The Alaska World Affairs Council hosted a panel on refugees in Alaska. Panelists included Jessica Kovarik and Margaret Stock.
Panelists:
Jessica Kovarik, Program Director/State Refugee Coordinator, Refugee Assistance and Immigration Services
Jessica Kovarik, has served as State Refugee Coordinator/Program Director of Refugee Assistance and Immigration Services (RAIS) at Catholic Social Services since July 2014. Prior to her work with the RAIS Program, Ms. Kovarik has volunteered, interned and worked with several domestic refugee resettlement programs as well as worked on international programming for refugees with both Save the Children and International Rescue Committee. She has a Master of Arts in International Human Rights with a focus on refugee studies and also holds a Certificate in Humanitarian Assistance from the University of Denver, Josef Korbel School of International Studies. During graduate school she was also a research associate for the University of Denver’s Human Trafficking Center. Jessica is a former Peace Corps Volunteer who served in an indigenous community in the cloud forest of Panama as a Sustainable Agriculture Specialist and also coordinated the country’s Gender and Development Programming.
Margaret Stock, Attorney, Cascadia Cross-Border Law Group LLC
Margaret D. Stock is an Alaska attorney who earned her undergraduate, graduate, and law degrees at Harvard University. A retired lieutenant colonel in the US Army Reserve Military Police Corps, she was named a 2013 MacArthur Fellow (“genius grant” recipient) by the John D. & Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation for her work on issues involving immigration and national security. She is the principal attorney at Cascadia Cross Border Law Group LLC in Anchorage, AK. She has worked with dozens of refugees and asylum-seekers over the two decades of her legal career.
Moderator:
Dr. Paul Dunscomb, Professor of East Asian History, UAA
Paul Dunscomb is Professor of East Asian History at the University of Alaska Anchorage and was the inaugural Director of the UAA Confucius Institute. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Kansas. His book Japan’s Siberian Intervention, 1918-1922: “A Great Disobedience Against the People” (New York: Lexington Books, 2011), is the first complete narrative of this topic in English. Japan Since 1945, his contribution to the Association for Asian Studies Key Issues in Asian Studies Series has just been released.
TOPIC: New Beginnings: Perspectives on Refugees in Alaska – A Panel Discussion
RECORDED: Friday, December 4, 2015 at the Hilton Hotel
ABOUT: Alaska World Affairs Council Presents is a public service partnership of the Alaska World Affairs Council and KSKA Public Radio. You can attend a variety of live AWAC speaking events in Anchorage. Check out the list of upcoming speakers and topics on the AWAC Events Calendar.
SUBSCRIBE: Get Alaska World Affairs Council Presents updates automatically — via email, RSS or podcasts.
Eric Bork, or you can just call him “Bork” because everybody else does, is the FM Operations Manager for KSKA-FM. He oversees the day-to-day operations of the FM broadcast. He produces and edits episodes of Outdoor Explorer, the Alaska-focused outdoors program. He also maintains the web posts for that show. You may have heard him filling in for Morning Edition or hosting All Things Considered and can still find him operating the soundboard for any of the live broadcast programs.
After escaping the Detroit area when he was 18, Bork made it up to the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, where he earned a degree in Communications/Radio Broadcasting from Northern Michigan University. He spent time managing the college radio station, working for the local NPR affiliate, and then in top 40 radio in Michigan before coming to Alaska to work his first few summers. After then moving to Chicago, it only took five years to convince him to move back to Alaska in 2010. When not involved in great radio programming he’s probably riding a bicycle, thinking about riding bicycles, dreaming about bikes, reading a book, or planning the next place he’ll travel to. Only two continents left to conquer!
