After graduating from Vermont Law School, Patricia Whalen JD'79 worked for Legal Aid, where she assisted low-income Vermonters with domestic violence issues and issues with public benefits. Today, she is a retired international judge, who works from her home as part of a seven-member judicial team for the International Association of Women Judges (IAWJ). She is helping Afghan women judges who are Taliban targets escape Afghanistan and relocate to a place where they can rebuild a life.

While those two roles are separated by decades, time zones, and a hemisphere, Whalen can draw a direct throughline from her work helping disadvantaged Vermonters to helping survivors of one of the world’s most notorious regimes.

“I have had amazing legal opportunities to be honest,” Whalen, of Westminster, Vermont, said. “I have not had one boring legal day.”

Whalen and her organization have helped approximately 200 judges and their families—more than 1,000 Afghans total—escape the Taliban and relocate outside of the country.

Women judges are high level targets for extremists. Not only are these women highly educated and serving in positions of power, they are also the individuals who sentenced many of the Taliban and ISIS-K members in terrorism cases. When the U.S. withdrew from Afghanistan in 2021, those on terrorism and other criminal charges escaped from prison and are seeking revenge.

Whalen first began working with Afghan women judges in 2003, a few years after the United States invaded Afghanistan. She attended an IAWJ conference in Washington, D.C., where she met an Afghan judge, Marzia Basel.

“I said, how can I help?” Whalen recalled. Basel told her she needed judicial training, and that while the U.S. had offered some training to Afghan judges, it had taken place in high-security, advanced courts, which were intimidating. Whalen invited her to Vermont, where our “unfussy” courtrooms and slower pace would remove some of the barriers to legal training.

From 2004 to 2014, as the project director for the Vermont Afghan Women Judges Judicial Education, a project of the IAWJ and the Rural Women Leadership Institute of Vermont, Whalen and her colleagues brought 35 Afghan women judges to Vermont for training.

In recent years, her involvement with Afghan judges turned to evacuations, when these women became prime terrorist targets. The threats to them are severe—a judge Whalen knew personally was assassinated. Initially, Whalen’s team of seven were working around the clock, seven days a week to coordinate evacuations. Her team works with a network of safehouses, translators, and intelligence agents to move these judges to safety.

“The time of promoting an independent judiciary is coming to an end,” Whalen said. “What they’re at risk of is something far worse than death—it is being erased. They live in a back room, they can’t go out, they’re isolated from work, their broader family. They’ve had everything taken from them. And that is the refugee story.”

The drive to help these women stems from Whalen’s friendship and kinship with the Afghan judges. Early in her own career, Whalen was appointed as a family court magistrate, and in this work, she remembered what her VLS professor Lowell Schechter had said: Don’t only think about the domestic implications of an issue you’re working on, think about how it works globally. Whalen joined a then-fledgling organization, the IAWJ, and through her connections there she was invited to work at The Hague on the family maintenance treaty. From there, she went to Bosnia and worked on the war crimes tribunal.

The experience wasn’t so much different from family court,” Whalen said of the war crimes cases. “It’s good people who once lived with each other now doing unspeakable harm to each other.”

Whether working locally or internationally, Whalen’s passion for humanitarian work is apparent. Her steadfast commitment to helping others has not gone unnoticed. Most recently, she was recognized with the American Bar Association’s 2023 World Order Under Law Award for providing visionary leadership in international law. Additionally, the IAWJ was awarded the 2023 Bolch Prize for the Rule of Law in recognition of the organization’s dedicated support of Afghan women judges. Through her role with IAWJ, Whalen was invited to the ceremony to accept the award.

“Working on this (Afghan) project has been as basic as any humanitarian kind of relief,” she said. “These are people who need help. They’re our friends, they’re our colleagues, and I feel an acute responsibility as well, mostly that they’re at risk now because of their belief in us...I feel like we’ve abandoned them.”

This feature was originally published in the 2024 edition of Loquitur, VLGS's alumni magazine. Photo courtesy of Patricia Whalen.

Nearly four years ago on his birthday, Ed Keable JD'86 was about to leave for a ski vacation with his husband, when then Sec. David Bernhardt of the United States Department of the Interior (DOI) called him into his office.

