Kari Jorgensen Diener is a senior non-profit executive with 25 years of experience working with mission- and community-centered organizations serving refugees and other vulnerable populations. She currently serves as the CEO of the Blue Ridge Area Food Bank, which is the largest responder to food insecurity in Western and Central Virginia, working with a network of 400 community partners to find sustainable approaches to combat hunger. Previously, Kari served as the Executive Director for the Refugee Self-Reliance Initiative (RSRI), where she provided overall leadership for the initiative, a multi-stakeholder network of 450+ organizations that promotes opportunities for refugees around the world to become self-reliant via the promotion of effective policies, research and practice. Prior to joining the RSRI, Kari was Country Director (2019-2022) and Director of Programs (2017-2019) for Mercy Corps in Jordan and held a number of leadership positions in the nonprofit sector, including as Mercy Corps' Deputy Director for Policy and Advocacy in Washington, DC and in program leadership roles in the West Bank, Gaza and South Sudan with Global Communities. Early in her career, Kari researched migration and refugee policy at the Institute for the Study of International Migration at Georgetown University and was a Fulbright Research Fellow in Turkey. She has published articles in Refugee Survey Quarterly, The Christian Science Monitor and The Hill, among other publications and is a contributing author to The Uprooted, Improving Responses to Forced Migration. Kari also serves on the editorial board of Refugee Survey Quarterly. She received a BA in Political Science from Bates College in Lewiston Maine, and an MA in Arab Studies with a Certificate in Refugee and Humanitarian Emergencies from Georgetown University. Kari is an Arabic speaker and is conversant in Turkish.