Our Advisory Board

Katherine Alteneder is an internationally recognized expert on improving justice systems to better serve people without lawyers. She currently consults on matters relating to judicial ethics, court rules, geospatial analysis, digital inclusion, and systemic advocacy and reform to build more equitable justice systems. Katherine led SRLN from 2013 – 2023, building a diverse international network of lawyers, judges, policy makers, technologists, researchers, and allied professionals creating innovative and evidence-based solutions so that self-represented litigants have meaningful access to the courts and get the legal help they need.

Before joining SRLN, Ms. Alteneder spent her career in Alaska, initially as a trial court law clerk and then as a legal aid lawyer. In 2001 Ms. Alteneder joined the Alaska Court System to design and launch the nation’s first comprehensive phone and internet-based court self-help center. In 2008 Ms. Alteneder returned to private practice establishing an innovative and successful unbundled practice, and founded the first Unbundled Law Section of a state bar. Katherine serves in an advisory capacity to many access to justice organizations and initiatives including Voices for Civil Justice, the National Center for State Court’s Justice for All Project, and is a Non-Resident Senior Fellow at the Georgetown Institute for Technology Law and Policy. In 2019 she received the National Center for State Court’s Distinguished Service Award for her work to improve access to justice. She has a BA from Northwestern University, and JD from Seattle University School of Law.

Drew is in charge of recruiting startups, cultivating partnerships with law firms and supporting law students in their placements. He is a graduate of Carleton College and Columbia Law School. After law school, Drew completed a fellowship with the National Center on Poverty Law and worked as a business litigator with firms in Chicago and San Francisco. More recently, he founded a legal tech company that matched freelance attorneys with companies and law firms.

“Nicole Bradick is the Founder and CEO at Theory and Principle, a legal and justice technology product design and development firm. Theory and Principle’s team of designers, engineers, project managers, product managers, and strategists works with global law firms, foundations, legal aid organizations, and legal technology companies to design and build innovative web and mobile apps related to law and justice. Their mission is to improve the legal experience for all through thoughtfully designed digital products.
Nicole is a former litigator turned three-time legal technology entrepreneur, and the leading industry expert in legal technology product design and development. You can often find her doing talks on this topic on stages around the world, and she has been the driving force behind some of the most ambitious digital products in the legal industry.”

Rob Brook has been an investor with Stand Together Ventures Lab (STVL) for the past two years. He has worked closely with STVL’s growing portfolio that aims to tackle the root causes of injustice in the institution of Criminal Justice. In addition to supporting STVL’s existing portfolio’s efforts, he is interested in supporting other innovative solutions in the space seeking to removing barriers to individual empowerment, like a criminal record. Through experience in emerging market credit investing, he brings financial analysis and modeling capabilities in support of JTA members.

Burnett comes to the ABF from the Open Society Foundations (OSF), where he worked as Senior Policy Officer for Legal Empowerment at the Open Society Justice Initiative (OSJI). His work included leading OSJI’s migrant worker project, supporting OSF partners in Puerto Rico on housing justice and displacement, providing technical assistance and field building support to legal empowerment efforts by OSF regional and national foundations in the US, Africa, Asia, and Eastern Europe, and global advocacy and coordination on access to civil justice and Sustainable Development Goal 16.3. Prior to his work with the Open Society Foundations, Burnett helped to launch the Immigration Advocates Network, first as associate director from 2007-2011 and then as director from 2011-2017.
Burnett has a J.D. from Seattle University School of Law and a B.A. from the University of Washington. During law school, he served as law clerk to Justice Zakeria Mohammed Yacoob of the Constitutional Court of South Africa, and as an article and content development editor for the Seattle Journal of Social Justice.

Burnett has written and presented extensively on a variety of civil access to justice topics, including legal empowerment, innovation, financing, and regulatory reform. He is co-author of the forthcoming publication, Making the Law Work for People: A Handbook on Legal Empowerment and Inclusive Innovation, and sits on the World Bank Taskforce on Access to Justice and Technology.

Art Cavazos is a finance and corporate lawyer who focuses his practice on complex financial transactions and other business matters. His clients include companies from a range of sectors including finance, healthcare, energy, real estate, construction, and technology. His transactional experience includes M&A, private placements, entity formation and governance, and general contract negotiations.
Art’s significant finance experience includes representation of both lenders and borrowers in a variety of transactions, including syndicated, bilateral and club facilities, secured and unsecured facilities, first, second lien and mezzanine facilities, revolvers and term loans, acquisition financings, commercial real estate and construction loans, asset based loans, reserve based loans, commodities and derivatives transactions, and others. He has also helped guide lenders and borrowers through distressed loan workouts and bankruptcy debtor-in-possession financings.

