Meet the Staff


Socorro has two permanent, full-time staff members, Jami Vigil and Lucia Williams.  Ms. Vigil and Ms. Williams form a unique and highly skilled team.   Together they represent diverse experiences, extensive education and training, and a deeply felt sense of responsibility and commitment to human rights and social justice.


Jami L. Vigil, J.D.
Executive Director and Managing Attorney

Ms. Vigil has long dedicated herself to serving, assisting, and protecting cultural, linguistic,
and ethnic minority populations.  In college, she pursued a Bachelor of Arts degree in both Anthropology and Political Science and then began a Master of Arts degree in Political Science, hoping to find a means to help society's most vulnerable segments.  It was this personal quest that brought Ms. Vigil to a Colorado non-profit organization called The Legal Center for People with Disabilities and Older People.  At the Legal Center Ms. Vigil was introduced to the world
of non-profit human rights legal services, and first met kindred spirits fighting to give a voice to individuals otherwise overlooked and discriminated against by society.  Ms. Vigil was deeply impacted by the great dedication of this organization and all of the individuals working there. 

Through this work, Ms. Vigil realized that law school was her path to fight for justice, and applied to the Juris Doctor program at the University of Colorado School of Law.  During law school, through the Legal Aid and Defender Program's immigration clinic, Ms. Vigil handled cases involving both Special Immigrant Juvenile Status and the Violence Against Women's
Act.  Ms. Vigil also worked for a private Immigration Attorney in Denver, representing individuals in cases involving asylum and cancellation of removal.

From April 2000 to May 2002, Ms. Vigil served as the Program Director for the Rural Immigrant Outreach Project (RIOP).  RIOP was a non-profit project, funded by a grant from
the University of Colorado, dedicated to providing free legal clinics to Spanish-speaking immigrant communities in rural Colorado.  Ms. Vigil organized and facilitated the clinics, enlisting the help of volunteer immigration attorneys, Spanish language translators, and law students.  The legal clinics provided participants access to both valuable information as well as free consultations for their specific legal situations with immigration attorneys.  Ms. Vigil also organized and facilitated a free legal clinic in a rural Colorado community on Asylum application procedures for a large group of individuals from West Africa.

During 2002, Ms. Vigil spent a year clerking for the honorable Justice Alex Martinez of the Colorado Supreme Court, and then worked for approximately a year and a half as an Appellate attorney with the Colorado Public Defender's Office.  However, Ms. Vigil's commitment to immigrant communities required her to leave her position as a public defender, and ultimately
to found this organization.  Ms. Vigil is bilingual, English and Spanish.

Lucia A. Williams, M.A.
Director of Programs and Services

Lucia Williams believes that it was growing up in a military family traveling the world that created her interest in researching ways to assist vulnerable individuals, particularly women,
and to provide constructive assistance for maintaining family unity and helping individuals to successfully navigate the complexities of the American judicial system.

In college, Ms. Williams pursued a Bachelor of Science in Family Studies, emphasizing human development, child development, marriage and family. Following her undergraduate program, Ms. Williams worked for Project for Homemakers in Arizona Seeking Employment (PHASE).  Through this project, Ms. Williams worked to assist women transition after exiting the criminal justice system.
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