Wendy Asmen

Wendy Asmen is a bilingual community engagement professional with extensive experience in disability services, legal guardianship, and family advocacy. She currently serves as a Legal Guardian Representative and Trippett Advocacy & Outreach Fellow with The Arc of Northern Virginia, where she leads Spanish-language outreach connecting Hispanic families to disability services and essential public benefits. In this role, she facilitates bilingual education on Medicaid waivers, special needs trusts, housing supports, and Social Security, while also serving as a court-appointed guardian. She advocates for individuals with disabilities who lack family support, ensuring they are protected from neglect or exploitation, have access to appropriate care, and are meaningfully integrated into their communities with dignity. She also contributes to a contracted hospital-based private guardianship program supporting individuals with severe mental health conditions who have been deemed incapacitated, ensuring they understand their rights and have consistent, trusted representation.

Wendy’s journey in the intellectual and developmental disabilities field began nearly 20 years ago following her son’s autism diagnosis, during a time when autism prevalence was approximately 1 in 68 children. As she navigated a complex and often inaccessible system, she recognized the lack of centralized resources and the burden placed on families to independently locate critical support. This experience led her to begin assisting other parents particularly mothers who were facing similar challenges. She provided informal guidance, resource navigation, and advocacy while also completing contracting work with the Autism Society of Northern Virginia, where she translated materials into Spanish and helped expand access for Hispanic families. During this time, she balanced multiple responsibilities, including working in the restaurant industry, while steadily building her expertise in disability services and community advocacy.

Her commitment to service deepened through her work with her local church, where she developed and expanded an Adults with Disabilities ministry that ultimately grew into one of the largest programs of its kind in Northern Virginia. Through Christ Church Fairfax Station, she designed programming, secured grants, coordinated volunteers, and built partnerships that strengthened community inclusion for adults with special needs and their caregivers. This experience, combined with her earlier professional foundation as a Senior Training Manager with Five Guys Enterprises, where she supported large-scale training and bilingual workforce development during rapid global expansion, shaped her leadership approach. Today, she continues to build on that trajectory while pursuing studies at Northern Virginia Community College, reinforcing her long-standing commitment to advocacy, education, and empowering vulnerable populations.