Welcome to Pine Tree Legal Assistance’s New Executive Director, Tom Fritzsche

Welcome to Pine Tree Legal Assistance’s New Executive Director, Tom Fritzsche

Pine Tree is happy to announce that we welcomed a new Executive Director, Tom Fritzsche, back in September! Tom was born and raised in Maine and is a graduate of Kennebunk High School, Amherst College, and the NYU School of Law. Tom has had a lifelong commitment to working toward the advancement of Pine Tree's vision that there should be fairness, justice, and equality for all.

Tom brings a wide range of experience working for low-income communities to promote justice and equity. He joins Pine Tree after serving as the first Executive Director of the Milk with Dignity Standards Council (MDSC). MDSC uses a collaborative model known as Worker-Driven Social Responsibility to monitor dairy farms' compliance with standards protecting farmworkers' human rights. Over the last five years, under Tom's leadership, MDSC has worked together with hundreds of farmworkers and dozens of farm owners to ensure groundbreaking, concrete improvements in working and housing conditions on farms participating in the program.

Tom has also served as a teaching fellow in the Cardozo School of Law's Immigration Justice Clinic, as a Skadden Fellow and Staff Attorney in the Southern Poverty Law Center's Immigrant Justice Project, as a medical interpreter, pesticide safety trainer, and as a health outreach worker with the Maine Migrant Health Program. As a health outreach worker, Tom spent some of his time working with Wabanaki farmworkers in the blueberry barrens. Tom remembers reading the Wabanaki Legal News over 20 years ago.

The Wabanaki Legal News is published by Pine Tree Legal Assistance, Inc. and is funded in part through a grant from the Legal Services Corporation. The views expressed by the authors in this newsletter are not necessarily shared by Pine Tree Legal Assistance or its staff.

Indigenous Peoples Unit
Lisa Chase, Managing Attorney
Suzanne Burke, Staff Attorney
Sadie Harris, Staff Attorney

115 Main St. #2
Bangor, ME 04401

Pine Tree Indigenous Peoples Unit toll free hotline: 1-877-213-5630; V/TTY: 711.

Please call our toll-free hotline to request assistance. You may also call Pine Tree Legal Assistance during call center hours.