Michelle Brown, Senior Advocate

Michelle Brown joined Refugees International in 2000 and currently represents the organization at the United Nations. She has conducted field assessments in the Horn of Africa, West Africa, and Afghanistan. On her 16 missions in the past five years, Ms. Brown has focused her advocacy on issues such as protection of internally displaced people and refugees, reintegration assistance in post-conflict situations, emergency education, psychosocial programs for child combatants, and HIV/AIDS prevention and awareness programs in Sierra Leone. Before joining RI, Ms. Brown worked for three years as an English teacher in Japan. She also worked in South Asia with various women’s health organizations and with women’s micro-enterprise organizations in Cambodia. She has an MA in International Development Studies from George Washington University.

Dawn Calabia, Senior Adviser

Dawn Calabia joined Refugees International in 2004. As the organization’s Congressional liaison, she follows legislative developments for the organization and works to increase our impact in Congress. Ms. Calabia has twenty years experience with foreign policy analysis, human rights issues and public advocacy. She has handled governmental and non-governmental relations in the USA and the Caribbean for the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, and served as the Director of Refugee Policy and International Affairs for the US Catholic Conference Migration office, one of the nation’s oldest service organizations for refugees and asylum seekers. Ms. Calabia also served on Capitol Hill for 11 years as a staff consultant to the House International Relations Committee and as the senior legislative staffer to Rep. Solarz (D-NY). One of the founders of the Women’s Commission for Refugee Women and Children, housed at the International Rescue Committee, Ms. Calabia has led numerous fact-finding missions to Central America, Southeast Asia, South Asia and Africa. In December of 1996 she was honored at the White House for her human rights work with refugee women and children. She received her MSW from Fordham University, NY and her BA from St. John’s University, NY.

Sally Chin, Advocate

Sally Chin joined Refugees International in 2005 as a member of the Advocacy staff. In this role, she will conduct missions to assess the plight of refugees and internally displaced people. Prior to joining RI, Ms. Chin spent two years in the Democratic Republic of the Congo with Search for Common Ground and Fondation Hirondelle. In these positions, she worked closely with Congolese civil society organizations on conflict resolution and peacebuilding. With Fondation Hirondelle she focused on building a network of community radio stations for Radio Okapi, a joint effort of MONUC, the UN peacekeeping force, and the Fondation to get information to isolated Congolese communities. She has also worked in Search for Common Ground's Washington office and with a British organization, BASIC, on the small arms trade. Ms. Chin has a Master's in Comparative Politic sfrom the London School of Economics.

Peter Gantz, Peacekeeping Advocate

Peter Gantz joined Refugees International in 2003, where he manages advocacy in the areas of peace operations, post-conflict rule of law operations and related foreign policy issues. He has written extensively about capacity problems within the global peace operations system, and has coordinated successful efforts in Congress to build U.S. national and global capacity for post-conflict situations. Mr. Gantz also serves as the Executive Coordinator for the Partnership for Effective Peace Operations (PEP), a Washington DC-based policy working group of nongovernmental organizations, academics, practitioners, and others that supports public policy initiatives to improve national and global peace operations capacity. Before joining RI, Mr. Gantz worked with Citizens for Global Solutions in Washington and the Carter Center in Atlanta. Mr. Gantz received his Bachelor’s degree in International Relations at Kennesaw State University in Georgia and is currently finishing a Masters Program in Peace Operations Policy at George Mason University in Virginia.

Andrea Lari, Advocate

Andrea Lari joined Refugees International in 2004 and has already conducted missions for the organization to Burundi, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Tanzania, Zimbabwe and South Africa. In these missions, he has particularly focused on return and reintegration of refugees and internally displaced people. Before joining RI, Mr. Lari was a researcher for Human Rights Watch where he focused on Angola and forced displacement. Mr. Lari’s career in humanitarian work began when he volunteered with Jesuit Refugee Service in Angola. He then served as their Country Director for Angola from 1998 to 2000. Mr. Lari grew up in Italy where he volunteered in projects assisting refugees in Croatia and Albania. Mr. Lari has a degree in Political Science from the University of Bologna, where he wrote a final thesis entitled, “Human Rights Protection of Guatemalan Refugees in Southern Mexico,” and has completed the Refugee Studies Program at the International Summer School of Oxford University.

Sarah Martin, Advocate

Sarah Martin joined Refugees International in 2003 where she works to build greater awareness of gender issues and incorporates a gender analysis of refugee situations. In the last year, Ms. Martin has conducted missions to Sudan, West Africa, Zimbabwe and South Africa where she has focused on gender issues in peacekeeping, HIV/AIDS, and gender-based violence. She was instrumental in urging the Government of South Africa to increase protection for asylum seekers and step up the processing of asylum claims of Zimbabweans. Prior to joining RI, Ms. Martin worked with the Reproductive Health for Refugees Consortium’s Gender-Based Violence Global Technical Support Project in Sierra Leone and Nepal. She has also researched the impact of reproductive health programs on social norms in Bangladesh and Vietnam with the Empowerment of Women Research Project and examined incidences of gender-based violence for clandestine users of contraceptives in Mali at Family Health International. Ms. Martin received her Masters in International Development with a concentration on gender and anthropology from George Washington University, and her B.A. at the University of South Carolina. She is also certified as a trainer in gender and development by the Royal Tropical Institute of the Netherlands.

Mamie Mutchler, Human Rights Advocate

Mamie Mutchler joined Refugees International at the end of April 2004 where she specializes on the relationship between human rights abuses and displacement. Her work for RI has included documenting abuses and advocating for increased protection for people displaced by the crisis in Darfur, and investigating the plight of Haitian refugees, migrants and asylum seekers. Prior to joining RI, Ms. Mutchler worked as in-house legal counsel of Greenpeace International from 1997 to 2003, and was appointed to the Asser Institute of Public and Private International Law and the Permanent Court of Arbitration at the World Court. As a national of Chile, the U.S. and the Netherlands, Ms. Mutchler has traveled extensively. In 2003, she volunteered with Medecins sans Frontieres to work as a humanitarian advocate in Colombia. She received a degree in international law at the Vrije University in the Netherlands and her BA from Duke University.

Kavita Shukla, Advocate

Kavita Shukla joined Refugees International in 2002 as Advocacy Associate and became RI’s newest Advocate at the end of 2004. She has conducted humanitarian assessments to Uganda, Thailand, India and Bangladesh. Her missions to countries bordering Burma allowed her to urge policy makers in Bangladesh, India and Thailand, as well as UN and US government agencies, to take action to protect Burmese refugees from ongoing attacks. Before joining RI, she worked at Oxfam America, where she was part of the Humanitarian Assistance unit in Boston and the Policy Department in Washington, DC. Kavita received her Master’s in International Relations at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst.