Evaluating Hot Topics Through the Prism of Liberal Arts

Isabel del Cid Castillo, Esq. has been practicing law since 2003. She was born in Guatemala City, Guatemala and is fluent in Spanish. Ms. Castillo immigrated to the United States in 1982. She obtained her Juris Doctor from the University of Florida in 2002. She passed the Florida Bar on her first attempt and was formally sworn in on May 5, 2003. Ms. Castillo is also a member of the Northern, Middle and Southern District Courts of Florida.

In 2011, Ms. Castillo founded the Law Offices of Isabel Castillo, P.A., focusing on immigration law. Ms. Castillo focuses her practice on helping corporate clients seeking outstanding foreign employees as well as helping foreign investors get the appropriate type of visa to allow them to live and work in the United States. Ms. Castillo also assists clients seeking immigrant visas for themselves and for qualifying family members. She also assists individuals with their citizenship and naturalization.

Ms. Castillo has served as an officer on the Board for the Palm Beach County Hispanic Bar Association and the South Palm Beach County Florida Association for Women Lawyers.  She is an active member of the American Immigration Lawyers Association and the South Palm Beach County Bar Association.

Cary A. High received his Juris Doctor from the University of Florida Levin College of Law with a focus on criminal defense. He worked as professor and department chair of the Paralegal Studies program at Palm Beach State College. A practicing lawyer, Professor High has handled cases before state and federal courts, including the Executive Office of Immigration Review (U.S. Immigration Court).   

Dr. Lourdes Norman-McKay earned her PhD in biochemistry and molecular biology from the Pennsylvania State University College of Medicine. Her postdoctoral fellowship in microbiology and immunology focused on the role of viruses in cancer. She has been training allied health students at the associate, baccalaureate, and post baccalaureate levels for the past 17 years. She is currently a professor at Florida State College Jacksonville where she mainly teaches microbiology and anatomy and physiology, and where in 2016, her peers and students recognized her with the Outstanding Faculty Award.

David Magerman is a co-founder and Managing Partner at Differential Ventures. Previously, he spent the entirety of his career at Renaissance Technologies, widely recognized as the world’s most successful quantitative hedge fund management company. He helped found the equities trading group at Renaissance, joining the group in its earliest days, playing a lead role in designing and building the trading, simulation, and estimation software. After a decorated career in quantitative finance, he is using his data science, software development, and statistical modeling expertise to help startups succeed in the global marketplace. David holds a PhD in Computer Science from Stanford University where his thesis on Natural Language Parsing as Statistical Pattern Recognition was an early and successful attempt to use large-scale data to produce fully automated syntactic analysis of text. David also earned a Bachelor of Arts in Mathematics and a Bachelor of Science in Computer Sciences and Information from the University of Pennsylvania.

Jillian C. York is a writer and activist whose work examines the impact of technology on our societal and cultural values. Based in Berlin, she is the Director for International Freedom of Expression at the Electronic Frontier Foundation and the author of the forthcoming book, Silicon Values: The Future of Free Speech Under Surveillance Capitalism.

Sister Gabriella Bottani serves as Director of “Talitha Kum” the International Network of Religious Life against trafficking in persons. Sr. Gabriella holds an A.D. [Academic Degree] in Social Pedagogy by the “Georg-Simon-Ohm Fachhochschule Nuremberg”. Her final work was the creation of an intercultural training in order to prepare volunteers to encounter foreign cultures and religions respecting and valuing the diversities.  She holds a Diploma (A level) in Economy, Accountancy and Regulations.  Sr. Gabriella coordinated and served as a consultant to numerous training courses and seminars to prepare agents to prevent and confront human trafficking, especially in Brazil. Sr. Gabriella related the experience of the first course in 2013 published by “Edições CRB, Brasília, 2013”.

Sr. Gabriella was Counselor of the “Conselho Municipal de Crianças e Adolescentes de Porto Velho” (Municipal Council for children and adolescents), a member of the States Committee against Human Trafficking of Government of the State of Ceará (Brazil), and a member of the Commission of Justice and Peace of the Diocese of Porto Velho (Rondônia, Brazil). As Social Pedagogue she worked many years to empower and give new opportunities to children and women in situations of social vulnerability, in the “favelas” and suffering any kind of violence, sexual abuse and exploitation.