Priscilla Mendenhall Biography

Priscilla Mendenhall is a not quite retired advocate and non-profit professional whose career focused on access to health care for refugees and immigrants in metro Washington, DC. She co-produced a film on Lao traditional healing, coordinated health programs at the Indochinese Community Center and was the initial Director of Cultural Competence and Interpreter Services at the Northern Virginia Area Health Education Center. It was in this capacity that she became one of the founding members of NCIHC. Priscilla subsequently established Samsara Communications, a consulting business that offered cultural competence workshops and interpreter training. In 2011, she moved to Tucson and opened Dishes & Stories, a small refugee women-led catering enterprise.

Back east and living in Charlottesville, Virginia right after the 2016 election, Priscilla worked alongside longtime residents and directly impacted university students to establish the Cville Immigrant Freedom Fund. She continues on their advisory board, collaborating with national organizations and families to free migrants from ICE detention and pay their immigration attorneys. Priscilla has recently joined the Board of Legacies of War, a Lao-American organization which educates elected officials and the public on the issue of unexploded ordnance in Laos where more than two million bombs remain in the soil. Legacies also chairs the US Campaign to Ban Land Mines and Cluster Munitions Coalition. Priscilla’s goal for the next decade is to support their mission and Lao coffee producers, especially women, who farm the land that the U.S. destroyed. She currently lives outside DC, across from her daughter and four cats.