Board Member, ACS Dallas-Ft. Worth Lawyer Chapter; ACS Faculty Advisor, SMU Dedman School of Law
Leo Yu (he/him)
Board Member, ACS Dallas-Ft. Worth Lawyer Chapter; ACS Faculty Advisor, SMU Dedman School of Law
When I came to America in 2010, I was 23 years old. My plan was simple – I needed to get my degree in the U.S., and then go back to Shanghai, where I used to work, and make a lot of money there.
That plan did not go anywhere, and I saw that coming in law school. After forcing myself to take business law classes and truly not enjoy any of them, I decided that business law was not my calling.
But what should I do? Constitutional Law was my favorite subject in law school, so I decided to give it a try despite many obvious hurdles – I didn’t go to the “right” law school for this type of works; I was not qualified for clerkships due to my immigration status; I actually needed the money … the list was long. But I told myself: I came to America to be myself, and that has to mean that I get to follow my passion.
After graduating from SMU School of Law, I started my career as a civil rights attorney for the Muslim community, and then a plaintiffs’ attorney for the local government. The journey was bumpy from time to time. Money was a struggle, the workload could get unmanageable, and I learned—in a hard way—that progressiveness does not magically make your workplace inclusive and less biased towards you.
But I still enjoyed it. As a young attorney, I was exposed to a wide variety of constitutional issues in the fields of immigration, national security, and administrative law, and I was given the opportunity to litigate them in court, which is something that does not happen often in the business law world. More importantly, I enjoyed going to the court for a good cause. I enjoyed the process of advocating tough constitutional positions in federal courts. In addition, ACS has played a positive role in my journey. Through ACS’s network, I connected with many attorneys who share the same values and passions with me. I attended ACS’s national convention many times, and it was always intellectually exhilarating.
Presently, I am a clinical law professor at my alma mater, and I teach Civil Rights Litigation, Perspectives of the American Legal System, and Legal Writing and Research for International Lawyers. My classroom is filled with students from different countries, with different backgrounds. I tell them that I really don’t believe that our constitution is a “dead, dead, document” – nobody comes all the way across oceans to learn about a dead document. On the contrary, it is the aliveness and openness of our constitution that makes the American legal system uniquely attractive. That’s why people like you and me come to this country, because we believe that in a system with many possibilities, we will eventually find our space. This is what America is really about.
The drive down the winding Tunica Trace Road in rural Louisiana is a long one. The 40 minutes along this stretch is heavy, and dead ends at Louisiana State Penitentiary, more commonly known as Angola. The trees part at a security gate. A small museum sits off the parking lot, and a brick sign announces your arrival at the largest maximum security prison in the country.
Angola is a working plantation prison, situated on 18,000 acres along the Mississippi River. You could fit the island of Manhattan on the sprawling Louisiana land.
Angola began as a convict-leasing plantation. After emancipation Black Louisianans often had to make a difficult decision—stay in the location where someone had been enslaved, or journey out in search of a new home and a new job. Doing the latter was treacherous. Louisiana’s Black Codes meant a person could be arrested if you did not have stable employment or stable housing. An arrest meant a conviction, and a journey to the very land at the end of Tunica Trace Road. In 1881, 20 percent of the people who stepped foot onto the convict leasing plantation died there.
Much of my work these days involves the U.S. Constitution, this very land, and the people who serve hard labor sentences there today. But this isn’t how my career started.
My trajectory changed dramatically after the 2016 Presidential election. At the time of the election, I was a partner in a regional Pacific Northwest law firm, and one of only a handful of Black women in partnership at larger Seattle law firms. I had been an ACS Student Chapter leader at the University of Washington School of Law, participated heavily in my community through service on various boards, and helped to administer my law firm’s pro bono program. I also ate a lot of rubbery plates of banquet chicken.
A month after the election, frustrated, and in a progressive political bubble, I applied for one job: a position running the criminal justice work of the Southern Poverty Law Center in the State of Louisiana. They hired me.
When former President Donald Trump gave his report on his first 100 days in office, I had already left the law firm, sold my condo and my bright yellow Mini Cooper, made arrangements for my son in his junior year of high school, moved from Seattle to New Orleans and was driving a white pickup truck through the rural Deep South.
