CREEC is thrilled to welcome two new paralegals, Caroline Sprague and Mikhal Kidane!
Caroline is joining CREEC as an admin paralegal and will eventually relocate to the Denver office. She
graduated from Brown University in December 2020 with a B.A. in American Studies, with a focus on the intersection of cultural arts and organizing. Before coming to CREEC, she held positions as an Education Rights Legal Intern at the Rhode Island Center for Justice, a Special Projects intern at Ars Nova in Manhattan, and a Senior Counselor for refugee students at Camp RYSE (Refugee Youth Solidarity through Education). Most recently, she worked as a remote organizer on a congressional campaign in her home state of Massachusetts.
While interning at the Rhode Island Center for Justice, Caroline worked within a community lawyering model and developed informational resources for immigrant parents applying for passports for their dependents. Caroline’s recognition of the critical need for savvy civil rights education led her to apply for a paralegal position at CREEC. Her background, academically and professionally, has led to her to focus on movements for justice through the lenses of history, Black feminism, anthropology, education studies and more.
Caroline also brings experience in admin work. At the off-Broadway theater Ars Nova, she assisted multiple departments through grant writing, forensic accounting, database upkeep, and event planning. This summer, she organized for Alex Morse in the MA-01 primary. She hosted twice-weekly phonebanks where she trained and led up to fifty volunteers at a time, and personally supervised ten undergraduate interns including through onboarding, holding check-ins, and developing personalized workplans.
At CREEC, Caroline will be supporting the Immigration Detention Accountability Project including its impact litigation to challenge the conditions of confinement in ICE detention centers, and to challenge discrimination against detained immigrants with disabilities. She will also provide administrative support to the attorneys and the entire CREEC team. Caroline says, “It couldn’t be a more important time to push for transparency, accountability, and justice — I’m honored to be joining CREEC to learn from and support the organization’s key advocacy work.”
Mikhal is joining CREEC as a paralegal in the Denver office. She graduated from Duke University in 2019 with a Bachelor of Science in Economics and minors in Political Science and Philosophy. Since then, Mikhal has worked as an organizer for Colorado 
People’s Action, a local non-profit organization fighting to hold elected officials and corporations accountable to the people and communities they serve. Her work there focused on building grassroots momentum behind progressive legislation and candidates and on bringing stakeholders together around social, climate, and economic justice issues. Most recently, Mikhal served as a Business and Agriculture Advising Specialist with the Peace Corps in Ghana, where she worked to develop projects at the grassroots level that were dedicated to improving food security and alleviating poverty. Mikhal was able to develop and actualize projects with limited access to resources by being inventive and adaptive.
While a student at Duke, Mikhal acquired extensive research and policy analysis experience while working with the Research Department at Southern Africa Clothing and Textile Workers Union (SACTWU). She completed several research reports on the clothing and textiles sector, and campaigned for subsidies from the South African government to continue the mechanization of clothing and textiles– an industry that supports primarily women factory workers. Mikhal’s desire to confront deep ideological divisions and systemic inequality led her to apply for a paralegal position at CREEC. Mikhal says, “I am very excited to join the team at CREEC, not only because of their wonderful mission, but also because of the inspiring group of individuals who work there.”
Mikhal is joining the Accessibility Project team, providing support on cases involving Deaf prisoners, curb cuts, and other accessibility issues. We are so excited to have Mikhal on board and we know that her background and experience will contribute greatly to CREEC’s work.