Michele Wucker

Michele Wucker
File:Michele Wucker.jpg Michele Wucker Michele Wucker
Occupation	Author, Commentator and Policy Analyst
Alma mater	Rice University, Columbia University
Website
wucker.com

Michele M. Wucker /’wʊkər/ (born 1969) is an American author, commentator and policy analyst specializing in the world economy and crisis anticipation. She is recognized as an expert on United States immigration policy, and on Dominican Republic-Haiti relations.

Life and career

Wucker is of American, Belgian and Austrian Slavic descent and lives in Chicago, Illinois. She has been diagnosed with celiac disease.

She holds a B.A. in French and Policy Studies from Rice University and a Master of International Affairs and Certificate in Latin American Studies from the School of International and Public Affairs at Columbia University. In 2012, she received a Certificate in Global Leadership and Public Policy in the 21st Century from the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University.

Wucker is the author of The Gray Rhino: How to Recognize and Act on the Obvious Dangers we Ignore, Lockout: Why America Keeps Getting Immigration Wrong when Our Prosperity Depends on Getting it Right and Why the Cocks Fight: Dominicans, Haitians and the Struggle for Hispaniola, for policy analysis and recommendations on the global economy, immigration and Latin America.

Before writing her first book, she worked as a news reporter at the Milwaukee Sentinel, (now the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel) in 1990, covering the local Hispanic community. This included a story on a missing man who later turned out to be one of Jeffrey Dahmer's victims. She wrote about emerging markets finance at Dow Jones, AmericaEconomia, and International Financing Review. From 2000-2001, she was Latin America Bureau Chief for International Financing Review and editor of IFR Latin America.

After publishing "Why the Cocks Fight," she was appointed senior fellow at the World Policy Institute, at the time part of The New School, the New York university. In 2007, she became executive director, taking the think tank independent from the university. She was named President of the World Policy Institute in 2010. The same year, the Women’s Media Center named Wucker a Woman Making History for her work on immigration and the relationship between the Dominican Republic and Haiti, calling her “a longtime proponent of policy reform” and crediting her with “highlighting issues rarely brought up in the national conversation. Michele's work shedding light on the complex realities of the world not only means she's making history; she's also helping to shape it by creating a more nuanced – and accurate – depiction of our era.”

In August 2014, Wucker left the World Policy Institute to join The Chicago Council on Global Affairs as Vice President for Studies. In 2015, she left the organization and founded Gray Rhino & Company.

Wucker was awarded a 2007 Guggenheim Fellowship for her work on changing global conceptions of citizenship. In 2008, she became a Womens Media Center Progressive Womens Voices Alumna. In 2009, the World Economic Forum honored her as a Young Global Leader.

Wucker was part of the Brookings-Duke Immigration Roundtable, which issued its recommendations in 2009. She was also part of the SUNY-Levin Institute New York in the World Advisory Council, which issued its recommendations in 2011 to New York City and State on policy responses to economic globalization.

Wucker is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, the Authors Guild, and _PEN. She is an advisor to the Dominican Republic Education and Mentoring Project and to Womensphere. She is a Mentor-Editor for The OpEd Project and an Oxfam Sisters on the Planet Ambassador.

Key concepts

Gray Rhinos

Wucker introduced the term “Gray Rhino” at the World Economic Forum Annual Meeting in Davos, Switzerland in January 2013. Unlike highly improbable “Black Swans” popularized by Nassim Nicholas Taleb’s 2007 book, Gray Rhinos are highly probable, high impact yet neglected threats. The concept is developed further in her 2016 book, The Gray Rhino: How to Recognize and Act on the Obvious Dangers We Ignore.

Sovereign debt crisis

Months before Argentina’s 2001 default, Wucker sounded an alarm that the lack of a process like an international Chapter 11 for sovereign defaults would increase the likelihood and costs of larger financial crises. In 2011, she made an early case for a pre-emptive restructuring and write-down of Greek sovereign debt.

United States immigration policy

In her second book, Lockout: Why America Keeps Getting Immigration Wrong When Our Prosperity Depends on Getting It Right, Wucker details the economic impact of the breakdown of the U.S. visa bureaucracy after 9/11. She flags the widespread American misconception that earlier generations of immigrants were more likely to stay than more recent arrivals, and warns that the United States is failing to capitalize on its greatest strength. Some of her policy recommendations have been controversial, like a 2007 New York Times op-ed that proposed reducing family preference visas for adult siblings of U.S. citizens in return for increases in employment-related visas. Despite writing on controversial issues, she has been recognized for making her case “clearly and deliberately” and a voice that is “wise and reasonable” and “ethical” voice.

