Maggie Powers is an Adviser for the Welcoming and Integrated Societies Division at the Open Society Foundations, an Adviser for the Columbia International Mobility Group (CIMG) and the Former Associate Director at the Columbia Global Policy Initiative (CGPI) at Columbia University.
Ms. Powers directly oversaw the International Migration Project of the Global Policy Initiative, which established a leading presence in the migration and refugee policy space. In this role, she supported the mandate of the former Special Representative of the Secretary-General for International Migration, Mr. Peter Sutherland, from 2014-2017; established partnerships with the UN Secretariat, IOM, UNHCR and others to host a Private Sector Forum on Migration and Refugees in 2016, and the NYC Global Mayors Summit on Migration and Refugee Policy and Practice in 2017. Ms. Powers is also a Commission Member of the Model International Mobility Convention.
Maggie has also researched the normative evolution of the Responsibility to Protect at the United Nations and the impact of the 2011 Libyan intervention on the norm’s development. She completed an empirical study tracking member-state usage of Responsibility to Protect in the Security Council from 2005-2014. This research was published in “The Responsibility to Protect After Libya” on openDemocracy.com (June 24, 2014) and in The International Journal of Human Rights (October 2015).
Maggie is a graduate of Columbia University with an M.A. in Human Rights Studies and Loyola University Chicago with a B.A. in political science and international relations.