Maria M. Odom, VP of Legal Programs at Kids in Need of Defense (KIND)

Maria M. Odom is the Vice President for Legal Programs at Kids in Need of Defense (KIND), where she leads a team of over 225 immigration professionals who provide high-quality legal services to unaccompanied migrant and refugee children in the U.S. and Mexico. With an impressive global network of pro bono partners, KIND’s Legal Programs team represents over 6,500 children before the U.S. immigration courts, federal agencies, and state courts around the country. 

As VP for Legal Programs, Ms. Odom also oversees KIND's Social Services team of experts in trauma-informed care, which provides vital psycho-social supports to our child clients. In 2018, she spearheaded the creation of KIND's first Legal Strategy and Special Programs division - a highly specialized team dedicated to supporting critical impact litigation and providing rapid-response legal services to children seeking protection at the U.S. southern border as well as children separated from their parents by the U.S. Government.

In the near past, Odom served as the DHS Citizenship and Immigration Services Ombudsman in the administration of President Barack Obama. In that role, she worked with community leaders and immigration professionals across the country to improve the quality of citizenship and immigration services delivered to the public. As Ombudsman, she reported to and testified before the U.S. Congress regarding systemic issues in our country’s immigration system. 

Odom is a nationally recognized legal and policy expert with a wide range of immigration experience in the private, government, and charitable sectors.  She previously led the country’s largest network of charitable legal immigration programs as Executive Director of the Catholic Legal Immigration Network, Inc. (CLINIC).  For a decade, she practiced immigration law in the southeast, leading a successful private practice in the areas of deportation defense, humanitarian protections, as well as business and family-based immigration.  Early in her career, Odom served at the U.S. Department of Justice as Assistant District Counsel for the legacy Immigration and Naturalization Service and as a judicial law clerk at the Executive Office for Immigration Review. 

At DHS, Odom also led the department’s human trafficking prevention, training, and public education efforts as Chair of the DHS Blue Campaign. She is a member of the Board of Directors of the Freedom Network, which works in coalition with service providers and survivor leaders to advance a rights-based approach to address human trafficking in the United States. 

Odom is a graduate of The Florida State University College of Criminology and the Mercer University Walter F. George School of Law. She currently lives in New York City.