John Slocum

About John Slocum

John Slocum is a nonresident senior fellow at the Council. He's the executive director of the Refugee Council USA and an independent consultant and a nonresident associate senior researcher at the Barcelona Centre for International Affairs (CIDOB).

As a consultant to nonprofits and foundations, Slocum provides strategic planning, executive search, and board retreat facilitation services. Previously, he worked for the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, where he served for a decade as the program director for the organization's grantmaking initiatives on international migration and US immigration policy. Under his leadership, MacArthur provided over $50 million in support of research, policy analysis, and practical interventions aimed at improving the international governance of migration, enhancing understanding of the economic impacts of immigration, and strengthening protections for vulnerable migrants in the United States, Mexico, and around the world. Slocum also directed MacArthur's Higher Education Initiative in Russia and its Research and Writing Grants Competition.

Slocum has published articles and commentary on migration, philanthropy, and Russian history. He taught political science at the University of Oklahoma and has held visiting positions at CIDOB (in Barcelona), the University of Toronto, the Maecenata Institute for Philanthropy and Civil Society (in Berlin), and the Blavatnik School of Government at Oxford University. A past board member of Grantmakers Concerned with Immigrants and Refugees, Slocum currently serves on the advisory board of Justice in Motion, a New York-based nonprofit that works to protect migrants' rights across borders. He has a PhD in political science from the University of Chicago.