Mark Hetfield Named New Leader of HIAS
Mark Hetfield was named president and CEO of HIAS, the global migration agency of the American Jewish community.
“As president and CEO, I intend to raise awareness of and support for HIAS’ compelling work and refugee needs across the Jewish community,” Hetfield said in a statement.
The appointment of Hetfield, who has served as interim CEO since Jun. 1, is effective immediately.
In a statement issued Monday that described the three-month search process, HIAS chairman Marc Silberberg said the organization’s decision “was firmly rooted in Mark’s widely recognized expertise and experience in global refugee and resettlement programs and advocacy, his exceptional track record of innovation and achievement with HIAS and the other organizations he has served, and his clear vision for HIAS’ future.”
Hetfield began his career at HIAS as a Russian-speaking caseworker in Rome in 1989. Immediately before his interim appointment, he served as the organization’s senior vice president for programs and policy.
Prior to rejoining the organization in April 2006, Hetfield was on the staff of the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom, where he was the commission’s senior adviser on refugee issues. He also spent five years working at the Immigration and Naturalization Service in Washington and at the U.S. Embassy in Haiti.
A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you move on, I wanted to ask you to support the Forward’s award-winning journalism during our High Holiday Monthly Donor Drive.
If you’ve turned to the Forward in the past 12 months to better understand the world around you, we hope you will support us with a gift now. Your support has a direct impact, giving us the resources we need to report from Israel and around the U.S., across college campuses, and wherever there is news of importance to American Jews.
Make a monthly or one-time gift and support Jewish journalism throughout 5785. The first six months of your monthly gift will be matched for twice the investment in independent Jewish journalism.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO