Michelle DeNamur

Michelle is currently completing her Juris Doctor at the University of Dayton School of Law, where she ranks in the top 15% of her class and serves as Comment Editor of the Law Review. She has received three CALI Awards for Excellence — recognizing the highest grade in Legal Professions II, Family Law, and Capstone — and conducted an independent study on educational law examining parental rights and curricular control. As a student volunteer with Advocates for Basic Legal Equality (ABLE), she assisted Haitian asylum applicants with the preparation of I-589 applications.

Before law school, Michelle served for over a decade at the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, most recently as Management Analysis Officer on the Fellowship and Immigration Team within the Center for Drug Evaluation and Research. In that role, she supervised a team of analysts and trainees, oversaw Title 42 recruitment and onboarding processes for employment-based immigration petitions across multiple visa categories, and managed sensitive records in compliance with legal and privacy standards. She co-developed the Indigenous Fellows Pilot Program and the FDA Research and Science Traineeship (FRST) program, drafted interagency agreements for immigration services, and responded to Government Accountability Office and internal investigatory audits. Earlier at the FDA, as a Program Analyst, she managed the sponsorship process for non-immigrant hiring programs and contributed to agency-level workgroups on process improvement for foreign scientist recruitment.

Michelle began her federal career as an Immigration Specialist at the National Institutes of Health, where she served as J-1 Responsible Officer for over 2,000 Research Scholars and Short-Term Scholars. She prepared petitions across multiple employment-based immigration categories — including Outstanding Researcher, Extraordinary Ability, and National Interest Waiver — and drafted and submitted an appeal on behalf of NIH to the USCIS Administrative Appeals Office. She also prepared divisional responses to Congressional inquiries.

Michelle holds a Master's degree in International Development from American University and a Bachelor of Arts in International Studies with a double major in French and Spanish from Trinity University, where she studied abroad at the Institut d'Études Politiques in Strasbourg, France and the Universidad de Alicante in Spain. She has also served as a Volunteer Field Specialist with the Administration for Children and Families' Office of Refugee Resettlement, where she worked with unaccompanied minors during an emergency response, and as President of the White Oak Federal Childcare Board.