For the past 16 years, I have worked in organizations advocating for children and populations whose voices were not heard. I have worked with kids with behavioral challenges, mental health concerns, learning disabilities, and trauma. This experience has given me the skills to identify and assess mitigation themes and to confirm and understand a person’s history. I have utilized my excellent communication skills through home visits, written reports, and oral presentations.
Before working with children and vulnerable populations, I worked as a union organizer for 10 years, conducting hundreds of in-home visits with workers towards the goal of self-advocacy.
My greatest strengths are my ability to make people feel comfortable sharing personal and sensitive information, keen listening skills and intuitive understanding how the information fits into a meaningful narrative. I have worked with school employees, social workers, diagnostic experts, and law-enforcement to advocate for children and their needs. I have heard stories and experienced firsthand many of the issues faced by children growing up in poverty. I have worked with children who suffer from learning disabilities and/or a wide variety of mental health disorders. I understand how each of these challenges play a role in an individual’s development, and I have used my experience to provide creative problem solving.
I decided to become a mitigation and sentencing specialist after seeing a need for sentencing advocacy in the work I have done with families. My husband, sister-in-law, and brother-in-law have all represented individuals charged with capital offenses, and I have witnessed the importance of sentencing mitigation in criminal defense. Our family strongly believes in the need for effective advocacy in the criminal justice system.