Policy and Advocacy Team

Jennifer Podkul is an international human rights lawyer and expert on child migration in the United States. She has authored articles, handbooks and reports and presents regularly as an expert at various conferences, briefings, and professional trainings. Jennifer provides technical assistance and education to policy makers and testifies before Congress on issues related to migrant children. She co-authored “Forced From Home: The Lost Boys and Girls from Central America” and was a contributing author to “Childhood, Migration, and Human Rights in Central and North America: Causes, Policies, Practices, and Challenges.” Jennifer has taught child migration at Georgetown Law Center’s Human Rights Institute. Jennifer began her legal career as an attorney at Ayuda in Washington, D.C. first as an Equal Justice Works Fellow and later as a KIND Fellow. Prior to joining KIND, Jennifer Podkul was a senior program officer at the Women’s Refugee Commission where she researched issues facing vulnerable migrants seeking protection in the United States and advocated for improved treatment. She served as a Peace Corps volunteer in Honduras, holds a B.A. from Franklin and Marshall College and a J.D. with honors from the Washington College of Law, American University, where she was a Public Interest/Public Service Scholar.

Bio coming soon

Cindy Liou first joined KIND in 2016 as the Deputy Director of Legal Services. Prior to KIND, she was the Director of the Human Trafficking Project at Asian Pacific Islander Legal Outreach, where she also co-counseled several civil litigation cases on behalf of human trafficking survivors, and provided direct legal representation for survivors of domestic violence, sexual assault, elder abuse, child abuse and exploitation, and hate crimes. She has also provided consulting and training on topics ranging from domestic violence lethality, strategies on addressing and messaging anti-violence issues with immigrant communities, language access, to the collaboration of legal services, social services, and law enforcement in cross-disciplinary teams. Cindy is also the author of several articles and manuals, and has provided extensive updates to the Human Trafficking Task Force e-Guide developed by the U.S. Department of Justice’s Office for Victims of Crime (OVC) and Bureau of Justice Assistance (BJA). She is the recipient of the 2013 San Francisco Collaborative Against Human Trafficking Modern Day Abolitionist Award for Policy and Advocacy and the 2018 Paul and Sheila Wellstone Award from the Freedom Network to Empower Trafficked and Enslaved Persons (USA). She also handled a variety of pro bono cases as an associate at Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati PC. Cindy is a graduate from Stanford Law School and the University of Washington.

At KIND, Cory engages in outreach and advocacy to support the fair and appropriate treatment of unaccompanied children in the U.S. immigration system. Prior to coming to KIND, Cory worked as a researcher for a labor arbitrator. She has worked previously as the Manager of Federal Policy for the U.S. Green Building Council, and has interned and held positions at several nonprofit organizations. Cory has a B.A. in Journalism, Spanish, and International Studies from Penn State University, and a J.D. from Brooklyn Law School, where she was an Edward V. Sparer Public Interest Fellow. After law school, Cory served as a law clerk to a federal magistrate judge in the Eastern District of New York.