The Westbrook City Council made local history last week in unanimously selecting American-Armenian writer, lawyer, lecturer and human rights advocate Anna Astvatsaturian Turcotte as its president, the first refugee and by all accounts the first woman to fill that role, Portland Press Herald reports.
“As a council, we had decided we wanted a woman. We wanted someone to represent those constituents who haven’t had that representation. I look forward to being the facilitator of the discussions,” she said. “One of my major goals is to work more closely with the schools on budgets, so we aren’t surprised when we see it.”
A lawyer specializing in international law, Turcotte has long been involved in advocacy work around her birth city of Baku, Azerbaijan. Turcotte’s Armenian family fled Azerbaijan when she was a child because...
Read full story
