Krish O'Mara Vignarajah

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Krish O'Mara Vignarajah
Krishanti O'Mara Vignarajah.jpg Krishanti O'Mara Vignarajah.jpg
Born	Krishanti Vignarajah (1979-09-16) September 16, 1979 Colombo, Sri Lanka
🏫 Education	Woodlawn High School Yale University (BA, MA) University of Oxford (MPhil) Yale Law School (JD)
💼 Occupation
🏛️ Political party	Democratic
👩 Spouse(s)	Collin O’Mara (m. 2016)
👶 Children	1
👴 👵 Parent(s)	Ely Vignarajah (father) Sothy Vignarajah (mother)
👪 Relatives	Thiru Vignarajah (brother)
🏅 Awards	Marshall Scholarship (2001) Potter Stewart Prize (2007) Thurman Arnold Prize (2007) Joseph Parker Prize (2008) Benjamin Scharps Prize (2008) William Nelson Cromwell Foundation Prize (2011)

Krish O'Mara Vignarajah is the President & CEO of Lutheran Immigration & Refugee Service (LIRS). As an immigrant whose family fled Sri Lanka and sought refuge in the United States, Vignarajah is the first non-Lutheran CEO in the 80-year history of the organization.

Prior to taking the helm at LIRS, Vignarajah held a position as Policy Director to First Lady Michelle Obama and led the presidential initiative Let Girls Learn. Before working in the White House, Vignarajah served as a senior advisor at the State Department under Secretary Clinton and Secretary Kerry. In February 2017, she founded Generation Impact, a firm that helps nonprofits and advocacy organizations achieve sustainable impact.

Early Life

Vignarajah was 9 months old when her family escaped growing violence in Sri Lanka to come to America. The daughter of Baltimore City public school teachers, her mother started teaching at Poly High School and finished her career teaching at Morgan State University, one of Maryland's distinguished HBCUs. Her father recently retired from Western High School in Baltimore City, the oldest all-girls public school in the country, at the age of 80 after teaching for 53 years. Vignarajah attended Baltimore Public Schools from kindergarten through twelfth grade, graduating from Woodlawn High School in Baltimore (Woodlawn was the school featured in the Serial podcast).

Education

Vignarajah graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Yale College with a master's degree in Political Science and a B.S. in Molecular Biology – all in 4 years. She subsequently obtained an M.Phil. in International Relations at Oxford University (Magdalen College) as a Marshall Scholar. She then went Yale Law School, where she served as Features and Reviews Editor on the Yale Law Journal. During her academic career, Vignarajah received the William Nelson Cromwell Foundation Prize, the Benjamin Scharps Prize, the Joseph Parker Prize, the Potter Stewart Prize, and the Thurman Arnold Prize.

After law school, she practiced law at Jenner & Block in Washington, DC, clerked for Chief Judge Michael Boudin on the United States Court of Appeals for the First Circuit, and taught U.S. foreign policy and international law at Georgetown University as an adjunct. She has published articles in the Chicago Law Review, Washington Post, Baltimore Sun, and Journal of World Trade. She regularly appears on MSNBC, The Hill, CNN and CBS.

Career

In October 2011, Vignarajah was named as Senior Advisor at the State Department under Secretary Clinton and Secretary Kerry. In that role, Vignarajah helped manage State Department initiatives and programs related to private sector investment and public-private partnerships, agency and bureau budgeting, development strategies around health, food security and climate change, youth and religious engagement, global women's issues, and regional issues relating to Africa and the Middle East. Vignarajah also served as an adjunct faculty member at Georgetown University, teaching international law and U.S. foreign policy.

In early 2015, Vignarajah was named Michelle Obama's new Policy Director. At the White House, Vignarajah led the Let Girls Learn initiative, which brought together a number of government agencies, private sector partners and countries to address the range of challenges preventing adolescent girls from attaining a quality education. Vignarajah oversaw the creation of an international coalition of governments that included Japan, Pakistan, South Korea, and the UK, plus over 100 private sector companies and organizations including IBM, Johnson & Johnson, Girl Scouts, and Lands’ End.

