Serena Hoy is the Assistant Secretary for International Affairs at the Department of Homeland Security. Previously, she served in the Office of Legal Affairs at INTERPOL Headquarters in Lyon, France; as a Senior Counselor to then-Deputy Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas and Secretary Jeh Johnson at the Department of Homeland Security; and with U.S. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, including as his Chief Counsel.
Before working in government, she was a staff attorney for the Florida Immigrant Advocacy Center and served as the Detention Project Director for the Capital Area Immigrants’ Rights Coalition. She clerked for Judge Merrick Garland on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit after earning her law degree from Yale Law School. She also holds a master’s degree in Middle Eastern Studies from Oxford University, where she was a Rhodes Scholar, and a bachelor’s degree from the University of Arizona.