Hot Topics, Cold Realties – Migration

Migration played a pivotal role in the U.S. elections, and it looms prominently in political debates in Germany ahead of elections next month. Join the ACG and 1014 for a discussion with Victoria Rietig, the Head of the Center for Migration at the German Council on Foreign Relations (DGAP), and award-winning journalist Molly O’Toole. They will help shed light on the trends, challenges, and opportunities arising from migration – and the role migration plays in the current political climate.

Molly O’Toole is a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, working on “The Route,” a nonfiction book on global migration through the Americas to the United States, for Crown Publishing, a Penguin Random House imprint, and developing an accompanying podcast. She most recently was an immigration and security reporter for The Los Angeles Times, and a fellow at the Rockefeller Foundation’s Bellagio Center, George Washington University, and the Logan Nonfiction Program. She has also taught at Cornell University and the Poynter Institute. She previously was a senior reporter at Foreign Policy and The Atlantic’s Defense One, and an editor at The Huffington Post.

From Latin America, West Africa, the Middle East, and South Asia, Ms. O’Toole has written and worked for outlets such as The Washington Post, The Atlantic, The New Republic, Newsweek, The Intercept, the Associated Press, Reuters, and more. She was awarded the first-ever Pulitzer Prize in audio reporting in 2020 with This American Life and Emily Green. Her work has also been recognized by the Livingston Awards, the National Press Club, the Charles Rappleye Investigative Award, the Fund for Investigative Journalism, and the Silvers Grants for Work in Progress, among others. She is a graduate of Cornell and New York University, and is based in Washington, D.C., but she will always be a Californian.

Victoria Rietig is head of the Center for Migration at the DGAP.  She has twenty years of experience working on migration, asylum, and refugee issues. She is the author of dozens of publications, has given hundreds of lectures and trainings on migration-related topics, and regularly comments on current migration issues in leading German and international media. She has conducted research in North and West Africa, the Middle East, and the Western Balkans, as well as Central and South America.

Before building up and leading DGAP’s Migration Program from 2019 to 2024, Ms. Rietig advised government agencies and foundations in Europe and the United States as an expert on migration policies. Prior to that, she worked as an analyst at the Migration Policy Institute, a fellow at the Atlantic Council in Washington, DC, and a consultant at the United Nations Institute for Training and Research in New York.

She graduated from Harvard University with a master’s degree in public policy with a focus on human trafficking and forced migration. She also completed a Magister at the Freie Universität Berlin with a focus on migration and integration.