Vignarajah left the White House at the end of the Obama Administration and began her own firm, Generation Impact, which partnered with nonprofits and social enterprises to create strategic partnerships and execute innovative strategies to positively impact the world. She worked to advance issues like education, entrepreneurship and women and girls empowerment.

In May 2017, she gave the commencement address at Hood College, which was named one of the 9 most inspiring commencement speeches of 2017 by Buzzfeed.

In September 2017, Vignarajah formally announced her run for Governor of Maryland at her childhood home in Edmonson Heights. She kicked off her gubernatorial campaign with a three-day statewide tour, beginning in Garrett County and ending in Ocean City. On the campaign trail, she was endorsed by actress Ashley Judd for her strong proposals to end sexual harassment, created a viral "Mean Tweets" video with more than 1.7 million views in response to sexist and racist comments she received, and was an outspoken critic of Trump's border policy of family separation at numerous immigration rallies. Her ground-breaking campaign received national attention and she essentially tied for third place with 8.5 percent of the vote in a field of 9 candidates. Her gubernatorial ticket was the first in the nation to include two women of color.

On February 13, 2019, Vignarajah was appointed as President and CEO of LIRS. The Board of Directors for LIRS, who were instrumental in her selection, cited her bold style of leadership, asserting that she “is exactly the kind of once-in-a-generation leader LIRS needs right now.”

LIRS Presidency

In February 2019, Vignarajah was named President & CEO of Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service (LIRS) -- one of the largest immigration and refugee resettlement agencies in the United States, and only one of two agencies that helped reunite immigrant children separated from their parents as a result of the Trump administration family separation policy.

In May 2019, Vignarajah visited the Homestead Temporary Shelter for Unaccompanied Children and spoke out against the facility's crowded conditions and the for-profit status of its parent company, Caliburn International. She further advocated for the humane treatment of unaccompanied migrant children as a co-organizer of the Lights for Liberty vigil in Washington D.C., addressing the hundreds of demonstrators on the importance of treating immigrants humanely. “I know the America that welcomed us feels different than the America I see in our detention operations along the border,” Vignarajah said. “This vigil is about reminding us of who we are.”

As a result of her advocacy and her organization's experience in caring for unaccompanied migrant children, Vignarajah was invited to testify before the House Committee on Appropriations in July 2019. During her testimony, Vignarajah laid out recommendations to improve the treatment of these children, testifying that "we must ensure that children in U.S. custody are not just in our custody, but in our care -- and that the conditions are conducive for their safety and well-being." She further noted that while the family separation policy may have officially ended in June of 2018, her organization continues to encounter such cases.

In July 2019, Vignarajah appeared on CBS News to talk about LIRS's United Sanctuaries of America campaign -- a response to reports of planned mass deportation operations targeting thousands of immigrant families vulnerable to denial of due process.

In response to the Trump administration's Public Charge Rule, Vignarajah fiercely criticized the policy, arguing that "the promise of America has always been that, if you put in the effort, you can surmount your difficulties, start over and achieve. This rule breaks that promise — but only for the poor."

In September 2019 following the administration's announcement of a record-low refugee admissions ceiling for FY2020, Vignarajah told CNN, "communities and people of faith across the country are deeply disturbed by this unwarranted decision to turn our backs to those most in need. The American legacy of welcoming refugees defines us as a nation. We admit refugees not because they are American, but because we are American."

Personal Life

In December 2015, Vignarajah got engaged to Collin O’Mara, President and CEO of the National Wildlife Federation, America's largest wildlife conservation organization. The couple married in May 2016, with the ceremony officiated by Senator Chris Coons. The couple welcomed a daughter, Alana Vignarajah O’Mara, in June 2017.

References

Category:1979 births Category:Yale University alumni Category:Alumni of the University of Oxford Category:Yale Law School alumni Category:White House staff Category:American people of Sri Lankan Tamil descent Category:Living people

Krish O'Mara Vignarajah

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