Moreover, Art’s diverse transactional practice affords him broad experience that enables him to identify problems, find solutions, and help clients achieve their goals. This includes advising companies on mergers and acquisitions, corporate structuring and governance, private debt and equity securities offerings, and other complex business transactions.

Brooke Daniels has over a decade of experience as a leader in venture capital, tech, and real estate investing, with a focus on investing in mortgage notes. Brooke has worked as a Director at Salesforce Ventures and has coached founders to raise over $75M in venture capital. She is an Advisor for BLCK VC, Justice Technology Association, is on the Investment Committee for the Cap Table Coalition, and is a mentor to entrepreneurs with TechStars and Pharrell William’s Black Ambition. Brooke holds an Executive MBA from UNC Kenan-Flagler and is an advisor for the entrepreneurship program.

Ed Diab is a leading figure in environmental litigation nationwide, known for his commitment to advocating for public entities affected by utility-caused wildfires. His dedication to his clients has earned him recognition, including the esteemed California Lawyer Attorney of the Year Award by the Daily Journal in 2020.

Outside the courtroom, Ed has a passion for technology. He actively supports legaltech companies as an angel investor and serves on advisory boards.

“David Freeman Engstrom is the LSVF Professor in Law and the Co-Director of the Deborah L. Rhode Center on the Legal Profession, the premier academic center working to shape the future of legal services and access to the legal system. A far-ranging scholar of the design and implementation of litigation and regulatory regimes, Engstrom’s expertise runs to civil procedure, administrative law, constitutional law, law and technology, and empirical legal studies.
Professor Engstrom’s current work focuses on access to justice in the millions of low-dollar but highly consequential cases, including debt collection, eviction, foreclosure, and child support actions, that shape the lives of Americans each year. He currently serves as the Reporter for the American Law Institute’s Principles of the Law, High-Volume Civil Adjudication, which will offer courts guidance on the urgent challenges these cases raise. From 2020 to 2022, he served as a public appointee to the California State Bar’s Closing the Justice Gap Working Group, tasked with proposing reforms to foster innovation in legal services.”

A respected senior executive leader, John has extensive experience leading private and public organizations. John joined The Mill, Bloomington’s home for innovators, to catalyze the regional innovation ecosystem, including leading collaborations with Indiana University, investors and the robust start-up community. A key priority includes developing and managing The Trades District, a center for innovation located in Bloomington’s certified tech park.
As Dentons’ Global Chief Innovation Officer, John worked closely with the Firm’s lawyers and cross-functional teams, designing innovative programs and solutions, driving greater efficiencies, engagement and revenue. John is also a Managing Director of Nextlaw Ventures, the industry’s first global legal tech venture launched by Dentons in 2015.

Prior to joining Dentons, John served as President Barack Obama’s Assistant Secretary of Commerce for Economic Development. During his tenure, he launched groundbreaking federal initiatives to accelerate innovation-based growth strategies. John served as Bloomington, Indiana’s mayor from 1996 to 2003. With his leadership, Bloomington’s economy thrived despite facing significant changes arising from the global economy. He worked with business and Indiana University leaders to launch Bloomington’s Life Sciences Partnership, securing more than $243 million in private investments and creating more than 3,700 jobs.

Ken Friedman is the chief industry officer at Divorce.com. He specializes in assisting disruptive companies steer their way through the legal and regulatory minefield. After beginning his career at a large, international law firm, Ken has continued his career as general counsel and as an advisor to entrepreneurial companies. Currently, Ken advises a number of companies, both formally on their Board of Advisors and informally as a colleague. His initial job at LegalZoom was to analyze and balance risks to ensure the company’s survival during a time of both hypergrowth and relentless attacks from the legal establishment, while also focusing on traditional legal activities.

Marcus Glover is the Co-founder and Managing Director of Lockstep Ventures, a venture capital firm that seeks to address issues that perpetuate racial inequality in the U.S.
Marcus has a mission to reimagine equity for Black America and is dedicated to investing and advising Black and women-led companies that are often overlooked, underfunded and underserved. As a leader of Lockstep Ventures, he has turned his passion into meaningful change while also inspiring and empowering a systematic shift in tandem with delivering investor returns.

In addition to his work with Lockstep Ventures, Marcus serves on the National Board of Directors of Defy Ventures, which advocates for criminal justice reform and lowering recidivism by building on incarcerated men and women’s natural talents through entrepreneurship business ownership. Marcus also serves on the Time@100 Advisory Board.

Tom co-founded Responsive Law in 2010 and has been serving as its Executive Director since 2012. He has worked on behalf of consumers of legal services for over two decades, including several years as Senior Counsel and Policy Director at HALT. He has testified hundreds of times before state legislatures, federal administrative panels, state bars, and the American Bar Association. His commentary has been featured in national media, including the Wall Street Journal and USA Today, In 2017, Tom was named to the Fastcase 50 as one of “”the law’s smartest, most courageous innovators, techies, visionaries, and leaders.
Tom received his JD from Northwestern University School of Law and his BA from the University of Pennsylvania. He is admitted to practice law in Maryland and the District of Columbia.

Richard S. Granat is an attorney, author, legal educator, and legal entrepreneur. He was the co-founder and co-director of the Center for Law Practice Technology at Florida Coastal School of Law in Jacksonville, Florida which offers distant learning courses in legal technology to law students and lawyers.
He is presently the founder and CEO of JusticeXpress Services, Inc., an on0line self-help legal book publisher and document preparation services for self-represented parties.

He was previously the founder and CEO of SmartLegalForms, Inc., a self-help legal information services company, and DirectLaw, Inc., a virtual law firm platform provider to solos and small law firms.

Mr. Granat helped create the paralegal profession in the United States as President and Dean of the Philadelphia Institute for Paralegal Training, the nation’s first paralegal education institution and he was also a member of the first management team that created the U.S. Legal Services Program.

In 2009 he was named a “”Legal Rebel”” by the American Bar Association Journal; in 2010 he was awarded the Louis M. Brown Lifetime Achievement Award for Innovation in the Delivery of Legal Services and in 2013 the James I. Keane Memorial Award for Excellence in eLawyering..

A frequent speaker and writer, Richard’s articles about virtual lawyering and access to justice have appeared in Law Practice Today, the New York State Bar Association Journal, the Maryland State Bar Association Journal and other legal industry publications.

Justice Constandinos “Deno” Himonas is a partner in the Salt Lake City office of Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati, where he advises companies on complex governance and regulatory issues.
Deno joined the firm’s litigation and appellate practices upon his retirement from the Utah Supreme Court, where he served for seven years and participated in hundreds of appeals that spanned nearly all areas of the law. Prior to his appointment to the high court, Deno served as a trial court judge in Utah for nearly 11 years. In that capacity, he tried well over 100 cases and presided over thousands of matters. These matters included the most serious of criminal cases; complex civil litigation involving, among other areas, corporate governance and tax; torts; and numerous state and federal constitutional issues. Before Deno was a judge, he spent 15 years working as a litigator for Jones Waldo Holbrook & McDonough, where he focused on complex civil litigation.

Throughout his legal career, Deno has concerned himself with issues relating to the access and affordability of civil justice in the U.S. court system. He has received widespread acclaim for his work in this arena, including distinction by the American Bar Association as a “Legal Rebel” and by the Institute for the Advancement of the American Legal System with the Rebuilding Justice Award (along with Utah attorney John Lund) for establishing Utah’s Office of Legal Services Innovation and a regulatory “sandbox” allowing entities to explore new ways of delivering legal services. More than 25 innovations are currently being piloted in the sandbox.

Deno has taught trial advocacy as an adjunct professor at the University of Utah S.J. Quinney College of Law, been honored by the College of Law as an Honorary Alumnus of the Year, and served as the Innovator-in-Residence at the College. He also has been a recipient of the Judicial Excellence award from the Utah State Bar.

A senior executive who offers a rare combination of investing, professional services, entrepreneurial and public service experience. Founded and led the first early stage legal tech focused venture fund in the world. With almost twenty years of professional services experience, partnered with and advised Fortune 500 CEOs on the most pressing strategic and organizational issues they faced. As an entrepreneur, founded, led or grew six different successful organizations in the for-profit and non-profit sectors, delivering impressive results including successful funding, growth, exits or cost cutting where needed. As Mayor, downsized government 30% and originated impactful legislation on housing, infrastructure and community issues. I am seeking my next leadership opportunity in an impactful organization looking for dramatic results.

