About us: Our Board

CO-FOUNDER, PRESIDENT

Becky (she/her) is an attorney and the Director of Economic Empowerment in the Office of the State Treasurer.  Becky started working with asylum seekers more than ten years ago through her law school’s immigration clinic. Since then, she has worked in a pro bono capacity on a number of immigration matters, including volunteering at the southern border in 2018 and 2019. In 2021, she co-founded the Vermont Asylum Assistance Project. She is licensed to practice law in Vermont and New York.  Becky lives in Burlington, VT with her husband and three children.

CO-FOUNDER, VICE PRESIDENT

Kate (she/they, ella/elle) has a PhD in Latin American Studies and spent ten years teaching college prior to directing the Community Asylum Seekers Project (CASP) in Brattleboro. In that role, Kate learned firsthand the transformative power of legal representation for asylum seekers, and worked with CASP to co-found VAAP. Kate now directs the Milk with Dignity Standards Council, a Burlington-based nonprofit working to ensure the human rights of Vermont's dairy workers. Kate has worked as a researcher and a solidarity activist with social movement organizers in Colombia and is fluent in Spanish.

TREASURER

Caitlin (she/her) lives with her husband Miles on a small homestead in Huntington, VT. In 2013, Caitlin earned her M.B.A from Antioch University in Sustainable Business Management, and has spent the last 10 years working in financial leadership of multiple mission-driven entrepreneurial businesses across Vermont. She is excited to bring her affinity for spreadsheets, budgets and financial planning to the organizational efforts of the VAAP team.

SECRETARY

Aisa (she/her) is an alum of Vermont Law and Graduate School and a licensed attorney practicing in New York and Georgia. As a principal of Diallo Law, she actualizes her deep-seated passion for immigration law representing individuals held in detention facilities and those facing immigration detainers across the United States. Raised in The Bronx by Guinean parents, she witnessed firsthand the challenges faced by immigrant communities, which fueled her determination to make a difference in this field.

DIRECTOR

Trudy (she/her) is a mother who immigrated to the USA in 2018 and settled in Vermont. With the help of law student clinicians at Vermont Law and Graduate School, the Chittenden Asylum Seekers Assistance Network, and the community, her case was approved by a Boston Immigration Court Judge in 2022 amidst so many challenges. As a highly trained finance professional, she worked with the Champlain Valley Office of Economic Opportunity for several years before joining the Chittenden County Regional Planning Commission, called to both nonprofits' missions of helping improve the lives of local community members. Trudy loves Vermont and to her, this is a home away from home.