Jennie Murray

As President and Chief Executive Officer, Murray leads the Forum, focused on ensuring immigrants and all Americans are supported through programs and policies that allow us to thrive.  Formed by her experiences in an immigrant family, throughout her career she has focused on ensuring immigrants have the services and skills they need to succeed while the country has the immigration system needed to prosper. She is pleased to return to the Forum, after 8 years of former service, where this unique blend is the focus everyday. Murray brings two decades of experience to this role, having worked at the intersection of immigration services and the private sector, as well as in refugee resettlement and workforce development, all while creating and driving policy change to support robust and dignifying immigration policies.

Before returning to the Forum, Murray served as the Executive Vice President of Programs at Upwardly Global, where she supported Upwardly Global in scaling its nationally-recognized job coaching and skill-building programs to job seekers and corporate partners across the country. Also, while serving at Upwardly Global, she supported the nation’s effort to evacuate 90,000 Afghan evacuees, launched a 50+ company Corporate DEI Working Group focused on inclusion Immigrants and Refugees, and helped to establish a workforce development plan with public and corporate partners in Poland to help with resettlement of over 3 million displaced Ukrainians.

In her previous role, Murray developed and led the New American Workforce at the National Immigration Forum, an umbrella of immigrant worker upskilling and support programs offered at over 500 companies, such as citizenship legal services and our English-language training program, English At Work. In addition, she formed and led the Corporate Roundtable for the New American Workforce, co-founded by Walmart and Chobani. This collection of the nation’s largest corporations develops and implements best practices for immigrant integration at the worksite and advances legislative advocacy initiatives to support new Americans.

In 2014, Murray’s program, New American Workforce, was recognized by the Obama White House for excellence in Immigrant Integration and 5 members were awarded the Champion of Change award for their participation.   

Before joining the Forum in 2013, she directed programs at Jubilee Jobs and at Catholic Charities Washington, D.C., Refugee Center. Raised in Los Angeles and Nashville, Jennie earned her bachelor’s degree from Union University and her master’s degree from Wesley Theological Seminary in Washington, D.C. Currently, Jennie lives in the San Francisco Bay Area with her husband and their son.