2025 Annual Conference Award Recipients

Each year, NLADA honors the extraordinary individuals and organizations who embody courage, dedication, and innovation in the fight for equal justice. From trailblazing racial equity leaders to rising advocates, community champions, and transformative defender programs, these awards shine a spotlight on those whose impact extends far beyond their own communities.

Courageous Leaders

The Courageous Leader Award is given to racial equity leaders who are committed to taking anti-racist stances. It recognizes the dedicated advocacy of trailblazers who model the commitment and courage that it takes to advance meaningful, lasting change.

Melissa Hortman

The National Legal Aid & Defender Association (NLADA) will posthumously honor Minnesota House Speaker Emerita Melissa Hortman with the 2025 Courageous Leader Award. 

Hortman began her career as a housing attorney at Central Minnesota Legal Services, representing families facing unsafe housing conditions. In one case, she pursued justice for an African American mother and her children whose landlord harassed them and denied basic repairs while treating white tenants differently. The jury awarded the largest verdict for housing discrimination for a single family in Minnesota history. 

Hortman later moved from law practice to public service. First elected to the Minnesota House of Representatives in 2004 after two earlier campaigns, she served for 19 years, including seven as Speaker of the House, the longest tenure of any woman in state history. 

As Speaker, Hortman helped pass key policies for Minnesota families, including paid family and medical leave, universal free school meals, an expanded child tax credit, and increased funding for early childhood programs. She also advanced legislation to establish Minnesota’s 100 percent clean electricity standard by 2040. 

Her work included justice reforms. After the murder of George Floyd, she worked across the aisle to enact police accountability measures. In 2023, she supported passage of the Restore the Vote Act, which restored voting rights to Minnesotans completing felony sentences. She also supported gun violence prevention initiatives. 

After the 2024 election left the Minnesota House evenly divided, she negotiated a bipartisan power-sharing agreement that allowed Representative Lisa Demuth to become the state’s first African American Speaker. Melissa Hortman, her husband Mark, and their family dog Gilbert were killed on June 14, 2025, in an act of political violence. 

NLADA honors her life and career with the 2025 Courageous Leader Award. Her family will attend in person to accept the award on her behalf. 

New Leaders in Advocacy Award

The New Leaders in Advocacy Award honors rising attorneys who exhibit extraordinary leadership early in their careers as civil legal aid or indigent defense advocates. The following year, recipients will also be invited to participate in NLADA’s Beacon of Justice selection process.

Katelyn Nicole Rowe

Katelyn Rowe is a Senior Attorney at Community Legal Aid SoCal, which provides free, high-quality legal services to low-income communities in Orange and Los Angeles Counties. Her work includes Family Violence Appellate Project et al. v. Sup. Cts. of Cali., an original writ in the California Supreme Court that addresses the access to justice crisis caused by the statewide court reporter shortage, and Alianza Translatinx et al. v. City of Huntington Beach, which has successfully challenged the City’s unlawful censorship efforts in public libraries. She graduated from UCLA School of Law in 2017 with a specialization in Public Interest Law and Policy. She was a litigation associate at Sidley Austin LLP until 2019, with over 1,700 pro bono hours. She clerked in the Central District of California from 2019 to 2021.

Charles Dorsey Award

The Charles Dorsey Award is given biennially to an individual who has provided extraordinary and dedicated service to the equal justice community and to organizations that promote expanding and improving access to justice for low-income people. To be eligible to receive this award, an individual must have demonstrated a commitment to equal justice for all through service as an officer, board or committee member of a national or statewide organization devoted to fulfilling the promise of equal justice.

Marilyn Harp

Marilyn Harp began her career with Kansas Legal Services (KLS) in 1979 after graduating from KU Law and has served there ever since—as staff attorney, managing attorney, and since 2006, the organization’s second Executive Director. Under her leadership, KLS has expanded access to justice for low-income Kansans through initiatives such as:

• a centralized intake system that connects callers, including seniors, with direct legal advice,
• interactive forms used by over 10,000 self-represented litigants each year,
• Supreme Court rule changes enabling retired and inactive attorneys to provide pro bono services,
• the creation of 10 courthouse-based self-help centers, and statewide offices that assist more than 19,000 Kansas families annually.

Mary Ellen Hamilton Award

The Mary Ellen Hamilton Award honors a legal services client or client community advocate who, on a volunteer basis or receiving a stipend for their services, has provided extraordinary support to the delivery of legal assistance to low-income people, to increase involvement of low-income people in the fight for equal justice, or to enhance the involvement of low-income people in their cases. The award commemorates Mary Ellen Hamilton, one of the founders of the National Clients Council and the Alliance for Legal Rights, who served on NLADA’s Board of Directors and remained an active Alliance member until her death in 1985.

Ginny Parham

Ginny’s son, Willie Nobles, was drawn into gang life at age 12 and sentenced to 96 years in prison at 18. Since then, Ginny has dedicated her life to helping families navigate the court system, cope with the isolation of incarceration, and push for prison reform.

She is an organizer with WA Community Action Network, focusing on Mass Liberation issues surrounding incarcerated individuals and their families and has taught Education and Restorative Justice classes inside Washington State prisons. Ginny also contributed to the Washington State Criminal Sentencing Task Force, working to refine the Sentencing Reform Act and reduce unjust sentencing practices.

Clara Shortridge Foltz Award

Commends a public defender program or defense delivery system for outstanding achievement in the provision of indigent defense services. The achievement may be the result of an effort by the entire program, a division or branch or a special project. This award is co-sponsored by NLADA and the American Bar Association Standing Committee on Legal Aid and Indigent Defendants. Established in 1985, this award was named for the founder of the nation's public defender system. Foltz, California's first woman lawyer, introduced the "Foltz Defender Bill" at the Congress of Jurisprudence and Law Reform in Chicago in 1893.

Partners for Justice, LA County Public Defender

Emily Galvin-Almanza and Rebecca Solow co-founded Partners for Justice in 2018. The program arose out of Emily’s experiences as a public defender in Los Angeles, San Jose, and the Bronx, and Rebecca’s years of work in the private sector as a consultant specializing in nonprofits and government entities. Together, they built the Partners for Justice initiative from a two-location pilot to a 40+ location national organization serving public defenders across nearly half of U.S. states. To date, the work has eliminated nearly 9,000 years of incarceration. Emily’s book on the criminal court system, The Price of Mercy, will be published by Crown in February of 2026.

Reginald Heber Smith Award

The Reginald Heber Smith Award is presented at NLADA's National Conference, and recognizes the dedicated services and outstanding achievements of civil or indigent defense attorneys while employed by organizations supporting such services. The award may be given up to two years after the attorney's termination of employment with the organization. The "Reggie" is named for the author of the first definitive examination of the unfair administration of justice and its effect on the poor, Justice and the Poor, which was published in 1919.

Miriam Harmatz

Miriam has devoted her career to advancing healthcare as a human right and ensuring access for low-income Floridians. Before founding the Florida Health Justice Project (FHJP) in 2018, she served as a leading poverty health lawyer and adjunct professor at FIU’s Health Law Clinic. She was lead counsel on federal cases that secured statewide relief for Medicaid beneficiaries, including precedent-setting victories achieved through collaboration with NHeLP, Florida legal aid, and pro bono attorneys. Locally, she spearheaded efforts improving access at Miami-Dade’s public hospital, successfully challenging discriminatory practices and consumer protection violations under the Affordable Care Act.