Prior to co-founding FurtherJustice in 2022, Jennifer spent more than a decade as the leader of the global pro bono practice at Cleary Gottlieb. In that role Jennifer led an award-winning pro bono program that each year served hundreds of low-income individuals and the nonprofit organizations that assist them. Earlier in her career, Jennifer was a litigation partner and a litigation associate at Cleary Gottlieb. During these years, Jennifer was part of a team that spent eight years successfully representing a class of homeless workers in New York who sued business improvement districts under the Fair Labor Standards Act.
Throughout her career, Jennifer has provided direct legal services to hundreds of low-income clients, has trained scores of pro bono lawyers around the country to represent human trafficking survivors in post-conviction motions, and has helped launch numerous pro bono legal service programs including one in New Jersey to provide lawyers to detained immigrants seeking bond and a national program to provide lawyers to human trafficking survivors seeking to vacate criminal convictions. In 2017, Jennifer spearheaded Cleary’s efforts in responding to former President Trump’s Muslim travel ban, filing suit in federal court in New York and securing the return to the United States of a Cleveland Clinic doctor wrongfully returned to Sudan from JFK airport.
Jennifer has been honored by The Legal Aid Society, The Freedom Network, Sanctuary for Families, and the New York City Bar Justice Center for her work with low-income New Yorkers, immigrant children and human trafficking survivors. She was named one of New York’s 100 Most Outstanding Corporate Citizens by Responsible 100 and a “Lawyer Who Leads By Example” by The New York Law Journal. In 2018, the Penn Law School Alumni Society awarded her the Howard Lesnick Pro Bono Award.
Jennifer received a J.D., magna cum laude, from the University of Pennsylvania in 1994, and a B.A., Phi Beta Kappa, in 1991 from the University of Michigan. Jennifer is a Board member of the Immigrant Advocates Responsive Collective. She previously served for nine years as a Board Member for Sanctuary for Families and served on the inaugural Advisory Board of Still She Rises, the first holistic defender organization devoted exclusively to serving mothers in the criminal and civil legal systems. Jennifer lives in NYC with her husband, two daughters, and her labradoodle, Charlie.