Today, nearly five years later, I am the Deputy Director of the Promise of Justice Initiative where I work to end the injuries from more than a century of Jim-Crow law, address the policies that have made Louisiana the incarceration capital of the country, and litigate Eighth Amendment class actions over the conditions of confinement in plantation prisons in the Deep South. I worked heavily with the Constitution in my private practice, but the meaning of the Constitution has never mattered as deeply to any one I had ever worked with, as it does for the men at Angola.
There are also few people I can imagine in the Country who have been more deprived of the promises of that Constitution.
For instance, our office represented Evangelisto Ramos in his petition to the U.S. Supreme Court. Mr. Ramos was one of many men and women in Louisiana who were sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole, despite two jurors at his trial finding him not guilty. In April 2020, the U.S. Supreme Court called this practice a Jim Crow relic passed to silence the voices of Black jurors and to convict more Black people.
Since that decision, it has been my job, and my colleagues’ jobs, to try to extend this ruling to the more than 1,500 men and women who remain in prison, even though the U.S. Supreme Court said the law deprived them of their Sixth Amendment rights and was racially motivated. The majority of the more than 1,000 men our office represents on this claim sleep each night at Angola. We have done these representations with the help of more than 780 volunteer lawyers from Seattle and Singapore, including lawyers who volunteered with ACS. We continue to fight for them each and every day.
ACS’s vision is to realize the promises of the U.S. Constitution. I want to thank those who volunteered from chapters across the country to fight for those who have seldom seen the promises within the Constitution. The drive on Tunica Trace Road can be lonely: the things seen at the end of that road are isolating. But 15 years after my first exposure to ACS, I carry the ACS community with me each time I make that drive.
Want to learn more about Jim Crow juries? Check out this Fault Linesdocumentary. Learn more about the Promise of Justice Initiative here.
Roeiah Epps-Ward, Student Chapter Liaison, ACS Michigan Chapter Board of Directors; ACS Next Generation Leader
Roeiah Epps-Ward (she/her)
Student Chapter Liaison, ACS Michigan Chapter Board of Directors; ACS Next Generation Leader
For most, the path to justice and pursuit of the law doesn’t start because of a first love—unless you’re a girl nicknamed “Ro” from the eastside of Detroit. At the age of 11, I met my first boyfriend, Ramon Lamar Ward. Ramon and I quickly became enmeshed with the similarities of our dysfunctional upbringings. We talked for hours on the steps of an abandoned house on the corner of 8 Mile road near the I-75 interstate highway. Although we learned a lot of personal details about each other’s dysfunctional home life that summer night in 1987, I never disclosed I made my first suicide attempt just two days prior to our meeting. Thereafter, Ramon would be the only person speaking life into me during this dark time. Ramon always checked on me! Whether it was walking down a dangerous street to give me a huge stuffed bear, or sneaking to make a late-night phone call just to ask, “are you ok?” By the spring of 1992, Ramon and I had parted ways, separated by the streets and our abusive upbringings.
Needless to say, my childhood carved the path for my education and career. After earning my bachelor’s degree in the spring of 2000, I became a Children’s Protective Services worker. On my lunchbreak in the fall of 2002, I ran into a childhood friend who was a police officer. We started talking about people in our old neighborhood, and he told me Ramon was in prison for murder. Something in my gut instantly told me Ramon was innocent. That’s the only thing that made sense. How could the person who spoke life into me when I tried to end my life, take someone else’s life? I immediately looked up Ramon’s inmate information and got confirmation of my gut feeling when I saw his mug shot. It was in his eyes; they said, “I don’t belong here.” I wrote Ramon a letter to encourage him and to remind him of how his life impacted mine and how I was advocating for children, the way no one did for us. Thereafter, we reconnected like we never separated. He told me he was innocent and that he had been wrongly convicted by the use of jailhouse informants, after being beaten, and held for seven days in custody before he was arraigned or provided counsel after making several requests. I immediately paid for a private investigator at the request of his second appellate attorney. However, his second attorney quit. She gave me Ramon’s file on a Friday afternoon and told me to hire another lawyer who was good in federal court because Ramon would not see any relief at the state level. I educated myself about Ramon’s case that weekend in 2003. I read his entire file. I reviewed all the transcripts. I saw there was no direct evidence, no ballistics evidence, no evidence at all linking Ramon to either murder. What’s worse, the prosecutor’s office had an internal memo, months prior to Ramon’s sentencing, indicating that the informants in Ramon’s case were known liars, could not be trusted, and that use of their testimony would lead to the prompt reversal of “any” conviction. However, none of this information was ever disclosed to Ramon or his trial attorney. In that moment, a small voice inside whispered, “where is the justice, how is this right?” In 2004, I gathered all the money I had, depleting my savings, and retained Ramon’s third appellate attorney, despite being in my last year of grad school with two small children. This attorney only met with me on one occasion, visited Ramon twice in prison, and then failed to timely file the motion to reopen Ramon’s case. I became numb. I had no more money and no more hope, but a fire ignited inside of me. I knew Ramon was innocent. I had all the evidence before me. The only thing that made sense was to go to law school and work to get him out myself.
