Karen L. Dean – Science Advisor and Strategic Consultant
Karen has worked closely with Nathan since 1995 on the strategic analysis of researchers’ CVs and other documents, to delineate their fields and advise them on the types of documentation that will optimally support their NIW and Extraordinary Ability (EA) petitions. She brings to this task a varied background in biomedical research, graduate study of archeology, and more experience in medical and scientific writing than she really wants to acknowledge. She has co-authored several articles on the NIW with her husband, Nathan, and has edited or contributed articles to books, magazines, and newsletters in many different fields of medical research and practice, and technology transfer. She looks forward to the day when she can make sense of it all by writing science fiction.
She earned a B.A. in Anthropology at Case Western Reserve University (Cleveland, OH), and spent several years in graduate study at the Universities of Chicago and Pennsylvania (in Philadelphia, PA).
Bithi Mukhopadhyay – Senior Employment-based Immigration Specialist
Bithi is our senior Labor Certification (PERM) technical specialist, and has 15 years’ experience in masterfully supervising corporate clients H-1 and labor certification programs. Bithi is also an authority on the preparation and submission of P and O petitions, often under considerable deadline challenge, for an impressive variety of for-profit and non-profit organizations seeking to bring talented musicians and performing artists to this country.
Like Nathan, Bithi has acquired a Master’s degree in Philosophy and studied both Sanskrit and law. She earned a BA (Hons) and an MA in Philosophy at the inestimable Presidency College/Calcutta University, and she studied law at Burdwan University in Bengal.
Susu Durst – NIW/ Extraordinary Ability Specialist
Susu has worked since 2004 on an extraordinary range of NIW and EB-1 petitions for clients ranging from avant garde artists through novelists, theologians and journalists, to scientists and medical researchers. She has a BA in English Literature from the University of Toronto. Prior to joining WAXLAW, she conducted art historical research in the US and Germany for the Foundation Dina Vierny - Musee Maillol, Paris, France.
Lynn Batun Duvall – Paralegal
Lynn has worked with WAXLAW as a consulting paralegal since October 2006. She has experience in H-1B filings, extensions and renewals, J-1 waivers, consular processing, family-based I-130 and I-485 adjustment petitions, and citizenship applications, and she assists with National Interest Waiver/Extraordinary Ability petitions and special projects. A graduate of City College in New York, she has an advanced certificate in Immigration Law Studies from the Graduate Center School of Professional Studies. Prior to joining WAXLAW, she worked at the City University of New York as a coordinator for the Citizenship and Immigration Project providing immigration related assistance to students and faculty.
Lynn spent half of her life in the United Kingdom, France, Italy, Egypt, Pakistan, Thailand, Singapore, Burma and the United States with her Burmese diplomat parents, to whom she attributes her global perspective.
Daniel S. Larson – First Year Summer Associate
Daniel graduated from the University of California (Santa Cruz) with high honors in History with a concentration on China. Fluent in Mandarin, he taught English at China’s prestigious Beijing Normal University before he initiated the study of law at Michigan State University. In 2008, Daniel served as Special Projects Coordinator on several high-profile EB-1 cases, all of which proved to be successful. We look forward to welcoming Daniel back as our Senior Summer Associate in June 2011.
Blagovesta Momchedjikova, Ph.D. – Special Consultant Arts and Culture
Blagovesta holds a PhD in Performance Studies from New York University, where she teaches essay writing classes on art and the city in the Tisch School of the Arts. She is an expert on the artistic use – and significance – of urban spaces and on the role of art in society, particularly in contemporary urban culture. She has written about the role of such public institutions as museums as symbols of the urban experience, and as mediators between past and present and tradition and modernity. She is herself an alumna of the WAXLAW National Interest Waiver program.
Of Counsel Attorneys
Rio Guerrero, JD (www.guerrerolawfirm.com)
Based in New York City, Mr. Guerrero is an authority on E-1 and E-2 investor visas and EB-5 permanent residence matters.
Nina J. Fantl, JD (www.fantlfirm.com)
Ms. Fantl, who practices immigration law in Austin, Texas, is an invaluable resource to our clients in complex matters regarding consular processing, particularly in Latin America, waivers of excludability, and the EOIR.