Batul Joffrey joined Kapor Capital after completing the 2019 Summer Associate Program. She focuses on managing mission critical projects and strategic initiatives, as well as, evaluating investments and assisting on due diligence.
A SoCal native, she studied economics and statistics at UCLA, worked on the complex data and management team as a consultant at Navigant, and prior to joining KCAP, moved to the Bay Area to get acquainted with the startup ecosystem – working as Chief of Staff for a social impact startup. She is also a member of Global Shapers, an initiative of the World Economic Forum, working with a network of individuals dedicated to address local, regional, and global challenges.

Outside of work, you can find her pouring over the pages of a book, traveling and exploring different cities, and trading Pakistani chai for good conversation.

Nyra Jordan is a founding and social impact investment director of the American Family Insurance Institute for Corporate and Social Impact. In this role, Nyra partners with and supports enterprises that are working to build resilient communities in the wake of environmental and social inequities. In addition, she amplifies the voices of experts and founders focused on people-centered solutions for those impacted by the justice system.
Nyra holds a bachelor’s degree in Mass Communication, and master’s degrees in Criminal Justice Administration and Social Innovation and Sustainability Leadership

Jeff focuses his practice in areas of emerging technology, particularly in areas involving data analytics, digital assets, and FinTech. He works closely with entrepreneurs and companies to effectively navigate changing regulations, government investigations, and complex corporate and securities law challenges.
Jeff also represents clients before tribunals and agencies that concentrate on regulating new technology and protecting trade secrets, including the North Carolina Business Court, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), and federal courts.

Josh King served as chief legal officer and general council at Avvo, the online marketplace for legal services. He helped grow Avvo from its beginning as a startup to its later acquisition. Josh now serves as general counsel at RealSelf, the most trusted provider of information for people considering elective cosmetic treatment. Josh has been a member of the California State Bar for 29 years, and a member of the Washington State Bar for 8 years.

Natalie Anne Knowlton was an advisor on regulatory innovation at IAALS and is Co-Founder of Access to Justice Ventures, LLC. She formerly served as the Director of Special Projects at IAALS, leading the organization’s work in family justice and regulatory reform, with expertise in access to justice issues, legal technology, self-represented litigation, case management, and public trust and confidence in the courts. She is committed to bringing deep empathy to the court users’ experience and in pursuit of that goal employs legal and empirical research and analysis, facilitates collaboration among stakeholders, and engages in national outreach and advocacy.
Knowlton is a regular on social media outlets, where she facilitates diverse and interactive public discourse on discrete issues in access to justice and innovation in the legal profession. She sits on the Justice Technology Association (JTA) Board of Advisors, is a judge for the American Legal Technology Awards (Access to Justice category), and is listed among the American Bar Association Legal Technology Resource Center’s 2022 Women of Legal Tech. Knowlton co-founded the Denver chapter of Legal Hackers. She is also a limited partner in Overlooked Ventures and LongJump Ventures.

Knowlton is Pragmatic Marketing Certified Level III and graduated from General Assembly’s Product Management Course. She received her JD from the University of Denver Sturm College of Law and an MA in International Studies from the Josef Korbel School of International Studies. She graduated Phi Beta Kappa and summa cum laude from the University of Colorado-Boulder with a BA in International Affairs.

Raised by two lawyer parents, each of whom had one sibling both of whom were lawyers, I joke that you weren’t a viable fetus in the Lear family until you had your law degree. It was pretty much inescapable that I’d become a lawyer. But for a bunch of reasons, probably better discussed in therapy, I knew almost from my first day in law school that I wasn’t interested in doing the “traditional thing” in law. Nevertheless, I ended up working as a technology attorney for a few years while I was trying to figure out what to “do with my life.” Shortly after I created a Twitter account and started engaging folks there in 2013, I stumbled upon the Twitter feed of the in-progress ReInvent Law Silicon Valley event and my career was forever changed.
I’ve been on a mission to digitize the legal sector ever since. Most recently I was doing independent consulting for startups in the legal technology space and before that I did outreach and evangelism at the venture-backed online legal marketplace Avvo. At Gravity Legal we’re bringing the fintech revolution to legal. And I’m stoked to be a part of it.

