CHSS Distinguished Alumni - History and Art History

Miriam Enriquez

BA Foreign Languages; History '01

Miriam Enriquez is the director of government relations and corporate social responsibility for Wawa, Inc.

Prior to joining Wawa in May of 2024, Enriquez was a presidential appointee serving as the deputy assistant secretary for intergovernmental affairs at the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. In that capacity, she served as the liaison between the Secretary of Homeland Security and elected officials at the local, county, state, tribal, and territorial levels. During her tenure, history was made with the creation of the first ever Tribal Homeland Security Advisory Council to advise the Secretary on homeland security policies and practices that affect Indian Country and Indigenous communities.

For more than a decade, Enriquez served in local government for the City of Philadelphia. As Mayor Jim Kenney’s appointed director of the office of immigrant affairs, Enriquez advised the mayor and his administration on all issues related to immigrants and refugees. During her tenure, she expanded the city's citizenship initiatives, language access program, immigrant workers' rights, workforce development and cultural programs, and helped launch the municipal ID and deportation defense programs. Enriquez also spearheaded the legislative effort to make the office of immigrant affairs a permanent part of Philadelphia's government.

Before joining immigrant affairs, Enriquez served as the principal policy and legislation advisor for a city council member where she developed a policy and legislative agenda focused on public safety, education, immigration, special needs, the environment, and the criminal justice system. She drafted, negotiated, and helped pass legislation including a comprehensive indigent conflict counsel legislative package, an anti-blight bill, and landmark legislation to protect immigration services consumers that has served as a model for other jurisdictions. Prior to her role with City Council, she served as an assistant district attorney at the Philadelphia District Attorney’s Office for more than seven years.

Prior to joining the Department of Homeland Security, Enriquez served as assistant deputy general counsel in the compliance and ethics function at Comcast Cable. Enriquez was also a lecturer of law at the University of Pennsylvania Law School, where she taught professional responsibility in public interest practice.  At the law school she fostered an environment of positive learning, providing students with opportunities to think outside the box and build confidence in problem solving, and developed mentoring relationships with students in effort to develop future leaders in Philadelphia’s legal community.

Enriquez received her BA with distinction from George Mason University and her JD from Penn State Dickinson Law (formerly Dickinson School of Law at Pennsylvania State University), where she attended on a full-academic scholarship and received awards in the areas of immigration law and civil rights litigation. She was born in the United States but spent much of her childhood living in several different Latin American countries, including her family’s country of origin, Nicaragua.