Variability of citizenship

Wucker was an early commentator on the economic impact of migrant worker remittances and drew attention to the ways in which countries were changing their conceptions of citizenship and political power to attract the funds workers sent home to their families. She has challenged traditional ways of thinking about citizenship, arguing that dual citizenship and other expanded definitions benefit both sending countries and host countries. Wucker has argued that non-citizen voting, also known as resident voting or municipal voting because it it is limited to residents of cities in city elections, prepares people for U.S. citizenship and helps their communities.

Dominican-Haitian relations

The New York Times Book Review described Wucker’s 1999 book, Why the Cocks Fight: Dominicans, Haitians, and the Struggle for Hispaniola, as “a complex exploration of the cultural divide between Haiti and the Dominican Republic.” The book addresses historical, economic, political and social dimensions the relationship between the two countries sharing the island of Hispaniola, viewing conflicts over culture as the symptoms rather than the root cause of the tensions. She is a recognized expert on the topic. Haitian parliamentary election, 2000,., http://prospect.org/article/culture-fear-fueling-dominican-deportation-crisis

Selected bibliography

Books

• Why the Cocks Fight: Dominicans, Haitians, and the Struggle for Hispaniola (Hill & Wang, 1999/2000) ISBN 9780809037193;
• Lockout: Why America Keeps Getting Immigration Wrong When Our Prosperity Depends on Getting It Right (PublicAffairs Press, 2006/2007) ISBN 9781586483562

Selected essays

• “Passing the Buck: No Chapter 11 for Bankrupt Countries.” World Policy Journal, Summer 2001.
• “Muddling is Not Enough.” International Financing Review, July 26, 2001. Also published as “Fazer confusão não basta” in Valor Económico.
• “Argentina and the IMF: Will They Benefit from Hindsight?” Opendemocracy.net, September 4, 2003.
• “Civics Lessons from Immigrants.” The American Prospect, July 1, 2003.
• “Haiti Has Company in this Crisis.” The Washington Post, March 7, 2004.
• “Remittances: The Perpetual Migration Machine.” World Policy Journal, Summer 2004.
• “Political Power in the Perpetual Migration Machine.” World Policy Journal, Fall 2004.
• “Fixing the Borders (Without a Wall).” World Policy Journal, Winter 2006/2007.
• “Family Second,” The New York Times. February 28, 2006.
• “The Benefits of Dual Citizenship.” Foreign Policy In Focus. March 8, 2006.
• “The Complex Terrain of Dual Citizenship.” Internationale Politik (Germany –TransAtlantic edition) Summer 2006
• “A Safe Haven in New Haven,” New York Times, April 15, 2007.
• “Balancing Federal, State and Local Priorities in Police-Immigrant Relations: Lessons from Muslim, Arab, and South Asian Communities,” Immigration Policy Center, June 2008.
• “Chronicle of a Debt Foretold.” New America Foundation, May 2, 2011
• “The Water-Energy Nexus.” With Diana Glassman. World Policy Institute, 2011.
• “Closing the Gender Gap in Silicon Valley –and Everywhere.” World Economic Forum Blog, August 6, 2012
• “Lean in to Learn from Global Examples of Women.” CNN.com March 8, 2013
• “Davos 2013: Down with Short Termism; Long Live the Long Term,” World Economic Forum Blog, February 5, 2013
• "Davos 2014 Review: Taxonomy of the Gray Rhino,” World Policy Blog, February 18, 2014

External links

• www.wucker.com Official website
• Michele Wucker on Twitter
• Michele Wucker’s SheSource Profile
• Michele Wucker Appearances on C-Span

Interviews

• Book World Live, May 30, 2006
• Carnegie Council Ethics in Business, August 11, 2009
• Jezebel.com “Does The Struggle For Women's Rights Extend To Citizenship?” August 21, 2009
• Rachel Maddow Show on Haiti Earthquake, January 14, 2010
• CNBC Worldwide Exchange on Greek debt crisis, February 13, 2012
• CNBC Squawk on the Street, “Will the US Intervene in Syria?” August 29, 2013
• WTTW Chicago Tonight interview, “Immigration Reform,” November 20, 2014
• National Public Radio, All Things Considered, “Haitians Face Deportation from the Dominican Republic as Deadline Nears,” June 17, 2015
• cfr.org, “Deportations in the Dominican Republic,” August 13, 2015