Betsy Cavendish

As General Counsel, Betsy Cavendish and her team at the Office of General Counsel are the legal advisors to Mayor Muriel Bowser and the 20 agencies and offices in the Executive Office of the Mayor. She alerts the Mayor to hot legal issues and plays a lead role in formulating positions on such issues. One of the signature initiatives of Mayor Bowser is the recent launch of the Immigrant Justice Legal Services Grant program, a half-million dollar commitment to providing grants to organizations that provide immigrant legal services to residents of Washington, DC and their family members in FY 17, with another half million dollars proposed for FY18. Working with the Mayor’s Offices on Latino Affairs, African Affairs and Asian and Pacific Islander Affairs, Ms. Cavendish has been deeply involved in designing and launching the IJLS program. Ms. Cavendish’s career has been working in the public interest – from Congressional staffer, to law clerk, at the Department of Justice in Civil Litigation and the Office of Legal Counsel, and in distinguished public interest nonprofit organizations, NARAL Pro-Choice America and Appleseed. At Appleseed, a network of public interest justice centers, she was the co-winner of a UNICEF award for Best Investigation, relating to the publication of Children at the Border: The Screening, Protection and Repatriation of Unaccompanied Mexican Minors (2011).