Over 20 years ago, I wrote in my law school personal statement that “I never wanted to be a lawyer.”
I knew I wanted a life in a helping profession—working with people, solving real problems—but the law didn’t feel like the obvious path. But what I could see at that time was how all roads led to the justice system: race, poverty, access to education and healthcare, housing instability…I saw all these points of convergence, but I didn’t yet understand how to take that on in a meaningful way in a job.
At some point, I realized that while law might not be the destination, it could be the journey to take me into the heart of the work I was called to do.
My first job out of law school, at The Bronx Defenders, dropped me right into the fight. In these early days, I wasn’t thinking about policy or reform—I was helping everyday people hold onto their homes, their jobs, and their families. People who were in the middle of crisis. Every single day, I watched families survive a system that was never built with them in mind. And I did whatever I could to help them do that.
As a young defender, I remember walking into Bronx County Family Court for the first time. I will never forget it. The hallways and courtrooms inside of the family courthouse looked like any other, but the benches and chairs were almost exclusively full of women – mothers, grandmothers, sisters, aunts, neighbors. But what was the most striking was what happened that day inside the courtroom when the judge sided with the state and terminated a mother’s parental rights. The cries and screams of this young mother were heartbreaking, and while there were also some difficult facts of her case including criminal charges, I still remember thinking that there has to be a better way to deliver safety and justice to these kids, their mother, and this family. Everything I studied in a law book became so real there. As part of the civil action practice, I worked with parents accused of abuse or neglect—facing the possibility of losing their children, often based on mere allegations alone.
Sitting beside clients as they tried to make sense of what was happening, I began to understand something that would shape everything that came after:
An arrest is never just an arrest. A sentence is never just a sentence. A record is never just a record.
The justice system is full of “collateral consequences,” and every single tiny decision has ripple effects on real people’s lives, sometimes for generations. These things shift public housing eligibility, employment access, child custody, public benefits, and community trust.
I worked with grandparents who faced eviction because a grandchild had been arrested — even if that young person no longer lived in the home. Housing rules left them with impossible choices: protect your lease or protect your family.
I worked with parents whose involvement in the justice system triggered child welfare cases, sometimes leading to the loss of parental rights—not because of harm, but because timelines and legal standards that moved faster than their lives could stabilize.
These weren’t exceptions. They were routine. Legal. Structural. Built into the everyday fabric of how we deliver justice and safety in America.
And that system showed up everywhere—in housing eligibility, employment licenses, public benefits, and custody decisions. What looked like a single point of contact with the justice system based on one really bad day actually set off a chain reaction that destabilized entire families.
That experience reshaped how I understand safety and justice.
I learned that safety is not just the absence of crime, it is the presence of stability. Housing that isn’t lost because of a family member’s mistake, parents who can remain connected to their children, systems that hold people accountable without permanently cutting off their ability to move forward.
After years in the courthouse, working case by case in moments of crisis, my work eventually shifted into broader criminal justice reform. That shift didn’t replace what I had learned—it expanded it.
Where I once saw individual stories, I now see how those outcomes are shaped by state statutes, administrative rules, funding decisions, and political realities. I see how reforms move—and where they break down, especially at the point of implementation.
Today, I work across states, often in the South, with lawmakers, advocates, faith leaders, and community partners. And some of the most meaningful work I do is bipartisan and cross-ideological. It requires engaging across differences with genuine curiosity and a focus on shared goals, and that makes the outputs so much stronger – from policy proposals, to lobbying efforts, to public education that actually makes a difference in human lives.
I’ve also learned that good policy is only the starting point, not the end goal. Durable reform depends on how it’s carried out and implemented—and on the relationships that sustain it. And if we do this well, the work comes full circle, impacting the very families I met all those years ago at the beginning of my career.
Working with families taught me to listen—for what people are trying to protect, what they fear, and what they hope for. It taught me that people often share the same core values, even when they disagree about the path forward: stronger families, safer communities, and real opportunities to move forward after a mistake.
By focusing on the things we all want – accountability, redemption, fiscal responsibility, public safety — we can create space for real progress. And that progress is more durable because it’s shared. That’s the work I get up every day to do at The Just Trust. Did I ever think I’d be here? Not for a minute. Just like being a lawyer wasn’t on my bingo card, neither was getting to support hundreds of advocacy organizations large and small, working together across the country for a better justice system. But here I am, and grateful everyday to be on this winding, and sometimes unpredictable journey.
