Alison Bloomquist is NLADA'S vice president of Strategic Alliances and Innovation. Before joining NLADA, Alison served for six years as director of training and education for the Connecticut Division of Public Defender Services, where she coordinated training for attorneys, investigators, social workers, and clerks in all aspects of criminal defense. She has been invited to teach federal and state public defenders all across the country, including as faculty at the National Criminal Defense College (NCDC), and has authored several trial skills publications. In addition to teaching, Alison has been trying public defense cases in New England for more than 15 years. She served for more than 10 years as a staff public defender in greater Boston, two of them as attorney‐in‐charge of the Norfolk Superior Court office at the Committee for Public Counsel Services. She has continued to try cases in Connecticut since joining the Connecticut bar in 2016. Alison is a graduate of Northeastern University School of Law and Boston University College of Arts and Sciences. She is an executive committee member of the National Alliance of Indigent Defense Educators (NAIDE) and a BPDA Certified Anti-Racism Trainer. She lives in West Hartford with her wife, three children, and their silver lab, Cooper. 

Emily Cardy joined the Appeals Unit at the Committee for Public Counsel Services in 2011, after clerking for the Honorable Charles B. Day, United States Magistrate Judge for the District of Maryland, and the Honorable James McHugh, Associate Justice of the Massachusetts Appeals Court. Emily is a graduate of Yale University and Boston University School of Law. 

Jennifer Bourn is the head of the appellate unit of the Connecticut public defender’s office. She has been representing clients at trial and on appeal in criminal cases for 20 years. In addition to her appellate work, she has considerable experience trying serious felony cases, handling habeas corpus cases, and working on death penalty cases at various levels of the process. She is currently and has been for several years an adjunct professor at UConn School of Law and Quinnipiac School of Law. She is co-running Criminal Appellate Clinics at both law schools and teaches Criminal Procedure, Advanced Criminal Procedure, and Habeas Corpus. Jenn was appointed by Governor Lamont to serve on the Commission on Medicolegal Investigations (oversight commission for Office of the CT Medical Examiner); was appointed by Chief Justice Robinson to serve on the Advisory Committee on Appellate Rules; and appointed by Justice Raheem Mullins to serve on the Code of Evidence Oversight Committee. She is also a member of numerous public defender committees, including the Assigned Counsel Standing Committee, our Legislative Committee, our Racial Justice and Cultural Competency Committee, and the negotiating team regarding attorney wages. Jenn is an active member of the Connecticut Criminal Defense Lawyers Association, was President in 2021-2022, and served on the Executive Committee for several years. She has organized and served as faculty for dozens of CLE programs for both CCDLA and the public defender’s office. 

Marilena David is the Deputy Director at the State Appellate Defender Office in Michigan. She has been at SADO since 2007 when she began as an intern. She represents individuals on appeal of their felony convictions and individuals who are being resentenced after serving unconstitutional juvenile life without parole sentences. Marilena manages the Criminal Defense Resource Center and provides training, resources, and support to the criminal defense bar. She regularly trains lawyers around the country on writing, research, sentencing mitigation, client relationships, issue spotting, sustainability, and more. Marilena launched and manages Project Reentry, a program focused on supporting people on their journey home from prison. Marilena serves on the Board of Directors for numerous Michigan defense education programs and is past chair of the State Bar of Michigan’s (SBM) Prisons & Corrections Section where she currently serves on the Council. She serves on the National Association for Public Defense Core Well-Being Committee and contributes to developing and implementing national standards for public defense sustainability. Marilena is the recipient of the 2014 SBM Outstanding Young Lawyer Award, the 2014 Criminal Defense Attorneys of Michigan Justice for All Award, and the 2018 Detroit Metropolitan Bar Association Community Impact Award. In 2019, she was appointed by Governor Whitmer to serve on the Michigan Community Corrections Board. In 2021, she was appointed by the Michigan Supreme Court to serve on the Michigan Judicial Council. 

