Public Health Institute to Present Webinar on Rights of Immigrant Community Members
SPRINGFIELD — The Public Health Institute of Western Massachusetts (PHIWM) will present a webinar called “Know Your Rights: Information for Immigrant Community Members and Programs Who Serve Them” on Friday, Jan. 10 from noon to 1 p.m. Click here to register.
Speakers include Elizabeth Sweet, executive director of the Massachusetts Immigrant & Refugee Advocacy Coalition (MIRA), and Ilana Steinhauer, executive director of Volunteers in Medicine (VIM) Berkshires.
Sweet brings to MIRA an 18-year record of advocating for immigrants and refugees. For the past six years, she served in senior leadership roles at HIAS (founded as the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society), most recently as its chief operating officer. A graduate of Northeastern University School of Law, she set out to defend immigrants and asylum seekers in immigration detention during their deportation hearings. She later became the first full-time director of the American Bar Assoc. Immigration Justice Project in San Diego and then associate director of the American Bar Commission on Immigration in Washington, D.C. For the past six years, Sweet has also chaired the board of Detention Watch Network, a national coalition building power through collective advocacy, grassroots organizing, and strategic communications to abolish immigration detention in the U.S.
As executive director of VIM Berkshires, along with the standard executive responsibilities, Steinhauer also acts as director of medical services, coordinating patient care across all medical service areas and providing acute and chronic care. In 2016, she helped launch Berkshire Area Support of the Immigrant Community, a group that works to ensure Berkshire County is a place the immigrant community can thrive. A PHIWM board member, she is also a board member of Southern Berkshire Rural Health Network and Berkshire Taconic’s Eagle Fund. With an undergraduate degree from Wesleyan University and bachelor’s and master’s degrees in nursing from Simmons College, Steinhauer began her career as a nurse with the Medical Group/Harvard Vanguard Associates in Beverly, later returning there as a nurse practitioner. She is bilingual in Spanish.