Daniel W. Linna Jr. has a joint appointment at Northwestern Pritzker School of Law and McCormick School of Engineering as the Director of Law and Technology Initiatives and a Senior Lecturer. Dan’s teaching and research focus on innovation and technology, including computational law, artificial intelligence, data analytics, leadership, operations, and innovation frameworks. Dan received his BA from the University of Michigan, received a second BA and an MA in public policy and administration from Michigan State University, and graduated magna cum laude, Order of the Coif from the University of Michigan Law School.

As the UX4Justice Director, Sarah Mauet (she/her/hers) designs and teaches UX4Justice courses that empower students to apply design thinking, systems thinking, and user experience (UX) research and design methodologies to justice sector technologies to ensure that they serve the needs of all court users, including those trying to navigate the legal system without the help of a lawyer.
Sarah is a UX researcher and strategist with nearly 20 years of experience in website design and development, multimedia communications, and higher education instruction and administration. She has led large-scale website design projects and conducted UX evaluations for governments, courts, hospitals, universities, and startups. In her time at the University of Arizona, Sarah has served as Creative Director for Media and Technology for Digital Learning, Assistant Director for the McGuire Center for Entrepreneurship, and an adjunct instructor of multimedia journalism.

Sarah has a passion for using human-centered design for social impact, and a track record of leading award-winning, forward-thinking projects that successfully communicate, educate, and drive innovation. Sarah studied journalism and sociology at Northwestern University, and has an M.S. in Graphic Information Technology from Arizona State University.

Cat is an internationally-recognized speaker, facilitator, and coach who works with people wanting to make change that creates value. In other words, innovators who seek inspiration—as well as methods and tools for action—to make the world better in ways both large and small. She speaks and facilitates extensively across the U.S. and Europe, and coaches individuals from around the globe.
As Director of Innovation Design and Lecturer in Law at Vanderbilt Law School, Cat brings her experience in research and teaching human-centered design, innovation leadership, and technology at a top 20 law school to her work with individuals, teams, and firms.

Cat also directs Vanderbilt Law’s executive education program, the PoLI Institute, where she facilitates workshops for legal professionals in human-centered design, legal project management, legal operations, emerging technologies, and innovation leadership.

Before joining Vanderbilt’s faculty in 2017, Cat led a technology-powered law firm and counseled businesses from start-up to acquisition stage for 19 years. Earlier in her career, she taught communication (rhetoric, persuasion, public speaking) at two large public universities and studied innovation and change management with global industry leaders.

Nicole N. Morris is a member of the faculty at Emory University School of Law. She is a professor of practice and director of the TI:GER program (Technological Innovation: Generating Economic Results), an innovative partnership between Emory and Georgia Institute of Technology (Georgia Tech) that brings together graduate students in law, business, science and engineering to work on ways to take innovative ideas from the lab to the marketplace. As a professor of practice, her areas of expertise include patent law, patent litigation, patent prosecution, IP licensing, and strategy.Professor Morris is a frequent speaker on patent law topics including patent prosecution, patent litigation, IP licensing, and the role of corporate counsel in patent transactions. She is also a member of the American Intellectual Property Law Association, Atlanta IP Inn of Court, Atlanta Bar Association, Georgia Lawyers for the Arts (Board Member), and serves as Treasurer of the Minority In-House Counsel Association. In 2013, Morris was awarded the 2013 Rising Star Corporate Counsel Award from the Atlanta Business Chronicle and featured in the August 2013 issue of Corporate Counsel magazine.
Morris is licensed to practice before the United States Patent and Trademark Office and is admitted to practice in the states of Georgia, Minnesota, Massachusetts, and in the District of Columbia.

Jeroen has been in legal tech since the early 2000’s. Having started his career as a lawyer for Clifford Chance, he founded two legal tech companies, established Practical Law in the USA from zero to capturing 80% of the AmLaw 200 and thousands of other law firms and in-house departments, worked as an innovator at Clifford Chance, advised and invested in many legal tech companies including Kira Systems, Leopard Solutions and Casetext. He spent most of his career selling legal (tech) products and acknowledges that getting eyeballs on products and services is a major challenge in the legal industry.

Chas Rampenthal formerly worked for LegalZoom. He earned his bachelor’s degree in economics and math studies summa cum laude from Southern Illinois University and his J.D. from the University of Southern California. Prior to law school, Rampenthal served honorably in the United States Navy as an officer and naval aviator.

