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Poonam Gupta
Senior Counsel
Berry Appleman & Leiden LLP
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Poonam Gupta is a Senior Counsel, and leads local operations for Berry Appleman & Leiden LLP’s New York office. She provides strategic and legal counsel to clients on all aspects of corporate and business immigration, working with organizations of all sizes in a wide variety of industries globally.
Her practice focuses on employment-based immigration matters, including assisting companies and their employees with all facets of nonimmigrant and immigrant visa matters. Poonam also provides guidance to employers on immigration compliance and immigration strategies related to corporate reorganizations. She regularly speaks at local and national conferences and events on corporate immigration and I-9 compliance.
Poonam’s active pro bono practice includes volunteering for the City University of New York’s Citizenship Now annual event, assisting with the Special Immigrant Juvenile docket, and leading a BAL team’s work with the International Refugee Assistance Project, including recent efforts to provide guidance on the Afghan refugee situation.
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Kelli Duehning
Partner
Berry Appleman & Leiden LLP
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As a Partner and head of the San Francisco office and a vital member of BAL’s Government Strategies team, Kelli is at the forefront of immigration government policy, trailblazing with creative tactics to meet even the most urgent contemporary matters. From complex cases requiring strategic government interaction to broad policy initiatives that involve sensitive political dynamics, Kelli successfully leverages her extensive background in government, her technical expertise and her passion for advocacy to help U.S. businesses access global talent and remain in compliance with the complicated web of employer immigration obligations. She keeps clients updated on fast-moving legislative and policy changes, drives immigration program management and advises on complex compliance issues in her role as a leader of the firm’s I-9 and e-verify practice.
Kelli joined BAL after a 17-year career with the Department of Homeland Security, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services and the Department of Justice Immigration and Naturalization Service. She managed the Western Law Division of USCIS and was responsible for developing and coordinating all legal strategies in the western United States. She also worked closely with government investigators and federal law enforcement officials and was a close advisor to agency leadership on complex immigration issues. In addition to her legal duties as a USCIS attorney, Kelli worked as an immigration officer in the overseas refugee program in Nairobi, Kenya; Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia; and various locations in Thailand. She was the acting field office director in Beijing, China and New Delhi, India, as well as an adjudications officer in Bangkok, Thailand.
As USCIS special counsel to Sen. Arlen Specter (R-Penn.), chair of the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee, she assisted with comprehensive immigration reform during the 2006 legislative session.
Kelli is a prolific advocate for immigration policy. She is a frequent speaker at WERC, SHRM and other venues and is sought after by the media for her immigration expertise. She currently serves as Chair of the Federal Bar Association's Immigration Law Section.
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Amy Nice
Assistant Director for International S&T Workforce
White House Office of Science and Technology Policy
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Amy M. Nice joined the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy in June 2021 as an Assistant Director. She has more than 30 years of experience as an immigration lawyer, both as a practitioner and policy analyst and advocate. In her role as OSTP’s Assistant Director for International Science and Technology Workforce, she takes the lead on STEM immigration and primarily focuses on agency policy shifts that will help the U.S. attract and retain more international STEM talent.
Since 2010, Ms. Nice’s work has included working with coalitions of higher education and business on high-skilled immigration policy, service as an attorney in the DHS Office of the General Counsel at the end of the Obama administration, working on employment-based immigration regulations and policy, and before that nearly five years as the Executive Director for Immigration Policy at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, where she worked extensively on S. 744, the bipartisan comprehensive immigration bill that passed the Senate in June 2013, and various other legislative efforts to reform the nation’s immigration statute.
Before devoting her work to immigration policy, Ms. Nice was Of Counsel at the Washington, DC law firm of Dickstein Shapiro (now Blank Rome) from 1989 to 2010, where she led the firm’s varied immigration practice. While she was primarily engaged on employment-based immigration matters, she also worked closely on pro bono projects with Catholic Charities on developing a U-visa case-intake system and with the Immigrant Legal Resource Center on naturalization.