LIRS
in the News
Staff News
Summer Exhibit Schedule
UNHCR Nansen Award
for your input, insight, innovation, inspiration,
information
A bimonthly publication of the Agency Advancement Department of
Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service
From the
Field
RCs Change at Four Affiliates
The roster of LIRS regional consultants has four newcomers: Dinah A. Hale
of Lutheran Social Services of New England (LSS/New England), West Springfield,
Mass.; James Horan of Lutheran Family Services of Colorado (LFS/Colorado),
Lakewood; Gregory James Wangerin of InterChurch Refugee and Immigration
Ministries (IRIM), Chicago; and Carol Roxburgh of Refugee Services of
North Texas (RS/North Texas), Dallas.
Dinah became director of refugee services for LSS/New England last September. She succeeded Kathy Shaw, who was in the position from June 1998 to June 2001 and is now executive director of Trust House, a family learning center in Hartford. After getting a bachelor's degree in business administration and accounting in 1984 from the University of Missouri in St. Louis, where she grew up, Dinah started her professional career as senior auditor of the St. Louis firm Coopers & Lybrand. During 1986-93 she was business manager for Enterprise Leasing & Rent-a-Car, starting in St. Louis and later relocating to Philadelphia and Hartford. Wanting to try something new, Dinah worked in the Stafford Springs office of the North Central Connecticut Mental Health Association 1994-98. She was a respite psychiatric counselor, an assertive community treatment team case manager and a therapy intern under a graduate program at Saint Joseph College, West Hartford. Prior to her present refugee work, she was site director and director of consumer services for Auctions.com, in Wallingford, Conn. Her interest in collecting Liberty Bell memorabilia led to the 1997 opening of the Liberty Bell Virtual Museum, which includes a gift shop.
A member of the staff of the Refugee and Asylee Program of LFS/Colorado, since April 1999, James became interim director last November and director in January. He succeeded Charlotte Adams, director since April 2000, who continues with the affiliate as a contracting consultant for its community development initiatives. A first-generation American whose family came from Slovenia in the former Yugoslavia, James grew up in Nevada and Arizona. In 1993 he received a bachelor's degree in anthropology and international studies from Whitman College, Walla Walla, Wash., and then taught English for a year in the Ukraine at the College of Business of the Kiev State Pedagogical Institute. After doing mortgage work during 1995-98 in the Reno area, James moved to Denver. Wanting to use his fluency in Russian, he initially served as a volunteer with both the Lutheran and Jewish resettlement programs. He started full-time at LFS as employment coordinator. His interests include ethnic politics and travel. His next "big trip," he says, is to Bolivia, Paraguay and Argentina.
Greg
became IRIM executive director in February. He succeeded May Campbell,
who started with the agency in 1982 when it was a program of the Illinois
Conference of Churches and oversaw its transition to the independent IRIM
a decade later. She has retired and plans to return to her native Scotland
to live. Greg, who was born in Grand Forks, N.D., graduated in 1978 from
Colorado State University, Fort Collins, with a bachelor's degree in humanities.
His courses included teaching English as a foreign language, and during
1979-80 he did just that at Rhenish Lutheran Church College in Hong Kong.
Greg also was on the staff of the Joint Voluntary Agency in Hong Kong
administered by LIRS, being a caseworker with Vietnamese "boat people."
From 1980 to his coming to IRIM, he was with the U.N. High Commissioner
for Refugees (UNHCR). After field assignments in Macao, Japan, Philippines,
Sudan, Kenya and Pakistan, he became senior external affairs officer at
UNHCR headquarters in Geneva in 1996, and most recently was senior personnel
officer.
Carol, who is director of special projects at RS/North
Texas, also assumed the LIRS regional consultancy from Cary "Chip"
Corcoran in March. She has been on the staff of the affiliate since March
1996. Chip continues as executive director and CEO. An Indianan, Carol
attended Indiana State University in Terre Haute and then lived in South
Africa and Zambia during 1971-81. After returning to the United States
she continued her studies at Dallas Baptist University, getting a bachelor's
degree in history and business in 1989 and a master's degree in history
and education in 1992. During 1987-96 she held various positions at the
university, including being director of counseling, and serving as an
adjunct professor in the College of Adult Education. Twice during her
service since '96 with RS/North Texas she has gone to New York City for
five months to be interim coordinator of processing and resettlement for
the Immigration and Refugee Program of Church World Service.
Return to top | Return to LIRS homepage