Phil Rosenthal is the President and co-founder of Fastcase, a leading online legal research software company based in Washington, D.C. Under Phil’s leadership, Fastcase has grown to the one of the world’s largest legal publishers, and the number one provider of online legal esearch benefits to bar associations around the country.
Phil combines his backgrounds in technology and law to bring lawyers and law librarians online legal research tools that are smarter and more intuitive. He is the face of Fastcase for bar associations and the law librarian communities and has served as the liaison from the Special Libraries Association (SLA) Legal Division to the American Association of Law Libraries. Before founding Fastcase, Phil worked at Covington & Burling in Washington, D.C., where he assisted in the development of the one of the first digital wireless cable systems. His diverse legal practice encompassed nuclear, patent, telecommunications, environmental, and corporate law. Phil has served on the Board of the MIT Enterprise Forum of Washington/Baltimore.
Phil earned a B.S. in physics from Yale University, where he graduated summa cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa, and earned his J.D. at Harvard Law School (magna cum laude), where he assisted Professor Arthur Miller in updating the classic treatise, Federal Practice and Procedure. He continued his studies at the California Institute of Technology, where he earned both Masters and Ph.D. degrees in physics for work in string cosmology. Phil is a
member of the New York Bar and the District of Columbia Bar.

I am an innovation evangelist and social media strategist. A former practicing lawyer, I spent years working in large and small legal technology companies, first in sales and then in legal marketing and branding. That’s where I learned the power of authentically sharing your personal brand.
​​In 2021 I founded Amplify Your Voice LLC to help companies and individuals find their voice and niche in the world. I help you define and hone your brand, then use social media and business development to share that authentically and boost your visibility.

Jim Sandman is Distinguished Lecturer and Senior Consultant to the Future of the Profession Initiative at the University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School. He is President Emeritus of the Legal Services Corporation, the United States’​ largest funder of civil legal aid. He served as President of LSC from 2011 to 2020. He practiced law with Arnold & Porter for 30 years and was the firm’s Managing Partner for a decade. He is a past President of the District of Columbia Bar and a former General Counsel of the District of Columbia Public Schools.
Jim is a summa cum laude, Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Boston College. He received his J.D. cum laude from the University of Pennsylvania Law School, where he was Executive Editor of the Law Review and was elected to the Order of the Coif. He served as a law clerk to Judge Max Rosenn of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit.

Jason Solomon is the Director of the National Institute of Workers’ Rights. Before joining the Institute, Jason was Executive Director of the Deborah L. Rhode Center on the Legal Profession, where he helped lead a national coalition on access to justice. From 2013–2016, he served as associate dean for academic affairs and chief of staff to the dean at Stanford Law School, where he worked on a range of strategic initiatives. He also taught Employment Law, Statutory Interpretation, and Constitutional Litigation.
Before joining Stanford, he was a tenured professor at William and Mary Law School, where his research focused on the theory and practice of civil justice. He has served as Chief Legal Officer for a public charter school network, and his pro bono clients include habeas petitioners challenging criminal convictions and immigrants seeking relief from deportation. In law school, he represented unemployment claimants, worked at the union-side labor firm Bredhoff and Kaiser as a summer associate, and externed at the National Employment Law Project and Brooklyn Legal Services.

Earlier in his career, he worked as a law clerk for judges in the U.S. District Court in Brooklyn and the Second Circuit in Manhattan, and as an aide at the White House and U.S. Treasury Department, where he worked on economic and health policy. He is a graduate of Harvard College and Columbia Law School, and a member of the New York and Massachusetts bars.

Kristen Sonday is the Co-Founder and CEO of Paladin, whose mission is to increase access to justice by helping legal teams run more efficient pro bono programs. In her role, she works with AmLaw200 firms, Fortune 500 in-house teams, and bar associations to increase pro bono engagement while decreasing administrative costs. In addition, Kristen currently serves as the Co-Chair of the Legal Services Corporation’s Emerging Leaders Council, working to highlight the value of legal aid in the United States.
Prior to Paladin, Kristen worked on international criminal matters for the U.S. Department of Justice and served on the founding team of a New York City-based tech start-up. As a result of her work to close the justice gap, she has been named an International Legal Technology Association (ILTA) Influential Woman in Legaltech, American Bar Association (ABA) Woman in Legal Tech to Watch, ABA Journal Legal Rebel, and FastCase50 honoree. Kristen also served as a Code2040 Entrepreneur-in-Residence, supporting Black and Latinx founders, and is a Partner with LongJump Ventures focused on investing in overlooked founders in Chicago.

