Foster Care & Extended Foster Care, Juvenile Justice

YLC Welcomes Meredith Desautels & Tracy Schiro

The Youth Law Center is pleased to announce the hiring of our newest staff members: Meredith Desautels and Tracy Schiro!

Meredith Desautels is a staff attorney at the Youth Law Center. Her work focuses on ending the criminalization of childhood and replacing youth incarceration with positive, developmentally-appropriate supports that are rooted in family and community. In partnership with the Young Women’s Freedom Center, Meredith’s work is grounded in movement-based legal strategies that seek to build power within directly impacted families and communities. Prior to joining the Youth Law Center, Meredith was a Leading Edge Fellow funded by the Rosenberg Foundation. As a Leading Edge Fellow, she worked at the San Francisco Public Defender’s Office and Bay Area Legal Aid, representing young people impacted by the juvenile delinquency system. Prior to that, she was a Skadden Foundation fellow and then staff attorney at the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights of the San Francisco Bay Area, and she served as a law clerk to the Honorable John T. Noonan on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.

Tracy Schiro is a QPI Advocate at the Youth Law Center. Tracy retired in December of 2018 as the Assistant Director of Social Services for San Luis Obispo County after serving in that capacity for nearly 12 years and in County service for 27 years. Her focus has been on serving the most vulnerable while striving to end abuse, neglect and poverty. Tracy has actively participated in State-wide efforts to address the commercial sexual exploitation of children, homelessness of children, families and individuals, and a positive future through higher education for youth in the foster and justice systems. Tracy is looking forward to utilizing her Social Services experience and her belief in the power of love to assist communities in providing excellent parenting for all children.