Makwerekwere: Advisory Board
Elzbieta M. Gozdziak
Elżbieta M. Goździak is the Director of Research at the Institute for the Study of International Migration (ISIM) at Georgetown University and Editor of International Migration, a peer reviewed, scholarly journal devoted to research and policy analysis of contemporary issues affecting international migration. Formerly, she held a senior position with the Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) and the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) in the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. She has taught at the Howard University’s School of Social Work in the Social Work with Displaced Populations Program, and managed a program area on admissions and resettlement of refugees in industrialized countries for the Refugee Policy Group. Prior to emigrating to the US, she was an Associate Professor of Anthropology at the Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań, Poland.
Dr. Gozdziak’s recent publications include New Immigrants, Changing Communities: Best Practices for Better America (with Micah N. Bump); Data and Research on Human Trafficking: A Global Survey (edited with Frank Laczko); Beyond the Gateway: Immigrants in a Changing America (edited with Susan F. Martin); and two edited volumes with Dianna J. Shandy): Rethinking Refuge and Migration, published by the American Anthropological Association in 2000, and a thematic volume of the Journal of Refugee Studies on Religion and Forced Migration published by Oxford University Press in 2002.
Susan Somach
Susan Somach is a Gender Specialist with extensive community and international development experience, including 13 years of providing technical assistance and conducting trainings, assessments, evaluations, and research for a variety of donor-funded initiatives in over 20 countries. She has worked on issues of immigration, asylum, refugee resettlement, reintegration, gender-based violence (including domestic violence and trafficking-in-persons) as well as civil rights and social justice. Ms. Somach served as Gender & Youth Advisor for the USAID/Russia Mission and has worked on gender issues in Eastern Europe and Eurasia, Central Europe, the Middle East, Southern Africa, and Southeast Asia. A former banking and securities lawyer, Ms. Somach also has 18 years of teaching, training (including training-of-trainers), facilitation, and presentation experience on a wide variety of gender, human rights, multicultural, civic and voter education, legal, and other democracy topics, as well as strategic and project planning. Ms. Somach was the Executive Director of a refugee social service agency that included the domestic violence program and participated in the formation of a shelter for battered refugee and immigrant women and children. Based in Atlanta, Georgia, Ms. Somach provides technical assistance and training on a consultancy basis for USAID/Washington and USAID Missions abroad, and implementing partners. Ms. Somach has a Bachelor’s Degree in Russian and East European Studies from the University of Michigan and a Juris Doctorate from the Duke University School of Law.
Eunice Mafundikwa
A native of Zimbabwe, Eunice Mafundikwa is a communications graduate with more than 20 years communications and journalism experience in Africa and the United States. Currently she is Senior Projects Manager for the National Minority Clinical Research Association, where she leads and manages continuing education on Hepatitis B and C, HIV and AIDS.
Her past work has included project management and consulting with the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Global AIDS Program, and managing the CDC Ethiopia Task Order.
She has also worked as a freelance Assignment Editor for CNN International, and as a Communications Consultant for Action Aid International Nairobi, Kenya/Johannesburg, South Africa. She spent many years working in the media as a Senior Political Reporter for The Herald and News Editor for the Daily News, both in Harare, Zimbabwe.
While in Zimbabwe she also served as Board Chair of the Federation of African Media Women- Zimbabwe Chapter (FAMWZ)