Kristin Brown is Empire Justice Center's President & CEO. She works out of the Albany office. Before becoming CEO, Kristin was a well-known and deeply respected presence in New York’s legal services community and within the state legislative process. For over 15 years, she led the organization’s extremely successful public policy and legislative advocacy as Vice President for Policy and Government Relations, designing, organizing, and advancing the annual budgetary and legislative agenda of the organization, leading multimillion dollar funding campaigns with community partners and advancing issues that expand access to justice. Under Kristin’s leadership as CEO since late 2019, Empire Justice Center completed and began implementing a Strategic Plan through which the organization deepened its commitment to systemic advocacy and has grown it’s footprint by expanding into new areas of law, such as public school discrimination, police reform and a new a tenants rights practice focus on immigrant representation and systems change. Kristin is Co-Secretary of the New York Legal Services Coalition and Chair of its Funding Advocacy Steering Committee, a member of the New York State Bar Association’s President’s Committee on Access to Justice and Committee on Legal Aid, a Board Member of JustCause in Rochester, New York and a Chief Judge of the State of New York appointee to the Permanent Commission on Access to Justice where she serves on multiple Committees. After graduating cum laude from Hartwick College with honors in Anthropology and History in 1994, Kristin worked in nonprofit direct service and small business management before returning to school in 1999 to pursue a Master's Degree in Social Policy from Empire State College. A 2000 Center for Women in Government Fellow, part of the Rockefeller College of Public Affairs and Policy, Kristin also worked at the Hunger Action Network of New York State as Upstate Public Policy Coordinator and American Farmland Trust as Senior Policy Manager.