Immigrant justice fund Senior leadership

Kica Matos, President

Kica Matos is the president of the National Immigration Law Center (NILC) and the Immigrant Justice Fund (IJF). She is also a Distinguished Practitioner at Yale University’s Brady Johnson Program in Grand Strategy. Kica joined NILC and IJF as executive vice president of programs and strategy in January 2023. Prior to this, Kica was vice president of initiatives at the Vera Institute of Justice. She also served as the director of immigrant rights and racial justice at the Center for Community Change. She has extensive experience as an advocate, community organizer, and lawyer.

Kica has also headed up the U.S. Reconciliation and Human Rights Program at Atlantic Philanthropies. Before joining Atlantic Philanthropies, she was deputy mayor in the city of New Haven, where she oversaw community programs and launched new initiatives including prisoner re-entry and youth and immigrant integration. Kica was previously the executive director of JUNTA, New Haven’s oldest Latino advocacy organization. She also worked as an assistant federal defender for death sentenced inmates and with the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund and Amnesty International on death penalty and criminal justice issues.

She has a B.A. from Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand, an M.A. from the New School and a J.D. from Cornell Law School. She was awarded honorary doctorate degrees from Albertus Magnus College in 2017 and the University of New Haven in 2019. She is a recipient of the John F. Kennedy New Frontier Award and in 2021, she was inducted into the CT Women’s Hall of Fame.

Kate Kahan, Executive Vice President, Advocacy

Kate Kahan is a longtime social justice advocate with over three decades of experience working on a range of issues, including advancing LGBTQIA+, racial and gender justice, immigrant justice, democracy reform, and economic justice.

Kate got involved in activism as a young mom on welfare. She led welfare rights and feminist organizing groups before moving to Washington, D.C., to work for the US Senate Finance Committee on low-income policy and tribal affairs.

Kate has also worked for several national advocacy organizations, including the National Partnership for Women & Families, Community Change, the Vera Institute of Justice, and People’s Action, on a range of social justice issues and campaigns, bringing a deep commitment to strengthening the field of community organizing and building power to advance justice and systemic change to build a more equitable world.