Migration Policy Institute Announces Leadership Transition
WASHINGTON — The chair of the Board of Trustees of the Migration Policy Institute (MPI), the Most Rev. Nicholas DiMarzio, Bishop of Brooklyn, on Monday announced the transition of leadership at MPI from founding President Demetrios G. Papademetriou to Michael Fix, the institute's long-serving senior vice president and director of studies.
"The Board of Trustees considered how to honor Demetri's wish to relinquish his management duties and have a smaller role at the Institute, and agreed unanimously to implement a carefully planned and orderly transition," DiMarzio said. "This transition, which has been in the works for nearly two years, leaves MPI on a firm footing across all of its research and policy development and advisory activities."
As part of this plan, Fix increasingly assumed more management duties, on January 1 becoming CEO of MPI, and on July 1 will become president.
Also effective July 1, Papademetriou will begin a six-month study sabbatical. He will return to MPI on January 1, 2015 as a distinguished senior fellow and president emeritus and will remain at MPI through 2016 in half-time capacity, with a specific focus on certain signature initiatives of the institute's international work. Papademetriou will also continue as president of MPI Europe, which is based in Brussels.
"It would be impossible to do justice in a few words to the huge influence Demetri has had on thought leadership and policymaking in the United States and internationally, and how he has built a unique policy research institute of unmatched excellence, impact and reach," DiMarzio said. "The board is grateful to Demetri for his vision and leadership, is unanimous in its support of this transition and has complete confidence that Michael is uniquely positioned to take MPI to its next phase of success."
Papademetriou co-founded MPI in 2001 with Kathleen Newland, with the institute evolving from the International Migration Policy Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. An independent, non-partisan think tank headquartered in Washington, DC, MPI has a sister institution in Brussels as well as offices in New York and Manila, and a presence in London. To date, MPI has published more than 400 research reports and books, provided testimony before the U.S. Congress and parliamentary bodies in more than a dozen countries, advised dozens of governments and civil society organizations and organized countless public and private convenings.
"Demetri and our colleagues at MPI have indelibly shaped the debates over immigration and immigrant integration policymaking in North America, Europe and beyond, and I am incredibly honored by the confidence that the board of trustees and Demetri have placed in me," Fix said. "I am delighted that I will continue to be able to draw upon Demetri's wise counsel and unparalleled expertise in the months ahead."
Said Papademetriou: "Michael has been my key partner for nearly a decade. Beginning with his long tenure at the Urban Institute, where he was the director of immigration studies, Michael has built a stellar career as one of the country's pre-eminent scholars on immigration and immigrant integration policy. Beyond his impeccable research credentials, I have long valued his strategic thinking and advice regarding the institute's management. I could not be leaving MPI in better hands."
Fix, who joined MPI in 2005, has focused his research on immigrant integration and the education of immigrant children in the United States and Europe, as well as citizenship policy, immigrant children and families, the effect of welfare reform on immigrants and the impact of immigrants on the U.S. labor force.
Fix serves on the board of MPI Europe and is a policy fellow with IZA in Bonn, Germany. He is a member of the National Research Council's Committee on the Integration of Immigrants into U.S. Society, which over 2014-2015 is examining what is known about the integration of immigrants in the United States. Previously, he served on the National Academy of Sciences' Committee on the Redesign of U.S. Naturalization Tests and on the Committee on the Health and Adjustment of Immigrant Children. In 2005 he was appointed to the state of Illinois' New Americans Advisory Council and in 2009 to the state of Maryland's Council for New Americans.
Fix received a JD from the University of Virginia and a bachelor of the arts degree from Princeton University. He did additional graduate work at the London School of Economics.
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The Migration Policy Institute is an independent, non-partisan, non-profit think tank in Washington, D.C. dedicated to analysis of the movement of people worldwide. MPI provides analysis, development and evaluation of migration and refugee policies at the local, national and international levels. For more on MPI's work, visit www.migrationpolicy.org.