Justin Heim is the Director of Learning Innovation at the National Legal Aid & Defender Association (NLADA). Previously, he worked for 12 years at the Wisconsin State Public Defender as a Staff Development Program Specialist in their Training Division and a Mitigation Specialist in the WISPD’s Appellate Division. Before working in Public Defense, Justin held various positions in community mental health in Colorado. Justin received his BA in Psychology from Michigan State University, and his MA in Contemplative Counseling Psychology from Naropa University in Boulder, Colorado.

Rebecca Kiley has served as the Public Defender Division’s Chief Appellate Attorney since February 2018. She is a graduate of Harvard College and the New York University School of Law. After law school, she clerked for the Honorable Eric Clay of the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit, and then worked for three years as a law fellow and staff attorney at the Equal Justice Initiative of Alabama. She joined CPCS as a trial attorney in the Roxbury/Dorchester Municipal Court office in 2008, and moved to the Appeals Unit in 2012. 

Patrick Levin is an appellate staff attorney in the Public Defender Division of the Massachusetts Committee for Public Counsel Services. In a little over a decade as a public defender, he has briefed and argued more than 25 cases in the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court and dozens more in the Massachusetts Appeals Court. In addition to his work representing individual clients, he has also authored numerous amicus briefs on behalf of CPCS in cases of particular systemic importance. He has published and lectured on topics including appellate practice; the law of homicide; eyewitness identification; pretrial detention; speedy trial rights; and search and seizure. Prior to joining CPCS’s appeals unit he served for two terms as a law clerk to the Honorable James R. Milkey of the Massachusetts Appeals Court. He is a native of Framingham, Massachusetts, and a graduate of Yale College and the New York University School of Law. 

Ann Balmelli O’Connor has served as Attorney-in-Charge of the Children and Family Law Division (CAFL) Appellate Unit of CPCS since its founding in 2012, and has led the CAFL Legal Response Team since 2020. She has presented at several national and statewide conferences and trainings and serves on the Certification Committee of the National Association of Counsel for Children. Before joining CAFL in 2011, Ms. O’Connor worked in private practice (2006-2011) and as an Assistant General Counsel for the Department of Children and Families (1991-2006). She is a 1991 graduate of Suffolk University Law School. In 2018, Ms. O’Connor received the Margaret Winchester Award for Children and Family Law from CPCS. In 2021, she was a co-recipient of the Covid-19 Impact Award from the Massachusetts Bar Association. Massachusetts Lawyers Weekly selected Ms. O’Connor as a Lawyer of the Year/Leader in the Law in 2021.

Melinda K. Pendergraph is Training Director for the Missouri State Public Defender's Office, serving in that capacity for the past eleven years. She has worked in the Missouri Public Defender's Office since 1986. During that time, Melinda primarily handled death penalty appeals in the Missouri Supreme Court. 

Melinda has served as faculty for state and national training programs, including National Legal Aid and Defender Associations Appellate Defender Training, NLADA's Leadership Institute, NLADA and NAIDE's Train the Trainer programs, NLADA's Life in the Balance, NAACP Legal Defense Funds Airlie Death Penalty Conference, the Federal Court's Persuasive Writing Workshops, the Missouri Bar, Missouri Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, and various State Public Defender organizations. She has taught a death penalty seminar at University of Missouri Columbia School of Law and has regularly worked with interns at MSPD. 

In 2006, Melinda received NLADA's Kutak-Dodd's Prize awarded annually to one public defender nationally for their dedication to equal justice. MACDL awarded Melinda their Lew Kollias Award for her appellate advocacy and their Bernard Edelman Award for sharing experience, knowledge and skills with fellow attorneys. In 1993, MSPD designated Melinda as their Defender of Distinction.

