Michele Klein-Solomon

Michele Klein Solomon is Senior Migration Policy Adviser to the Director General at the headquarters of the International Organization for Migration (IOM). She has represented the Organization in the preparations of the UN General Assembly Summit on Addressing Large Movements of Refugees and Migrants. Since November 2014 she also serves as the Director of the Secretariat of the Migrants in Countries in Crisis Initiative, based at IOM.  Prior to this, she served as the Permanent Observer of IOM to the United Nations, from 2010, and represented the Organization in preparations for the 2013 UN General Assembly High-Level Dialogue on International Migration and Development and the post-2015 UN Development Agenda, as well as in numerous humanitarian and development-related inter-governmental and expert fora.  She previously served as the Director of the Migration Policy and Research Department of IOM.  In that capacity, she was instrumental in building the Organization’s migration policy expertise and profile, including by helping to create and leading the IOM International Dialogue on Migration, and serving as a key member of the secretariat to and producing the Berne Initiative’s International Agenda on Migration Management.  She regularly provides advice and guidance to governments in all regions of the world as well as to regional, intergovernmental and non-governmental organizations on a wide range of migration policy matters.

Prior to joining IOM in 2000, Ms. Klein Solomon served as an Attorney Adviser with the U.S. Department of State’s Office of the Legal Adviser (from 1989 – 2000, in UN Affairs, Human Rights and Refugees, Law Enforcement and Intelligence, and Management). Of particular relevance to her work with IOM, Ms. Klein Solomon served as the Department's principal refugee and migration lawyer from 1991 - 1996. Ms. Klein Solomon received her Juris Doctor and Masters of Science in Foreign Service (MSFS) degrees, with honors, from Georgetown University Law Center and Georgetown University School of Foreign Service in 1988.  Ms. Klein Solomon has published on a range of migration-related issues, including migration and asylum; migration and trade; migration and development; and migration, environmental degradation and climate change.