Keable had spent seven years as a staff attorney in the U.S. Army Judge Advocate Generals’ Corps; six years as a staff attorney with DOI’s legal office; and seventeen years leading DOI’s legal office in three different positions, serving at the pleasure of the secretary. Upon entering Bernhardt’s office that day, Keable was greeted with a major opportunity—an offer to become the superintendent of Grand Canyon National Park in Arizona.

With his husband’s blessing, Keable said yes, and soon began overseeing one of the most important and iconic places in the world. From staffing to drinking water to wildfire management to trail maintenance, and so much more, Keable oversees the programs that touch the 5+ million people who visit the park annually.

“The first time I visited the Grand Canyon as a tourist in 1994 and walked up to the rim to see the canyon, I had one of those experiences that many of our visitors have,” Keable recalled. “I was overwhelmed by the beauty and the grandeur. I had a random thought that it would be really great to live and work at the Grand Canyon because it’s such a special place. And then 26 years later, I got the call.”

Through the park, Keable is committed to making change in two key areas: climate change and in respect to Indigenous people. On the climate side, Sec. of the Department of the Interior Deb Haaland appointed Keable as the National Park Service’s representative on the Grand Canyon Adaptive Management Work Group, which is addressing the water use issues in the Colorado River basin by making recommendations to the secretary about the timing and volumes of discharges from the dam. Lakes Powell and Mead have dropped to historic lows, and the working group is attempting to help the secretary make difficult decisions regarding competing interests for water uses such as drinking water, agricultural, hydropower, and environmental protection.

“I’ve been given an opportunity to advocate for environmental interests in the Colorado River basin,” Keable said. “As I use that opportunity to find solutions, it’s important to determine how to strike a balance for the environment with other real and meaningful uses of water in the basin. I am leaning into the tradition of compromise in this advisory process and speaking to the better angles that we all can, and must, bring to these difficult decisions that we have to make as a result of changes to the climate that are impacting the environment in which we live.”

In regard to Indigenous people, Keable points out that the Grand Canyon and surrounding lands were home to 11 tribes of people from time immemorial. When the federal government decided the geographical area would become a national park, they did not seek the Indigenous people’s consent, and they physically moved many of them out of the park—some as far away as New Mexico. For the next 100 years, he said, the National Park Service managed the park in a way that has actively and passively kept Indigenous people out of the park, “in a way that made them unwelcome in what is essentially their home.”

“Indigenous people have a connection to the Grand Canyon that is more than historic, it’s spiritual and cultural,” Keable said.

To begin addressing these wrongs, the park is changing its approach. With help from the nonprofit Grand Canyon Conservancy, they’ve been engaging with an inter-tribal working group composed of representatives of the 11 tribes associated with the Grand Canyon. As a starting point, the park took over a former tourist observation tower, and with the inter-tribal working group, is turning it into the first inter-tribal cultural heritage site in the national park. This space will provide opportunities for Indigenous people to sell crafts and art, and to share their history and culture with park visitors through first-person interpretive programing. It will also allow the park to encourage its visitors to visit tribal lands near the park to further promote economic development. Called the Desert View Watch Tower, it is located near the park’s east entrance.

“We’re focused on how we can reengage with Indigenous people as we manage the park,” Keable said. “Frankly, it took years for the park to build trust with Indigenous leaders… because of how we managed the park for 100 years. But we were able to rebuild trust over time by listening to and incorporating ideas that Indigenous people brought to the Desert View Strategic Plan.” As an example, tribal leaders developed a theme—“We are still here”—for the strategic plan. Since many park visitors don’t know the history of Indigenous people and their connection to the land—that process is ongoing historically, spiritually, and culturally.

Keable credits his father, a general practice lawyer, as an inspiration. He loved helping people so much that he would represent them regardless of their ability to pay. When Keable arrived at Vermont Law School, he spent a semester working at the clinic, assisting people who were struggling to pay rent. Keable was drawn to the school because of its social justice focus.

“That same social justice focus informs how I serve the American people today as the Grand Canyon superintendent.”

This feature was originally published in the 2024 edition of Loquitur, VLGS's alumni magazine. Photo courtesy of Ed Keable.

As a personal injury attorney, Ricky Armand JD'12 has the opportunity to help clients through some of the most challenging times in their lives. And when resolution leads to a monetary settlement, it can be one of the most life-changing moments in his clients’ lives.