Josh Raisler Cohn is a public defender and legal training attorney with the Committee for Public Counsel Services. He has been representing poor people in the Roxbury neighborhood of Boston charged with serious crimes for fifteen years, and had seen a legal training attorney since 2020. Josh is also a member of the CPCS Race Equity Training Team. Josh is a graduate of the Northeastern University Law School. While representing individual clients, Josh’s litigation strategy looks for ways to attack structures in the law (and in society) that perpetuate systemic oppression and that stand between our clients and real freedom. Josh is on the Board of Directors at the Massachusetts Chapter of the National Lawyers Guild and has been involved in legal work within social movements for decades, using the tools of the legal system to support organizing for justice, liberation and self-determination. Josh has also been Adjunct Faculty at Boston University School of Law. 

BENJAMIN B. SELMAN has been a public defender for over twenty years. He is presently the Forensic Services Director for the Massachusetts Committee for Public Counsel Services. Prior to this, he was a Legal Training Attorney with the CPCS Criminal Defense Trainers; a staff attorney in the CPCS Somerville Superior Court office; and a staff attorney with the CPCS Drug Lab Crisis Litigation Unit.  He has represented indigent persons, primarily those charged with serious felony offenses, in various Middlesex County District Courts, the Superior Court, the Massachusetts Appeals Court, the Supreme Judicial Court, as well as before the Sex Offender Registry Board. Previously, he worked as a staff attorney with the New Hampshire Public Defender in Manchester, New Hampshire, representing indigent persons in felony, misdemeanor, and juvenile delinquency proceedings in various courts in northern Hillsborough County. He is the editor of MCLE's Trying Drug Cases in Massachusetts (2022), and is a regular guest lecturer at Boston-area law schools. Mr. Selman is a graduate of Oberlin College (B.A., 1998), the University of Toronto (M.A., 1999), Boston University School of Law (J.D., 2004), and the National Criminal Defense College Trial Practice Institute (Certificate, 2012). 

David Singleton received his J.D., cum laude, from Harvard Law School in 1991, and his A.B. in Economics and Public Policy, cum laude, from Duke University in 1987. Upon graduation from law school, David received a Skadden Fellowship to work at the Legal Action Center for the Homeless in New York City, where he practiced for three years. He then worked as a public defender for seven years, first with the Neighborhood Defender Service of Harlem and then with the Public Defender Service for the District of Columbia. After moving to Cincinnati in the summer of 2001, David practiced at Thompson Hine before joining OJPC as its Executive Director in July 2002. David is also a Professor of Law at Northern Kentucky University’s Salmon P. Chase College of Law. 

Kristen Stanley is an Assistant Clinical Professor in the Lawyering Program at Cornell Law School.  Before coming to Cornell, she taught legal writing and analysis to first-year J.D. students at Vanderbilt Law School.   

 For more than a decade, Professor Stanley represented death-sentenced individuals in their federal habeas corpus and state post-conviction proceedings. As an Assistant Federal Public Defender in the Capital Habeas Unit of the Office of the Federal Public Defender for the Middle District of Tennessee, Professor Stanley represented individuals under sentence of death in their federal habeas proceedings in Federal District Court, the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals, the United States Supreme Court, and Tennessee state court proceedings. Professor Stanley also practiced in Louisiana where she represented indigent men sentenced to death in state post-conviction proceedings.   

Professor Stanley also has her Masters in Social Work.  She specializes in understanding the effects of and effective treatment of trauma. Her focus is on the ways in which exposure to traumatic experiences impacts neurobiology, human development, brain functioning, and interpersonal relationships, particularly in the context of the criminal judicial system. She is also interested in the social, cultural, and political forces that shape exposure to, and recovery from, traumatic experiences. 

Travis Stearns is an advocate for the right to counsel for all disenfranchised persons. He has worked in public defense most of his career, currently with the Washington State Office of Public Defense. A graduate of George Washington University Law School, he has worked for the New York City Legal Aid Society, the Whatcom County Public Defender, the Washington Defender Association, and the Washington Appellate Project. He focuses on training and substantive policy reform, having seen success in the courts and with the legislature. He is a nationally recognized speaker on issues relating to injustice, leadership, trial advocacy, the right to counsel and the impact of criminal convictions. He has published articles in law school journals, primarily on issues relating to the impact of criminal convictions on reentry. He is an adjunct professor at Seattle University School of Law. He has chaired or been a member of the WSBA's Commission on Public Defense, NLADA’s Education Committee, the Supreme Court’s Minority and Justice Commission, and the ABA’s Standards Committee. His major accomplishments as a litigator includes arguing landmark cases in the Washington Supreme Court on issues of racial injustice. 

