Sarah Paoletti, CDM’s Board President, is a Practice Professor of Law at the University of Pennsylvania Law School, Director of Penn’s Transnational Legal Clinic, and a Founding Ally for Migrant Justice.
Why does Professor Paoletti support CDM? “CDM not only provides critical services that would not otherwise be provided to thousands of migrant workers, but also ensures the voices of migrant workers are part of the current debates on labor and immigration.”
Professor Paoletti has been with CDM from the start. In 2005, Rachel Micah-Jones, CDM’s Founder and Executive Director, met with Professor Paoletti to share her vision for CDM. Professor Paoletti was a clinical practitioner-in-residence at the American University Washington College of Law, who was quickly establishing herself as an expert on the intersection of human rights, migration, and labor law.
Professor Paoletti understands the barriers to justice that migrants often confront when they return home after working in the United States. When she heard Rachel’s plan for CDM—a migrant rights organization that would “ensure transnational legal services and ensure transnational perspectives in policy debates,” she became a Founding Board Member.
Since then, Professor Paoletti has been a champion for CDM. “I’m impressed with CDM’s commitment to its clients and its innovation in being a truly transnational organization,” she says. In 2013, Professor Paoletti and her students joined CDM to testify about abuses in the US guestworker programs before the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights.