He holds a BS in agricultural and natural resource economics from the U of MD, College Park, a Master’s in environmental law and policy from Vermont Law School, and an MS in international and development economics from the University of San Francisco. He has studied extensively, and seen firsthand, how immigration can alleviate poverty. He and Ricardo Meilman wrote “From Crisis to Community: Syrian Refugees and the B.C. Economy" and "Open For Business: Immigrant/New Canadian Entrepreneurs in Canada." He is currently working on an academic paper examining economic impacts of immigration policy in the US. 

Ricardo’s research focuses on the economics of education and labor, and applied econometrics. He is interested in economic inequality and has written reports about Syrian refugees in BC and immigrants entrepreneurs in Canada. He is currently working on papers on cash and in-kind transfers in Mexico, childcare subsidy program in Quebec and full-day kindergarten program in BC. He has also worked on economic research with the World Bank, Itau Unibanco and UNDP.

Erin Goheen Glanville is a SSHRC Postdoctoral Fellow in the School of Communication and a Research Associate at the Centre for Policy Studies on Culture and Communities. Her current work is a community collaboration project on storytelling in advocacy and the everyday discourse of contemporary forced migration dialogues in Canada. She has published on cultural representations of refugees, refugee literary narratives, and diaspora literature in global context, and runs community workshops, using stories to prompt dialogue about refugee representation.

Sonja van der Putten is a secondary Social Studies teacher in the Surrey School District. From teaching, to coaching soccer, to working on research projects in the community, Sonja has worked with students from refugee backgrounds in a variety of capacities. Sonja’s academic background has focused on the experiences of children in war and the role of education in post-war reconstruction. She is currently a PhD student at SFU conducting research focusing on belonging, well-being, and the gendered experiences of female adolescents and young adults from refugee backgrounds in the BC education system.

During her BSc Health Promotion, she conducted her honours thesis on international students’ access to sexual health services. As a Research Assistant at the Centre for Gender and Sexual Health Equity (CGSHE), Stefanie supports qualitative research with im/migrant women in Metro Vancouver and explores sexual and reproductive health inequities faced by im/migrant women in Canada. Stefanie also has international experience from a SFU/UCSD field course on global migrant health in the U.S.-Mexico border region, and an internship with CGSHE and the University of California San Diego. Locally, she volunteers with the Pacific Immigrant Resources Society.