Mary Giovagnoli

Mary Giovagnoli works on a range of KIND program priorities, sharing her deep expertise in asylum and refugee law and migration policy. Mary is the immediate prior Executive Director of Refugee Council USA and previously served as Deputy Assistant Secretary for Immigration Policy at the U.S. Department of Homeland Security in the Obama Administration. She also spent six years at the American Immigration Council, where she led the Immigration Policy Center (IPC).

Prior to IPC, Mary served as Senior Director of Policy for the National Immigration Forum and practiced law as an attorney with the Departments of Justice and Homeland Security, serving first as a trial attorney and associate general counsel with the INS, and, following the creation of DHS, as an associate chief counsel for United States Citizenship and Immigration Services. Mary has done impactful legislative work and was awarded a Congressional Fellowship from USCIS to serve in Senator Edward M. Kennedy’s office, where she worked on comprehensive immigration reform and refugee issues.

Mary attended Drake University, graduating summa cum laude with a major in speech communication. She received a master’s degree in rhetoric and completed additional graduate coursework in rhetoric at the University of Wisconsin. She then received a J.D. from the University of Wisconsin Law School.