One thing I learned quickly about being in a courtroom was that relationships and connections mattered. Whether I was advocating for a child in juvenile court or observing Ramon’s post-conviction hearings, who you are, and your reputation means everything, irrespective of the law. Although justice should be fair and impartial, Ramon’s wrongful conviction was a constant reminder that being equipped with the law was not going to be enough to ensure his freedom. After all, Ramon had at least two appellate attorneys, who were equipped with the same information about his case that I had, and they were unsuccessful in obtaining justice for Ramon. So I knew it wasn’t going to be enough to just go to law school and become a lawyer to get justice for Ramon. I had to build and orchestrate my entire law school experience on establishing relationships that would aid in getting Ramon out when I became an attorney.
My first law school externship was with the Michigan Attorney Grievance Commission. In this role, I made disciplinary recommendations for complaints filed against attorneys under the Michigan Rules of Professional Conduct. However, I wanted to gain more experience in knowing what the prosecutor’s responsibilities are in bringing charges against someone accused of a crime. To my benefit, one of my last assignments dealt with this very issue and gave me a clearer understanding of Brady v. Maryland, Giglio v. United States, Naupe v. Illinois, Smith v. Phillips, DeMarco v. United States, and all the candor rules for the professional conduct of prosecutors.
Due to Ramon exhausting all appeal remedies at the state level, I knew any relief was going to have to come through the federal courts. As a result, I obtained a judicial externship my 3L year for the Honorable Victoria A. Roberts, United States District Court Judge for the Eastern District of Michigan, and student attorney position my 4L year for the Federal Pro Se Clinic. In both these roles, I gained experience in drafting judicial opinions and assisting indigent parties file civil actions in federal court. Because federal court experience can seem daunting to most attorneys, I wanted to make sure I looked and felt as if I belonged there before becoming an attorney. Being known by name (and not just another face at federal court) was an added bonus.
However, by the time I graduated from law school in 2019, Ramon’s fourth appellate attorney had already filed his habeas petition in federal court and it was denied. A familiar feeling came back to haunt me: hopelessness. Thankfully, this feeling was short-lived when I recalled a vision and voice: In June 2016, I saw Attorney Valerie Newman walk Devontae Sanford out of prison after fighting to overturn his wrongful conviction. Upon seeing this, a small voice inside whispered, “That’s who’s going to help you get Ramon out of prison.” I didn’t know what that meant at the time because I didn’t know Ms. Newman. However, the same prosecutor’s office that brought charges against Ramon, now had a Conviction Integrity Unit (“CIU”), where Valerie Newman was the director and reviewed his case. I suddenly realized what that voice from inside meant. While I had envisioned that my work in the courtroom—filing motions all the way up to the U.S. Supreme Court—would bring justice for Ramon, I learned that there are multiple paths to justice and my job as an attorney was just to ensure justice was served, whether it was through a CIU or a motion filed in court. The end goal is to get Ramon out of prison because he is innocent. Ramon, like other exonerees, had exhausted all remedies through the court system and still had not seen justice.
Therefore, we must promote and encourage multiple paths to justice by requiring all prosecutor’s offices to have a CIU. CIU’s serve as a system of checks and balances to help right the wrongs. In addition, as lawyers in this mostly self-regulated profession, we must also conduct self-inventory examinations and remember that we are dealing with human beings; not case numbers. Rather than brag about conviction rates, prosecutors should stand against injustice by fighting to overturn wrongful convictions. Rather than being consumed with billable hours and encouraging plea deals, defense attorneys should remember to never define their clients by their worst day, weakest moment, or biggest mistake.
I never forget these values in my practice of the law. Ramon was exonerated on February 20, 2020, by the Wayne County Prosecutor’s Office CIU. We married on December 31, 2020. Together, we raise awareness about wrongful convictions and assist other exonerees transitioning out of prison and learning how to navigate life after finally receiving justice.
