Asma Kadri Keeler
Asma Kadri Keeler has spent her career building trust and relationships while advancing the rule of law in the public interest. She is bringing her talents to the private sector to help a wider variety of clients with shared passion for public policy, good governance, and the rule of law.
Asma provides strategic counsel on matters related to every aspect of the political process, including legislative efforts, ballot initiatives, electoral issues, regulatory frameworks, and public policy. She has years of expertise in building coalitions and advancing issues that are most important to her clients. She brings litigation experience and has provided representation to clients in constitutional and civil rights cases, along with matters touching state or local government affairs. Asma spent years working for the State of Colorado in the Governor's Office and has deep expertise in how the statehouse works. She has drafted and redlined signing statements, veto letters, and bills, negotiated with lawmakers and stakeholders, engaged with legislative committees and with stakeholder working groups, and provided sound legal advice every step of the way. Asma also has expertise in clemency and criminal justice related matters both from her time at the Governor's Office and the ACLU. In addition to a demonstrated commitment to public sector legal issues, Asma has experience in corporate and nonprofit legal work, including contract drafting, review, and negotiation, employment law, HR policy development, social governance program development, and leadership coaching.
After graduating magna cum laude from American University Washington College of Law, she served as a law clerk to the Honorable Thomas P. Mann. Her professional legal foundation was shaped by her time as a staff lawyer at the American Civil Liberties Union, in various state affiliates, litigating complex constitutional cases under Section 1983, Title VII, First, Fourth, and Fourteenth Amendments, ADA, ACA, and more. This work honed her ability to interpret and explain complicated legal frameworks to diverse audiences and see the power in strategic initiatives. Asma's experience in litigation, general counsel, grassroots organizing, legislative strategy and lobbying, and targeted media campaigns in highly political environments leaves her with trust and credibility inside state houses, in front of juries and judges, and with her clients. Accordingly, Asma has seamlessly moved from working on deeply nuanced and complicated civil constitutional cases to legal and business matters to advising the executive of Colorado.
During law school, Asma worked with numerous international human rights and international criminal legal organizations to advance human rights and the rule of law across the globe. She assisted lawyers negotiating peace talks for the Syrian war and helped draft portions of a new constitution for Yemen during her time at the Public International Law and Policy Group. She served in the Office of the Prosecutor at the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia where she prepped witnesses brave enough to testify for the prosecution of Ratko Mladic. She also helped develop criminal defense bars in Eastern European nations through the American Bar Association Rule of Law Initiative and provided direct representations to Syrian refugees seeking asylum during the war.
Asma is a member of the Colorado Women's Bar Association, the South Asian Bar Association, and a coach for East High School students in the We the People Constitutional Law Program. She is also a board member of the War Crimes Research Office (WCRO) at American University Washington College of Law. In her spare time, Asma is either traveling with her family, drinking a good glass of wine, reading the latest trend fantasy series, or ideally, all three.