Ivy Suriyopas Announced as New Vice President of Programs for Grantmakers Concerned with Immigrants and Refugees
PETALUMA, CA – Ivy Suriyopas has been appointed as the new Vice President of Programs at Grantmakers Concerned with Immigrants and Refugees (GCIR), effective May 12, 2021.
Suriyopas is a strategic and collaborative leader with more than 15 years of experience working to advance immigrant justice. She comes to GCIR from the Open Society Foundations (OSF), where she currently serves as a program officer focused on immigrant and refugee rights and manages a multimillion-dollar portfolio. At OSF, Suriyopas developed a grantmaking strategy focused on challenging the systems rooted in the racialized treatment of immigrants throughout U.S. history. Along with her colleagues, she convened leaders from across the racial justice, immigrant rights, and Muslim Arab South Asian movements to cultivate solidarity in a transformative and co-liberating way.
Before joining OSF in 2015, Suriyopas was an attorney and the director of the Anti-Trafficking Initiative at the Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund, working at the intersection of migrants’, workers’, and women’s rights, providing legal representation, and advocating for policy changes informed by the lived experiences of her clients. Previously, she was co-chair of the Freedom Network, a national alliance of almost 40 NGOs and individuals that serve and advocate for the rights of trafficking survivors.
As GCIR’s Vice President of Programs, Suriyopas will play a critical strategic leadership role in three areas: program and policy strategy and development, funder education and engagement, and funder mobilizing and organizing. She will introduce leading-edge practices from the immigrant justice field and play a key role in shaping GCIR’s long-term strategy. “As a daughter of immigrants and a long-time advocate for immigrant justice, I am excited to be joining the GCIR team as Vice President of Programs,” said Suriyopas. “There is no better place to galvanize philanthropy to support immigrant communities.”
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GCIR galvanizes philanthropy to advance immigrant justice and belonging. Founded in 1990, GCIR is the nation’s only immigrant-focused philanthropy-supporting organization (PSO). The organization works with its 130 member institutions, the 1,200 individual grantmakers in its network, partners in the field, and other PSOs to mobilize funder resources on the most pressing issues facing immigrants, refugees, and asylum seekers. In 2017, Inside Philanthropy named GCIR the Funders’ Affinity Group of the Year for leading funder pushback to anti-immigrant policies. GCIR’s work has informed and mobilized hundreds of millions of dollars to support immigrant communities across the country.