Loren Kieve, Member, ACS Bay Area Lawyer Chapter Board of Advisors
Loren Kieve (he/him)
Member, ACS Bay Area Lawyer Chapter Board of Advisors
As a founding member of the San Francisco Bay Area Lawyer Chapter, it has been my privilege to support the ACS in its great work, first under Caroline Frederickson (whose father, the esteemed late Professor George Frederickson, I knew from serving on a Stanford board with him), and now under Russ Feingold.
I have also been blessed to be able to spend a fair amount of my time over the last 27 years helping build the Institute of American Indian Arts (“IAIA”), literally from the ground up, and then expanding its footprint and reach to become the nation’s preeminent educational institution for Native Americans and Alaska Natives.
I suspect most of ACS’s readership has never heard of the IAIA, but it is a unique institution in Indian Country and our nation’s educational pantheon. The IAIA’s official name is the Institute of American Indian and Alaska Native Culture and Arts Development. In its latest iteration, it was chartered by Congress in 1987. Its roots go back to 1960 when it was founded as a groundbreaking high school for Native Americans to study art and the arts at the Santa Fe Indian School.
In 1994, President Clinton appointed (and the Senate confirmed) me as an IAIA trustee. I was practicing law in Washington, D.C. at the time, and I thought I had gone to heaven. As a Cherokee and an officer of the United States, I got to work with Native Americans, education and art – all passions of mine – in Santa Fe, New Mexico, where I had grown up. At that point, the IAIA was housed in leased, substandard space at the College of Santa Fe, including temporary WWII Quonset huts that should have been torn down long ago.
1994 was also the year of the 105th Congress. Under Newt Gingrich’s speakership, Congress started slashing the IAIA’s federal appropriation. Two years later, Congress reduced it to a third of what it had been stating that it would be the last year of federal funding. The IAIA president resigned and, unknown to the board, sent out letters saying that the Institute was going to close. Many of our students left.
I was then elected by my fellow trustees to chair the board. Most people said that we should close up shop, but I had another idea. We had a small $12 million endowment, and a local developer had given us 40 acres ten miles south of town, but there was nothing else there, not even a road. We would take half of the endowment and start building a new campus; reduce our curriculum to its bare bones; and use the remaining money to keep us going as a college.
On a cold winter New Mexico day, tribal elders planted seeds in a blessing ceremony, and we broke ground. I retained Manny Lujan (former Republican NM Congressman and Interior Secretary) to work the halls of Congress with me to turn the sentiment around. It worked. My fellow trustees have elected me to chair the board for most of the time since then. We have expanded our campus, our curriculum and our student enrollment.
We’ve gotten our federal appropriation back to where it was when I first joined the board and we’ve embarked on more projects since then, including expanding our curriculum and outreach and beginning construction on two new buildings this year.
In 2015, President Obama reappointed me to another term as a trustee. Since then, we’ve built the most effective board in the school’s history, recently with the addition of three members of President Obama’s Native American leadership, two of whom are now working for the Biden-Harris administration in senior roles.
The IAIA’s graduates and educators are among the leading artists, poets, innovators and public servants in the country. They include the current Poet Laureate of the United States, Joy Harjo; award-winning novelist and IAIA professor Tommy Orange; N. Scott Momaday, the first Native American Pulitzer Prize winner; nationally-recognized artists Fritz Scholder, Dan Namingha, Rose B. Simpson, Roxanne Swentzell, Tony Abeyta, Alan Hauser, T.C. Cannon and Char Teters, to name just a few; film-maker Chris Eyre; and tribal and government leaders such as George Rivera.
The IAIA is unique among higher learning institutions. It not only has associate, bachelor, bachelor-of-fine-arts and master-of-fine-arts programs in the arts, creative writing, performing arts, and museum studies, but its art museum, MoCNA is one of the very few university art museums to have been accredited by the American Alliance of Museums. In 2020, the Ford Foundation named it one of the country’s 20 Black, Indigenous and People of Color “Cultural Treasures.” MoCNA regularly curates cutting-edge exhibitions that are shared with other museums. Our impressive website (www.iaia.edu) doesn’t do justice to all that IAIA does. USA Today also named the museum the third best art museum in the country.
