Betsy Jenson

Education

• MA, Public Administration, SUNY Brockport, NY

Get to Know Us

Betsy was born and raised in the Midwest. As an adult, she has lived in a variety of places, but Greensboro is her first home in the South. She first developed a love of service as an undergraduate at Hanover College through Alternative Spring Break programs which took her to rural eastern Tennessee and Madagalpa, Nicaragua. After a brief stint in a graduate Philosophy program in Ohio, Betsy moved to New York where she worked for several years in marketing and fundraising, primarily in the nonprofit sector. During this time, she also earned a Master’s in Public Administration with a concentration in Nonprofit Management from SUNY Brockport.

In 2013, Betsy made a long-time dream into a reality when she joined the Peace Corps serving in the former Republic of Georgia where, among other activities, she co-founded GLOW Georgia, a nonprofit organization dedicated to girls’ leadership and empowerment. Upon her return to the U.S. in 2015, Betsy worked with the Nationalities Service Center, a refugee resettlement agency in Philadelphia, where she implemented organizational improvements while falling in love with working with refugees. In 2017, she and her partner made the move to Greensboro where Betsy began providing immigration services to refugees and asylees at Elon Law’s Humanitarian Immigration Law Clinic as a DOJ accredited representative.

Betsy joined the team in the summer of 2020 and is excited to bring her organizational development and immigration services skills to the Center for New North Carolinians. She looks forward to implementing new systems that will enable the Immigration Services Program to grow its capacity to provide low-cost immigration services to a larger number of immigrants and refugees.

When she isn’t working, Betsy is a novice potter and an amateur cook and canner. She also enjoys long walks with her dog and chilling with a good book at the beach.