Anne Vachon

Anne received her Masters in Social Work from Columbia University. While pursuing her degree, Anne’s first-year field placement was at the New York Harm Reduction Educators, where she provided mental health counseling to individuals who identified wanting to make a change to their drug use. Anne’s second year field placement was at the Bronx Defenders, working in the Criminal Defense Practice. Prior to returning to graduate school, Anne worked as an investigator in the Prisoners’ Rights department of the Office of the Defender General, for the State of Vermont. This experience sparked her interest in working as a social worker in a legal setting. Anne also worked at the Women’s Prison Association, a nonprofit that explicitly works with women in New York City at any level of criminal justice involvement. Here, Anne was tasked with starting a new mentoring program for women transitioning home after serving short sentences at Rikers Island. Anne received a BA from Bard College, majoring in Human Rights. She wrote an interdisciplinary senior thesis on the growing female population in prison in New York State in the 1990s and early 2000s. While in college, Anne facilitated a writing group at Beacon Correctional Facility and tutored college students at Eastern and Woodbourne Correctional Facilities, through the Bard Prison Initiative.