In 2012, for my work in the law and at IAIA, Stanford University inducted me into its Multicultural Alumni Hall of Fame. (Other inductees that day included Michelle Alexander.) In 2017, the University of New Mexico honored me with its Bernard S. Rodey Award (to an individual who has “devoted an unusual amount of time in a leadership capacity and whose efforts have contributed significantly to the field of education”).
In 2019, Stanford’s President asked me to serve on a seven-member committee to recommend a University policy on naming University buildings and features. He adopted our recommendations and the University has now renamed the buildings and features formerly named for Junipero Serra.
I continue to support and serve on the boards of other great organizations, but the IAIA has been my major “night job” and commitment for the past 27 years, and I hope to be able to continue that for as long as I am able and the then-President lets me do it.
Marissa Ditowsky, Diversity Chair, ACS District of Columbia Lawyer Chapter
Marissa Ditowsky (she/her)
Diversity Chair, ACS District of Columbia Lawyer Chapter
The legal profession was not built with access and inclusion in mind. In fact, it was specifically designed to exclude. Our profession hangs onto elitist, classist, ableist, racist, and sexist requirements and notions of competency. Exclusion occurs at every step to become a lawyer, starting at K-12 education, continuing through the licensing process (including the Bar exam and discriminatory, overbroad character and fitness questions about mental health), and ending with employment in the profession. The latest American Bar Association disability statistics survey conducted in 2010 showed that only about 6.87% of respondents self-identified as disabled. According to the National Association for Law Placement, Inc.'s 2019 report on diversity in U.S. law firms, only about half of one percent of all lawyers in large United States law firms identified as having a disability. The pipeline is leaking. Every process is so much extra effort for disabled students and attorneys--so much additional fighting and advocacy. We are forced to be extraordinary to survive. We must focus on our work and academics while simultaneously advocating for our own humanity and access.
I am a disabled attorney with myotonic dystrophy, as well as several other disabilities and chronic conditions. I cannot guarantee that I would be here today without consistently advocating for myself, hearkening to the wisdom of disabled elders and others in the collective struggle for liberation, and support from other disabled students and allies seeking a common goal and equity. When I first got to law school, some of my accommodation requests were denied. I had to push my university to provide these accommodations. After drafting some strongly worded letters citing my legal rights and laying the foundation of my argument, they eventually provided all of my requested accommodations to me. However, it should not have been so difficult. When I took the Multistate Professional Responsibility Exam (MPRE), the National Conference of Bar Examiners (NCBE) denied my accommodation request for time and a half, although they did grant my request for a non-scantron answer sheet. I had received additional time on all exams in law school because of the extra time it takes to write, type, or dictate answers due to my disability, as well as the pain that can be incredibly distracting during exams. NCBE denied my request for these same accommodations despite evidence of this reasoning and previous receipt of these accommodations. I, somehow, managed to receive the score I needed on the MPRE. Others in my position have not been so lucky. The NCBE regularly and excessively denies accommodations to disabled students. Generally, when applying for accommodations for the Bar exam, state bars ask about what accommodation applicants have received on the MPRE. That can affect whether we receive accommodations, and if so, which accommodations we receive on the Bar exam.
When I took the Bar exam, I was so grateful that all of my accommodation requests were granted. That is not always to be expected, although it should be the norm. So many applicants must appeal accommodation decisions, and in some cases, they receive decisions past appeal deadlines. However, even with my accommodations, the Bar exam was grueling and inaccessible. I was exhausted, in pain, and experienced chronic migraines and gastrointestinal distress the entire summer I studied. This is known as a flare of chronic symptoms. While having time and a half during the exam was absolutely necessary for me to have sufficient time to type and dictate when in pain, it also made an already extremely lengthy exam even longer. For someone with chronic fatigue, and pain as well as symptoms that are exacerbated by fatigue and exhaustion, the test was extremely difficult to get through. Focusing and maintaining stamina was difficult, if not impossible for me. Many push back on critics of accommodations and argue that they are simply a way to "level the playing field." For me, no accommodation on such a test could possibly "level the playing field." The extra time allowed me to recoup some of the time lost focusing on my pain and spent dazed in my chronic fatigue, but such a lengthy exam is hugely inaccessible. That is what many do not understand about accommodations--even with accommodations, disabled students are often still at a disadvantage on traditional, timed exams. Again, I somehow managed to push through and pass on my first try. Others in my position were not able to excel while facing these unreasonable and discriminatory barriers established by our profession.
