America's Voice (lobby)
| Frank Sharry | |
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Sharry with Jack Dromey
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| Born | Connecticut |
| Alma mater | Princeton University |
| Organization | America's Voice |
Frank Sharry is the founder and executive director of America’s Voice, an immigration reform group.
He was raised in West Hartford, Connecticut by an Italian-American mother and an Irish-American father. He graduated from Princeton University in 1978, majoring in History and American Studies. He was captain of the soccer team his junior and senior year, served as a Resident Advisor his senior year and was active in student protest efforts regarding the role of private and selective eating clubs in college life and university investments in firms operating in a South Africa ruled by apartheid.
After graduation he taught secondary school for a year at the United World College of Southeast Asia in Singapore. He left to work for the American Council for Nationalities Service (ACNS) in Singapore and Indonesia to assist with the resettlement of boat refugees fleeing war-torn Vietnam in search of temporary safe haven in Indonesia.
He returned to the United States in 1980 and worked for ACNS in Fort Chaffee, Arkansas, helping to resettle Cuban refugees who arrived from the Cuban Port of Mariel. He then moved to the ACNS main office in New York to direct a special nationwide resettlement program for Cuban Refugees, and then was promoted to oversee the nationwide resettlement program in 27 cities for refugees from Southeast Asia, Africa and elsewhere.
In 1986 Sharry left ACNS and moved to Cambridge, Massachusetts where he became the Executive Director of Centro Presente, a local organization that worked with Central Americans who had fled civil war and human rights violations in their countries of origin to seek safe haven in the greater Boston area. While there he helped to found the Massachusetts Immigrant and Refugee Advocacy (MIRA) Coalition, a statewide immigrant advocacy organization.
In 1990 he was hired to become the Executive Director of the National Immigration Forum, one of the nation's premier immigration policy organizations based in Washington, D.C. It has been directly involved in every major legislative policy debate related to immigration since its founding in 1982. At the Forum he emerged as one of the leading pro-immigrant spokespeople, appearing frequently on television and radio, being quoted regularly in print publications, and addressing audiences throughout the country.
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