Megan Finno-Velasquez

Director

Megan Finno-Velasquez, PhD, LMSW, is an Associate Professor and Director of the Center on Immigration and Child Welfare in the School of Social Work at New Mexico State University, in Albuquerque, NM.

Dr. Finno-Velasquez has spent the past 15 years working at the intersection of child welfare and immigration issues, as a child welfare practitioner, administrator, and researcher. Her research centers around the impact of immigration policy on child welfare system experiences, culturally competent maltreatment prevention strategies, and improving child welfare service system response to the needs of immigrant families.

In 2019, Dr. Finno-Velasquez was appointed Director of Immigration Affairs for the New Mexico Children, Youth and Families Department in a position split with her professorship at NMSU, where she is building an immigration unit to improve policies and practices to support immigrant and refugee children along the Mexico border and throughout the state.

Dr. Finno-Velasquez received her PhD from the University of Southern California’s School of Social Work in 2015 and completed post-doctoral work with the Children’s Data Network. She was a recipient of the Doris Duke Fellowships for the Promotion of Child-Well-being during her doctoral work.

She completed her MSW from New Mexico Highlands University in 2007, and has a BS in Psychology and Spanish from the University of Illinois-Urbana/Champaign.