Now that I am an attorney, I am so blessed to work in an extremely accommodating workplace. Not only is my organization flexible, but they view my disability as an asset in my work and in building relationships with clients. However, many lawyers do not work in such welcoming spaces. There are many workplaces without formalized or widely publicized accommodation request policies, that are not familiar with disability or how to appropriately discuss disability, and that foster anxiety-inducing and toxic environments. I also experience access barriers outside of my office constantly. When court was held in person, the main entrance was inaccessible. I therefore had to use a separate accessible entrance. However, that entrance is a staff entrance, and anyone entering not on staff must be let in. I would often wait about twenty minutes in the cold before someone would even let me in to court. Further, events for attorneys often lack proper captioning, and I miss content due to my hearing loss. I regularly encounter misconceptions about the value disabled lawyers bring to the table. We are often pigeonholed in positions related to disability or accessibility--even disabled lawyers with no interest in that practice. Disability is often not even considered an aspect of diversity in hiring priorities, and not all firms even have affinity groups for disabled attorneys. Lastly, many workplaces do not even consider how disability intersects with other identities to further marginalization. We must do better--that includes law schools, career offices, law firms, non-profits, corporations, and other organizations. That is why I am a leader of the National Disabled Law Students Association (NDLSA), an organization with the mission of changing the nature of legal education and the profession to make it more inclusive and accessible for disabled students and lawyers.
October is National Disability Employment Awareness Month (NDEAM). Take this opportunity to educate yourself about how you can help to fix the leaky pipeline and why disabled lawyers, and their invaluable perspectives, are an asset to your workplace (NDLSA has several fantastic resources on these questions). Think about what systemic change you can help effect to make the profession less exclusionary and more attainable for all. Change policies at your workplace. Keep telework options in place as offices reopen. Help to advocate for diploma privilege. Donate to the Community Fund for Black Bar Applicants. Use your power as alumni and attorneys to assist current students at your alma mater experiencing access barriers. Listen to and learn from disabled people. We are in this fight together.
Marie E. Masson, Co-Chair, ACS Central Florida Lawyer Chapter
Marie E. Masson (she/her)
Co-Chair, ACS Central Florida Lawyer Chapter
I was born and raised in the beautiful island and U.S. territory of Puerto Rico. Back home, we are taught that our culture is an amalgamation of the Spanish, indigenous (taíno), and African cultures. However, when I moved to Florida to attend law school, I quickly learned that, outside of the Puerto Rican community, there was little understanding of the unique, intricate culture I grew up cherishing. I am no stranger to discrimination, which is often paired with a lack of knowledge of history and the U.S. Constitution. These personal experiences led me to volunteer early in my career with the Florida Supreme Court's Justice Teaching program, through which I visited middle schools and high schools to enhance Civics lessons each school year. When young students saw someone who looked like me, talked like me, and came from my island, they too could aspire to love the law and become lawyers or judges one day.
I have had the privilege to represent Fortune 500 companies through my entire career, and in the last 5 years, I have also been able to represent individuals in all matters involving employment and workplace accidents. For all of the mental and physical demands of a legal job, it seldom provides the satisfaction that volunteer work has given me. I will always be proud of my work over many years with the Puerto Rican Bar Association of Florida, my contributions to the founding of the Legal Services Clinic of the Puerto Rican Community in Orlando after hurricane Maria, and the continuing efforts to bring light into the constitutionality of Puerto Rico's political status.
After the grueling 2020 election cycle ended, I reflected on my roles as private sector lawyer, volunteer election observer, and Hispanic community activist. Like so many of my colleagues, I felt the need for change when I saw our democracy imperiled by steady blows to the rule of law and Constitutional precedents. This day and age invariably points us toward social media when we search for news, sources of hope, and opportunities. While browsing LinkedIn, the American Constitution Society popped up on my feed through a post by a law school connection, who also happens to work for ACS. I immediately recalled ACS's mission and purpose, and thus, my search for other ways to make an impactful contribution considering all my former roles and experience was over.
Central Florida has been my home for the last decade and I am proud to be a co-chair of the ACS Central Florida Lawyer Chapter. Our community is one of the most diverse in the entire State of Florida and its resilience in the wake of adversity has been historic. Our chapter aims at creating change in small and steady steps, with the goal to be a significant source of progressive legal policies and a beacon to fair-minded judicial aspirants of all ages, genders, and backgrounds. I am looking forward to working with the national ACS office and other Lawyer Chapters, and seeing the organization become the best it can be for the future of our country.
