Kaethe has been with CAASE since 2009, when a legal services and policy advocacy nonprofit she founded became part of the organization.

Kaethe has been working against inequality and sex-based violence for decades, engaging in feminist advocacy and litigation in many venues. Internationally, she represented Equality Now in United Nations proceedings that created the international law against sex trafficking, and served as project manager for a precedent-setting civil lawsuit led by Catharine MacKinnon on behalf of survivors of Bosnian-Serb rape death camps. At the state level, Kaethe served on Governor Ryan’s Commission on the Status of Women in Illinois, through which she co-authored the Gender Violence Act, and assisted in the development and passage of the Civil No Contact Order Act and the Victims’ Employment Safety and Security Act. Locally, Kaethe served as an Assistant to the Mayor in the Daley Administration, directed federal affairs for the AIDS Foundation of Chicago, and represented low-income women at Legal Aid Chicago. Kaethe is a current member of the Illinois Council on Girls and Women, and a past member of the American Bar Association Commission on Domestic and Sexual Violence and the Cook County Women’s Commission.

In recent years Kaethe has been recognized by the Chicago Foundation for Women (Impact Award) and the YWCA Evanston/North Shore (YWomen Leadership Award). Kaethe is a graduate of Swarthmore College and the University of Michigan Law School.