Courtesy / Pine Tree Legal Assistance
Tom Fritzsche will serve as the new executive director of Pine Tree Legal Assistance.
July 1, 2022
Pine Tree Legal names new executive director
By Jessica Hall
Pine Tree Legal Assistance, the nonprofit legal aid organization serving low-income Mainers, has named Tom Fritzsche as its new executive director.
Fritzsche will assume the role on Sept. 6. He succeeds Nan Heald, who led the organization for more than 30 years and died of cancer in January.
Fritzsche will oversee a staff of 75, including 47 attorneys and 15 paralegals, in six locations throughout the state. Pine Tree Legal assists Mainers with a wide range legal issues, including matters related to housing, domestic violence, farm workers, veterans and Indigenous people.
Fritzsche currently serves as the executive director of Milk with Dignity Standards Council in Vermont, which monitors dairy farms’ compliance with standards protecting farm workers’ human rights. Over the last five years, under his leadership, the council has worked with hundreds of farm workers and dozens of farm owners to improve working and housing conditions on farms, according to a news release.
He also has served as a teaching fellow in the Cardozo School of Law’s immigration justice clinic, as a Skadden Fellow and staff attorney in the Southern Poverty Law Center’s Immigrant Justice Project, and as a medical interpreter, pesticide safety trainer and health outreach worker with the Maine Migrant Health Program.
Fritzsche was born and raised in Maine and is a graduate of Kennebunk High School, Amherst College and New York University School of Law.
“We’re lucky to have found Tom. He has wide experience working with the vulnerable populations Pine Tree serves, and we fully expect him to continue Pine Tree’s tradition of outstanding leadership,” Pine Tree Legal’s board president Dan Emery said.
Pine Tree Legal was founded in 1966 was one of the nation’s first statewide civil legal aid organizations.
This year, Pine Tree Legal said it expects to serve more than 6,000 individuals and families through direct legal assistance and more than 1 million people through its websites.
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