“A lot of the time, it’s the largest amount of money they’ve ever seen at one time,” Armand said.

Armand works for Kelley | Uustal, a nationally recognized law firm known for its track record of winning large verdicts and settlements from personal injury cases. He focuses on cases that range from slip-and-falls to catastrophic injuries and wrongful deaths. One of the things he likes about this area of practice is that anyone can afford to hire him, because it’s based on a contingency fee, where Armand’s firm receives a percentage if the client wins. In many other areas of law, clients must come up with a retainer to begin the process, which can make representation out of reach.

One of Armand’s more memorable cases involved a family where a woman was killed by her ex-partner, and the father of her two sons. The mother of the woman—the grandmother to the children—arrived at the woman’s apartment complex to pick her up one morning for work. When she did not come down to the car, the mother went to the door. There, she saw the ex holding a gun, and she screamed, but the man still shot and killed her daughter right in front of her. He then came after her, but she was able to run and escape. The perpetrator is spending life in prison, and the children were left with no parents.

The grandmother and grandfather took in the grandchildren, and worked with Armand to sue the apartment complex. During the discovery process, Armand learned the complex was supposed to have a security officer on duty, but they had called out sick that day and there was no replacement. He argued that had that officer been on duty, the tragedy could have been prevented. Armand said it wasn’t a slam dunk case—the apartment complex argued a “victim-targeted” defense—but he and his team successfully litigated it. Armand will never forget the moment when he and the grandparents, after an eight-hour mediation, reached a seven-figure settlement. “I recall the grandparents crying,” he said. “We all choked up a bit.”

The case personally resonated with Armand as well.

“I remember the Sunday before mediation was Father’s Day,” Armand said. “I remember lying down next to my own sons that day. After they fell asleep, I started to get a little emotional, I was holding them tight. The young boys in the case lost both of their parents. Their father killed their mother.”

Armand, who is of Haitian descent, believes it is important to speak to young people of color to serve as a role model. “When you see me, it’s proof that it’s possible,” he said. “Here I was thinking that to be successful I had to go into music, sports, or some other form of entertainment.” Armand wants young people who look like him to know there are other avenues to success.

Armand credits Vice President Shirley Jefferson JD’86, who is a Black woman, as the reason he found Vermont Law School, now Vermont Law and Graduate School. He met her at a law school fair in Houston, Texas, and said her warm, motherly vibe made him feel welcomed. “She’s a fighter and always tries to protect her students,” he said.

More than a decade later, Armand is still paying it forward by mentoring and supporting the next generation of lawyers of color.

This feature was originally published in the 2024 edition of Loquitur, VLGS's alumni magazine. Photo courtesy of Ricky Armand

After graduating from Middlebury College in 2016 with an environmental studies and geography degree, Megan Cousino MELP'20 launched her career at the Vermont Department of Environmental Conservation (VT DEC). She quickly learned that she had a passion for conserving and protecting the natural resources in her home state, all while learning more about Vermont's legal systems and enforcement mechanisms.

While working full time at VT DEC, Megan entered the MELP program at VLS in 2018. She completed her degree with distinction in October 2020.

In October 2021, Megan became the environmental program manager of the Environmental Assistance Office (EAO) in VT DEC. Her team initially consisted of four staff members. The program underwent a complete revisioning under her direction. Over the next year and a half, she built the current iteration of EAO, which now has 10 staff members, three new sections, and two American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) initiatives.

Megan is especially excited to have played a role in developing the Accessible Assistance Section, which focuses on working with overburdened and underserved individuals or communities as they navigate Vermont's environmental regulatory system.  The section is currently distributing over $40 million to hundreds of low-income Vermont homeowners with failed or inadequate on-site drinking water or wastewater systems, as well as to dozens of manufactured housing communities with water infrastructure issues.

In 2023, Megan also became the DEC Environmental Justice Coordinator, where she serves as the lead on the department's environmental justice initiatives.

Her studies at VLS, now VLGS, are put to use on a daily basis—and will continue to be—as she oversees EAO and coordinates DEC's role in the implementation of Vermont's Environmental Justice Law (Act 154). Megan is proud to be involved in a field that drives better outcomes for all Vermonters, and especially those in need.

This feature was originally published in the August 2023 edition of the VLGSAA Master's Only Committee newsletter. Photo courtesy of Megan Cousino.