Meet the Team

Our Team

Doug Rand

As a startup founder, immigration expert, and experienced executive branch policymaker, who trained as an evolutionary biologist, Doug brings a unique combination of abilities to his role as the Talent Mobility Fund’s Director. Doug sees the full landscape of how existing policies on the books can be used to more effectively attract and retain international scientific talent, how to identify and assess scalable ideas, and how to discover what’s needed and support to fruition solutions, including public goods, that will support the STEM talent ecosystem.

Doug’s federal government service includes senior roles both in the front office of a DHS agency and the White House. He served as Senior Advisor to the Director of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services from 2021–2025, where he spent a lot of time at the intersection of policy and process - coordinating agency-wide efforts to improve agency efficiency, data collection, and backlog reduction, as well as working on policy development and rulemaking on high-skilled immigration including for immigrant entrepreneurs. As Assistant Director for Entrepreneurship in the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy from 2010–2017, he spearheaded startup initiatives, helped develop legislation and regulations on startups, entrepreneurs, and immigration, and worked on lab-to-market efforts. Doug has testified before Congress concerning immigration agency oversight and written and published extensively on a wide variety of immigration-related topics, including foreign-born founders and entrepreneurs and data-based policy development. He has also been a Senior Fellow at the Federation of American Scientists and an advisor to the National Security Commission on Artificial Intelligence. As an entrepreneur, he was the co-founder and president of Boundless, as a tech company helping families navigate the immigration system, and was the co-founder and CEO of Playscripts, Inc., a licensing house for new stage plays and musicals.
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Diane Rish

Deputy Director, Talent Mobility Fund

Diane is a U.S. immigration attorney with 16 years of experience in the field of U.S. immigration law and policy. Most recently, she served as Senior Manager of Immigration at Salesforce, a cloud-based software company headquartered in San Francisco. Previously, she served as Associate Director of Government Relations at the American Immigration Lawyers Association (AILA) where she advocated on behalf of AILA and its 15,000+ immigration attorney members for immigration-related policy, regulatory and legislative reforms before Congress, the White House and federal agencies.. Diane began her legal career in private practice where she provided legal counsel to Fortune 500 companies on all aspects of employment-based immigration.

Experts Council

• Parth Ahya

Chief of Staff, Renaissance Philanthropy

Experience designing and leading grantmaking programs in market shaping, science policy, and immigration, among other philanthropic ventures

• Jeff Alstott

Senior Information Scientist

Expert on global talent flows especially in the context of tech competition - experience as Information Scientist at IARPA and RAND as well as Professor of Policy Analysis at the RAND School of Public Policy

• Fanta Aw, PhD

Executive Director and CEO of NAFSA

Long time executive in the international students and scholars services space at US higher ed institutions, now leading the world’s largest association of international educators

• Lawrence S. Bacow

President Emeritus, Harvard University

One of the most widely experienced leaders in American higher education, known for his commitment to expanding student opportunity and catalyzing academic innovation

• Amanda Baran

Former Chief of the Office of Policy & Strategy at U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services for the Biden administration

A leader in immigration policy analysis, advocacy, and government affairs

• Michael Clemens

Professor in the Department of Economics at George Mason University

Leading immigration economist studying migration flows and their impacts to economic prosperity

• Johann Harnoss

BCG Henderson Fellow for Global Migration, and the Co-Founder and CEO of Imagine Foundation

Expertise includes the future of global talent mobility and how that connects to innovation and strategic implications for companies

• William Kerr

Professor at Harvard Business School and Co-Director of Harvard's Managing the Future of Work Project

A leading expert on how the movement of high-skilled global talent shapes business, economy, and society

• Amy Nice

Founder, Talent Mobility Fund

A thought leader on U.S. STEM immigration

• Leo Rafael Reif

President Emeritus, MIT

Electrical engineer, academic administrator, professor who has focused on making education more effective and accessible and working to accelerate the pace and impact of innovation

• Rajat Suri

Co-Founder, Lima, Presto, Lyft

Serial Silicon Valley entrepreneur committed to helping skilled immigrants

• Julia Willemyns

Founding Co-Director, Centre for British Progress

Working to advance the policy landscape on science, technology, and innovation, also member of the Board of Renaissance Philanthropy

• Lisa Zeiger

Head of People, ClassDojo, former Head of Mobility, Stripe

Extensive experience running global mobility operations, and connecting high-value talent to enterprise success