Lucia Harrison
Lucia Harrison (English, Dutch) Lucia has been our Chief Executive Officer since 2006 and has been part of our organization since 2000. Originally from the Netherlands, she immigrated to Canada as a child with her family and became a Canadian Citizen in 1967. She studied business at Wilfrid Laurier University and Third World Studies at Conrad Grebel College. A fierce advocate for building a community of inclusion for everyone, she is the Past Chair and a current member of the Waterloo Region Immigration Partnership and Waterloo Region Refugee Resettlement Steering Committee. She has served on the boards of over 20 local and provincial organizations and agencies and currently sits on the board of the Ontario Council of Agencies Serving Immigrants and Youth In Conflict With The Law. In her rare (but occasional) spare time she likes to travel, cook and spend time with her grandchildren.
Jenna Hennebry
Jenna Hennebry holds a Ph.D. in Sociology, is an Associate Professor affiliated with the Balsillie School of International Affairs, and is the Director of the International Migration Research Centre (IMRC) at Wilfrid Laurier University. Her research focuses on international migration and mobility, with a specialization in lower-skilled labour migration with regional expertise in Canada, Mexico, Morocco and Spain.
Dr. Hennebry’s research portfolio includes comparative studies of migration policy and foreign worker programs with an emphasis on migrant rights and health, migration industries, non-state migration mediation, transnational families, and the role of remittances in development. Recent work examines the role of bilateral labour mobility agreements in protecting migrant rights and social protections, non-state actors and an expanding migration industry in foreign worker programs, and shifting regimes of labour migration governance worldwide (e.g. www.mappingmigration.com and www.migrantworkerhealth.ca).
Dr. Hennebry is currently working with UN Women to provide key analytical and methodological support to the UN Women’s project on Promoting and Protecting Women Migrant Worker’s Labour and Human Rights. She is also working with the World Bank on the KNOMAD project, KNOMAD draws on experts from all parts of the world to synthesize existing knowledge and generate new knowledge for use by policy makers in sending and receiving countries.
Tara Bedard
Tara Bedard is Executive Director of the Waterloo Region Immigration Partnership. Tara has over a decade of experience working in the field of immigration, refugee rights and diversity in numerous capacities from researcher to senior management.
Margaret Walton-Roberts
Margaret Walton-Roberts is a professor in the Geography and Environmental studies department at Wilfrid Laurier University, and affiliated to the Balsillie School of International Affairs, Waterloo Ontario. Her research interests are in gender and migration, transnational networks in the Indian diaspora, and immigrant settlement in Canada.
Her current research project focuses on the international migration of health care professionals in the context of economic regionalisation, and Mutual Recognition Agreements within ASEAN. She has been awarded several external grants for her research, and has published 3 co-edited books, over 18 book chapters, and more than 20 journal articles on immigration and citizenship policy, settlement and integration and transnational community formation.
Her latest co-edited book The Human Right to Citizenship: A Slippery Concept is published by University of Pennsylvania Press. Dr Walton-Roberts has led projects, published outputs, mentored, engaged in knowledge transfer with policy makers and community organizations, and established an international network of scholars focused on South Asian transnational migration networks. From 2008-2012 Dr Walton-Roberts was the inaugural Director of the International Migration Research Centre (IMRC); a research centre whose mandate is to serve as a focal point for debate, research, policy analysis, and proposal development related to international migration and mobility at the global, national and regional scale.
