At Santa Clara Aila was a recipient of the Dean Emery Scholarship for academic achievement and a member of Honors Moot Court Board, Advocate journalist, and the Vice-President of Women and Law Society. She also participated in the Northern California Innocence Project for three years. Aila has served as FLY’s Law Program Director for the past two years where she has specialized in recruiting, training, and supervising volunteers, updating FLY’s curriculum, creating new programs, and serving as the liaison between our referring partners in the juvenile justice and school systems, as well as the wider nonprofit community. Aila has national expertise in utilizing and training others on cognitive-based techniques from the National Law-Related Education Consortium.

Before her current position, Aila served as a FLY’s Peer Leader Case Manager where she worked with high-risk youth, helping them set personal goals, complete their probation contracts, graduate from high school, and go onto college or find a vocation. While in Law School Aila served as a volunteer law-related education teacher for three years and taught at community centers, school sites, and locked facilities. Aila has other additional experience including, tutoring “at-risk” youth living in a shelter for homeless families and working as a caretaker in a supported living home for the mentally disabled. During law school, in addition to teaching “at-risk” youth enrolled in FLY’s programs, Aila taught a weekly music class to mentally ill residents in an intermediate care home and interned with a local immigration clinic and specialized in assisting Cambodian prisoners gain refugee status in the U.S.