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Mayabanza Sylena Bangudi is the Director of Legal Programs at Ayuda. She oversees the organization’s immigration, domestic violence/family law, pro bono, and Project END teams in D.C., Maryland, and Virginia, and supervises managing attorneys and a legal coordinator. She brings to Ayuda decades of direct legal services, nonprofit and private practice management, and leadership experience.
Prior to joining Ayuda, Mayabanza was the managing attorney for the general immigration and unaccompanied children’s legal programs at the International Rescue Committee. Prior to that, she was a Supervising Attorney at Catholic Charities. Mayabanza’s solo practice of over ten years focused on full-service international family, immigration, and small business law, and began after she served as a Financial Services Associate at Hudson Cook. She started her legal career as a litigation and labor & employment associate at DLA Piper, where she co-managed a team providing human rights litigation support to the Southern Africa Litigation Centre. Mayabanza is a past chair of both the D.C. Chapter of the American Immigration Lawyers Association and the Maryland State Bar Association’s Immigration Section. She is licensed to practice in Maryland and received her J.D. from Georgetown University Law Center in Washington, D.C.
