Katie is an ILD Managing Attorney leading ILD’s Legal-Education partnerships with the Oakland Unified School District, a unique program that provides direct representation to K-12 students and families in removal proceedings. In this capacity, Katie represents current and former students and works with school and district staff to secure wrap-around services for clients.

EXPERIENCE Prior to joining ILD, Katie opened the San Francisco and Fresno offices of Kids in Need of Defense (KIND), building strong teams across both sites and leveraging resources, technology, and pro bono partnerships to increase access to legal representation for unaccompanied children and youth in California’s San Joaquin Valley. A statewide expert on SIJS and on representing unaccompanied children, Katie is a co-chair of the Practicing Law Institute course on Representing Unaccompanied Children in California and serves as a Steering Committee member of Immigrant Health Equity and Legal Partnerships (ImmHELP), a collaborative of medical and legal partners striving to improve access to health and legal systems of immigrant children and families. She is also a member of the End SIJ Backlog Coalition Youth Working Group, in which she works alongside young people affected by the SIJS backlog and other legal services providers, and has contributed to numerous publications amplifying the stories of unaccompanied children and the detrimental impacts of the U.S.’s harmful immigration policies. Before working at KIND, Katie ran a solo practice supporting SIJS-eligible youth. At the start of her legal career, Katie was an associate at Reed Smith in San Francisco and worked with San Francisco’s Immigration Center for Women and Children.

EDUCATION Katie holds a B.A. in Cultural Anthropology and International Relations from Wesleyan University and a J.D. at the University of California College of Law, San Francisco. She is a member of the California bar and is fluent in Spanish.