About Aisa

Aisa Villarosa is an attorney, storyteller, and coalition builder with significant experience building movements that shift policy, narrative, and practice.

Aisa is currently Manager of the Asian American Leaders Table with Advancing Justice - Asian Law Caucus, where she conducts key national projects to advance a progressive Asian and Pacific Islander agenda through infrastructure support, advocacy coordination, and narrative change.

Previously, as Director of Youth Organizing and Programs at Stop AAPI Hate, she led coalition building, educational equity initiatives, and healing justice support to organizations and activists. As a civil rights advocate, narrative strategist, and visual artist, she has uplifted Ethnic Studies and other liberatory frameworks for over two decades.

Prior to joining Stop AAPI Hate, Aisa served as Senior Director of External Affairs for Yerba Buena Center for the Arts (YBCA), where she was instrumental in implementing a coalition-based Guaranteed Income Pilot for Artists, the first program of its kind in the United States. Before YBCA, Aisa was the Associate Director of Policy and Advocacy at the Insight Center (now Maven). While there, she applied her law and policy expertise to Insight’s workforce and economic security initiatives. Through policy advocacy, coalition management, and data analysis, she supported Insight’s Family Needs Calculator, a tool that quantifies living costs for California’s working families.

Aisa began her career as a children’s rights and legal aid attorney in Detroit, Michigan, where she co-founded The 313 Project, a nonprofit connecting communities to legal and educational resources. A former Skadden Public Interest Fellow, she received her B.A. from the University of Michigan and her law degree from Wayne State University. A licensed attorney in Michigan (‘11) and California (‘15), her legal expertise includes juvenile justice, immigration, housing, mental health, and civil rights law, as well as analyzing the harms of surveillance and policing on Black and Brown communities.

Aisa is a former instructor of Filipinx and Ethnic Studies, and an avid painter and illustrator. She can often be found camping with her dogs, Maki and Willow.