LACEY STUDNICKA: Meet One: The Power of Welcoming Refugees 

Lacey has been welcoming refugees for seventeen years, and in her talk she points out that you don’t choose to flee your country, your home, and undertake highly perilous journeys unless you are forced to do so. However, some people do have a choice, and that is us, and our choice is how we welcome our new neighbors. Lacey really challenges all of us to reframe how they see individuals from other communities, and to take the first step; go and talk to and meet a refugee, and be transformed.

For the past 15 years, Lacey Studnicka has dedicated her life to fostering an inclusive and welcoming community for refugees in the United States. She oversees programs that span the state including volunteer management, faith community sponsorships, career mentoring, refugee arts programming, and creating a refugee speakers’ bureau, to name a few. Under Lacey’s leadership, LFS-NE’s refugee co-sponsorship program and volunteer program has gained national recognition as the best practice for church and community engagement and serves as a model for the nation. Lacey’s impassioned advocacy for refugees has led to her being profiled for local, national, and international media, most recently by PBS and NBC and she will be featured in an upcoming documentary. Lacey is recognizable for her genuine and relentless optimism for the future of the most vulnerable in our community.