Karen Owen Talley, Esq., is currently the Director of Mental Health Appeals for the Committee for Public Counsel Services, which is the public defender office for Massachusetts.  The Mental Health Litigation Division of CPCS provides counsel to indigent adults facing involuntary civil commitment, involuntary treatment and guardianship.  During  her tenure at CPCS, Attorney Talley has been a staff attorney, trial panel director, training director, appeals director, assistant director of the Division and interim director for the Division.  She has practiced mental health law exclusively for thirty years. 
  
Prior to working at CPCS, Attorney Talley worked at the Disability Law Center and the Center for Public Representation, representing clients facing abuse and neglect in facilities and discrimination in the community.  She is the author of several articles and chapters relating to the rights of individuals with mental disabilities.  She has presented nationally and internationally on topics such as the role of counsel in representing persons with mental disabilities, ending segregated confinement of mentally ill prisoners and restraint reduction in mental health facilities. Attorney Talley was an adjunct professor in New York Law School’s Online Mental Disability Law program for 8 years until the program ended and was an adjunct professor at Suffolk University Law School for 8 years, where she taught Mental Health Law. 
  
Notable cases in the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court include Foss v. Commonwealth, 437 Mass. 584 (2001); Matter of N.L., 476 Mass. 71 (2017); Guardianship of D.C., 479 Mass. 516 (2018); Massachusetts General Hospital v. C.R., 484 Mass. 472 (2020); Matter of a Minor, 484 Mass. 295 (2020) (amicus); K.J. v. Superintendent of Bridgewater State Hospital,  488 Mass. 362 (2021). 

Afton M. Templin (she/her) is currently Director of Juvenile Appeals at the Youth Advocacy Division at the Committee for Public Counsel Services, where she is responsible for overseeing a panel of private attorneys representing youth on appeal. She also serves as the CPCS representative on the Supreme Judicial Court’s Standing Advisory Committee on the Rules of Appellate Procedure. Prior to joining YAD, she was a sole practitioner focused on juvenile delinquency/youthful offender, criminal defense, family law, and child welfare appeals. Attorney Templin has also served as Deputy General Counsel to the Massachusetts Parole Board and as an Assistant District Attorney in the Middlesex District Attorney’s Office. She has briefed and argued numerous criminal and civil appeals, including homicides, sexual assaults and grand jury matters, and has filed numerous amicus briefs with the Supreme Judicial Court. Attorney Templin co-authored the chapter “Pardons and Commutations” in Crime and Consequence: The Collateral Effects of Criminal Conduct (MCLE 2023) and “Youth Matters: Resentencing and Parole after Commonwealth v. Mattis” in the Spring 2024 volume of the Boston Bar Journal. She served as Law Clerk to the Justices of the Superior Court and to the Hon. Francis X. Spina (ret.), then of the Appeals Court. She has presented at numerous seminars and taught legal skills sections in Appellate Advocacy and Criminal Law at the UMass School of Law. Attorney Templin graduated from Mount Holyoke College and Northeastern University School of Law. 

Lei Young supervises the Disproportionality Unit at the Washington State Office of Public Defense, where she works to advocate against racial and social injustice in the legal system. Prior to that position, she spent 17 years as an attorney with The Defender Association, which is now a division of the King County Department of Public Defense. As a public defender, she represented clients in a variety of practice areas, including felony, sex offender commitment, and dependency proceedings. Her teaching experience includes serving as an Adjunct Professor at Seattle University School of Law. She received her J.D. from Cornell Law School in 2006.