Staff News

Michelle Brané
Michelle Brané joined the staff on January 25 as the national coordinator of LIRS's new Detained Torture Survivor Legal Support Network. An attorney who received her law degree from Georgetown University in 1994, Michelle brings over 15 years' experience in human services and human rights work to the agency. She has most recently served as national negotiator/assistant counsel with the National Treasury Employees Union, Washington, D.C., where she negotiated collective bargaining agreements with federal agencies. Other previous work has included stints as a human rights officer and a polling station supervisor in Bosnia and Herzegovina and advisory work with the U.S. Board of Immigration Appeals. She completed internships and clerkships with the U.S. Department of Justice's Office of the Chief Immigration Judge, the Lawyers Committee for Human Rights and the Lawyers Collective-Indira Jaising in Bombay, India. Michelle completed her undergraduate work in international studies at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, and also studied at the Institut des Etudes Politiques à Paris and the Anglo-Chinese School in Ipoh, Malaysia. Fluent in Spanish and French, she also has a working knowledge of German, Italian, Portuguese, Hungarian and Serbo-Croatian/Bosnian.

Jamie McLeod
Jamie McLeod, project director for RefugeeWorks' California office, resigned as of January 25 to take a position with the city of Sunnyvale, Calif. Jamie was instrumental in the coordination and facilitation of effective capacity building strategies for close to 50 mutual assistance associations in California. She has also authored training materials and presented numerous workshops to support refugee service providers. We wish her the best in her new endeavors.

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