People Behind AIIA
Executive Board
Ishaan Khanna
President
ishaan(at)goaiia.org
Originally from New Delhi, India, Ishaan was in his senior year of college majoring in Information Systems when he found out about the EB-5 program. He realized the United States had a tremendous amount of professional opportunities to offer and after several months of research, he invested and applied for his EB-5 visa in 2016. Ishaan was soon hired by the same investment issuer he had invested with and over the next few years, raised a significant amount of EB-5 financing for various offerings. Having gone through the process himself, he was able to help many of the families he worked with to navigate the complexities of the EB-5 program. Currently based in Washington D.C, Ishaan serves as the President of AIIA, where he continues his goal of advocating for the EB-5 investor community. By sharing his experience and knowledge with current and prospective EB-5 investors, he hopes to help them on their path toward permanent residency in the United States.
Rajvir Batra
Director of Policy
rajvir(at)goaiia.org
Rajvir came to the US as an undergraduate student at Harvard University majoring in Economics and Government. Due to the lack of other alternatives to secure permanent residence in the United States, Rajvir made his EB-5 investment in May of 2019. As one of the original co-founders of the organization, Rajvir was instrumental in leading the creation of the ‘grandfathering’ proposal to protect EB-5 investors during the EB-5 program lapse in 2021-2022. Based in Boston, Massachusetts, Rajvir serves as AIIA’s Director of Policy, where he focuses on our legislative priorities, works alongside AIIA’s lobbyists to plan strategic initiatives, and oversees the organization’s Congressional outreach.
Shawn Gehani
Director of Community Engagement
shawn(at)goaiia.org
Shawn Gehani is based in Toronto, Canada where he serves as the Director of Community Engagement at AIIA. Shawn works in renewable energy and consulting industries and has structured dozens of large scale energy projects. With his engineering and financial background, he conducted rigorous research before selecting his EB-5 investment. Shawn realized early on that investors were crucially missing from the advocacy discussions in the EB-5 space. After organizing numerous informal advocacy efforts with other investors, along with the other co-founders of AIIA, he developed a vision for an investor-driven advocacy organization. Shawn was an instrumental voice behind the AIIA's strategy, messaging and lobbying efforts for gaining investor grandfathering during the 2021 program lapse.
David Yu
Director of Operations
david(at)goaiia.org
David Yu started volunteering for AIIA in June 2021 to share the vision of “grandfathering” with Chinese EB-5 investors after the lapse of the EB-5 Regional Center program. He applied for permanent residency through the EB-5 program in 2015 with his family. As the Director of Operations, his current duties include communicating with key policy makers, educating investors of the risks as well as realities associated with the program, and overseeing volunteer and donor outreach. David has been instrumental in representing the voice of the Chinese immigrant investor community and continues to advocate for the issues impacting them. He is currently based in Nashville, TN, where he studies Economics and Public Policy at Vanderbilt University.
Advisory Board
Matt Galati
Matthew Galati has been an EB-5 attorney since early 2011, representing hundreds of EB-5 stakeholders, including investors, developers, and regional centers. In recent years, following unprecedented USCIS delays, Matt has pivoted much of his practice towards litigation representing hundreds of investors facing delays and denials in their immigration process. Matt has been a part of AIIA since its inception, and regularly assists the organization with legal advisory, including filing unreasonable delay suits against USCIS for AIIA members. Beyond his importance to AIIA and the EB-5 world, Matt represents immigrants from all walks of life, including in family immigration, business startups, E-2 visas, and extraordinary ability cases at the Galati Law Firm. For his outstanding work in the field of immigration and nationality law, Matt was awarded the American Immigration Lawyers Association’s 2022 Joseph Minsky Young Lawyer Award. Matt continues to run his own law firm in Philadelphia, PA.
Suzanne Lazicki
Suzanne offers business writing services through her firm Lucid Professional Writing, and runs the LucidText blog. She is sympathetic to the challenges of migration, having been born in France, grown up in Chad and Cameroon, and worked in China before settling at her current home in Ogden, Utah. Suzanne Lazicki promotes and supports AIIA’s mission to advocate for EB-5 investor interests, due to her belief that legal and systemic changes will not happen to the EB-5 program without organized efforts.. As a business plan writer and blogger working in the EB-5 industry since 2009, Suzanne has watched clients struggle to navigate EB-5. Immigrant investment should be – at minimum – an investment and an opportunity to immigrate. She believes EB-5 will benefit if investors also organize to promote their distinct interests, which has drawn her towards advocating alongside AIIA.
Professionals
Isabella Getgey
Program Manager
isabella(at)goaiia.org
Isabella assists the organization with content creation, member management, community outreach, and advocacy. Izzy joined the alliance as an Intern in June 2022 and has been catching up with all the advancements in the EB-5 industry, building AIIA’s administrative capacity and educational resources, as well as helping AIIA set long-term goals for the future. She is currently based at Tufts University in Boston, Massachusetts as a fifth year pre-law student, where she studies Studio Art and Political Science.
Yiran Cheng
Head of Communications
yiran(at)goaiia.org
As AIIA’s Head of Communications, Yiran helps the organization produce online content for public distribution and outreach, with a special emphasis on the Chinese EB-5 Community. Currently based in New York City, he also actively contributes to AIIA’s political advocacy work and its volunteer campaign. Yiran has a Bachelor’s degree on Economics and Political Science from Washington University in St. Louis, as well as a Master of Public Policy degree from Georgetown University’s McCourt School.