Jason Tashea is a writer and entrepreneur exploring the intersection of justice and technology. A lawyer by training, he is the founding director and a co-founder of the Judicial Innovation Fellowship program at Georgetown and a consultant for the World Bank on access to justice and technology issues. He was most recently a product manager at a justice technology startup and an adjunct professor of law at Georgetown University Law Center, where he created and taught a practicum on criminal justice technology, policy, and law. He’s also the editor of the Justice Tech Download, a weekly industry newsletter, and the creator of 40 Futures, a speculative fiction podcast about the criminal justice system.He is a member of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers’ Law Committee, an inaugural member of the Legal Services Corporation’s Emerging Leaders Council, and co-founder of the Baltimore Legal Hackers. For five years, he operated Justice Codes, a consultancy he founded that built, deployed and studied the impact of technology on the justice system. He received his JD from the University of Oregon School of Law and has a BA in history from Linfield College. After law school, Jason was awarded a Fulbright Fellowship to research justice reform in the Republic of Kosovo.

Jeff Ward is Clinical Professor of Law and currently teaches Contracts and technology-focused courses such as Frontier AI & Robotics: Law & Ethics and Data Governance. He is affiliated faculty at the Initiative for Science & Society and at Duke’s Pratt School of Engineering where he teaches Legal, Legal, Societal & Ethical Implications of AI for Artificial Intelligence for Product Innovation Master of Engineering students and Intellectual Property, Business Law, and Entrepreneurship for Master of Engineering Management students.
Through his work at Duke and as a Faculty Associate at the Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University, Ward focuses his scholarship and professional activities on the law and policy of emerging technologies, the future of lawyering, and the socio-economic effects of rapid technological change, with a focus on ensuring equitable access to the tools of economic growth and the resources of the law. In all his work on ethical technology development, he focuses on facilitating structures to allow diverse communities of stakeholders to have a voice in their socio-technical futures and on breaking down the habitual walls of law to seek inspiration and engagement from other viewpoints and disciplines.

Ward earned both his JD and his LLM in International & Comparative Law from Duke Law School, his MA in Literature from Northern Illinois University, and his BA in the Program of Liberal Studies (Great Books) and a concentration in Philosophy, Politics, & Economics from the University of Notre Dame. Before turning to the law, Ward worked first as a business consultant with a global management-consulting firm in Chicago and then as an English teacher in the Chicago suburbs.

He concurrently serves as the Executive Director of Access to Justice Tech Fellows (A2J Tech Fellows), a national nonprofit organization that develops summer fellowships for law students seeking to leverage technology to create equitable legal access for low-income and marginalized populations. Immediately prior to joining FPI, Willis served as the Law School Admissions Council’s (LSAC) inaugural Presidential Innovation Fellow.
Willis earned a degree in Political Science from Howard University. While completing his undergraduate degree, Willis worked with the Department of Justice’s Office of Immigration Litigation. He is a 2017 graduate of the Seattle University School of Law.

Following law school, Willis held posts at the City of Seattle, Office of Immigrant & Refugee Affairs, where he assisted on legal content and strategy for the creation of a Citizenship web portal, as well as at the Alaska Court System, where he developed its Justice for All Project.

Willis’ entrepreneurial spirit, drive to innovate, and commitment to diversity and access to justice earned him recognition by the American Bar Association as a 2018 Legal Rebel and 2019 Fastcase 50 honoree. He teaches a course in Law, Technology, and Access to Justice.

Willis currently serves on the advisory board of University of Arizona James E. Rogers College of Law’s Innovation for Justice (i4J) program and serves on The Legal Services Corporation’s Emerging Leaders Council.

Founder and CEO of Molly Wood Media, where I’m building a business-focused climate solutions newsroom, as well as advising startups, VCs, and brands on how to position and enable climate tech solutions. Venture partner at Amasia VC and occasional angel investor. Previously, host of Marketplace Tech on national public radio, creator and co-host of Make Me Smart, creator and host of How We Survive, a documentary podcast about climate solutions. Available for consulting, keynote speaking, moderating, tech commentary on TV and radio, and helping you with ideas for your climate tech startup!