2026 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.

Arthur von Briesen Award

George T. "Buck" Lewis

Denison Ray Award

The "Denny" award honors persons who have provided at least five years of service to the legal services community in staff, client or volunteer capacities. Denison Ray, who dedicated his professional life to equal justice for the poor, is the former director of the Legal Aid Society of Northeastern New York, Legal Services of North Carolina, and other programs.

Mariah Thompson

Mariah Thompson is a Senior Litigator at California Rural Legal Assistance, Inc., a statewide non-profit legal aid serving rural California for over 60 years. In her current role, Mariah mentors junior attorneys as they become the next generation of impact litigators and actualize CRLA’s commitment to dismantling unjust systems through radical advocacy. Prior to her current role, Mariah spent seven years as a staff attorney in CRLA's environmental justice program working alongside resident leaders and CRLA's Community Workers to advocate for a safer and more equitable built environment in rural communities. Mariah credits the Legal Aid Justice Center in Charlottesville, Virginia for turning her into a housing law and legal aid addict in law school, when she had previously intended to be an international human rights lawyer. Mariah is a recent transplant to Portland, Oregon after spending more than a decade working in California's Central Valley. She is obsessed with her dogs, mobile home parks, and strong coffee. Mariah earned her JD from the University of Virginia School of Law.

Emery A. Brownell Award

Affords national recognition to newspapers, films, radio, and television stations that have informed the public of the crucial role played by civil or defender organizations in ensuring equal justice for those who cannot afford counsel. This award commemorates Emery Brownell, who began his legal career with the Legal Aid Society of Rochester, N.Y., in 1925 and served as NLADA's executive director from 1940 to 1961.

Marco Poggio

Marco Poggio is a senior reporter at Law360 covering access to justice, civil rights, the U.S. Supreme Court and criminal justice. His reporting examines legal doctrines that shape the relationship between ordinary people and their government, including the barriers people face in asserting their rights and obtaining legal representation.

He joined Law360 in 2020 as a general assignment reporter. Previously, he freelanced for the New York Daily News, reporting full time on the city’s streets beginning in 2017. His coverage of crime, courts and human interest stories appeared in publications including the San Antonio Express-News, Gothamist, City Limits, Boston Herald, Baltimore Sun and Juvenile Justice Information Exchange.

A multimedia journalist, Poggio shot, directed and edited independent documentaries about the 2016 Black Lives Matter protests and police crackdown in Baton Rouge following Alton Sterling’s killing, and opposition to an oil pipeline through Louisiana’s Atchafalaya Basin in 2017. His filmmaking honors include Best International Student Film at the 2017 Telling Tales International Film and Audio Documentary Festival in Manchester, England. He also freelanced as a video producer and editor for RAI, Italy’s national broadcaster.

He previously taught multimedia journalism, digital journalism and newswriting at Baruch College and Brooklyn College.

Poggio holds a bachelor’s degree in journalism and philosophy from Brooklyn College, a master’s degree in journalism from CUNY’s Graduate School of Journalism, and a bachelor’s in graphic design from Nuova Accademia di Belle Arti in Milan. He is pursuing a J.D. at the City University of New York School of Law.

He serves in the New York Air National Guard and lives in Brooklyn with his wife and two children.

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.

Joy Amarylis Johnson

Joy Amarylis Johnson is the Founder and former chair of the Board of Directors for the Public Housing Association of Residents (PHAR) in Charlottesville Virginia. PHAR was established in 1998 as a citywide residents’ association for public housing and section 8 residents. She is employed as a Resident Services Coordinator for the Charlottesville Redevelopment and Housing Authority (CRHA). A native of Kingston, Jamaica, Joy became an American citizen in 2000.

Prior to her work with CRHA, Joy served for 22 years as an Outreach Coordinator for the Westhaven Nursing Clinic in Charlottesville, Virginia assisting her neighbors in accessing preventative healthcare provided by parish nurses and organizing the legendary Annual West haven Community Day. As a founder of Charlottesville’s Public Housing Association of Residents (PHAR), Joy put the rights and needs of low-income residents front and center in the city’s housing policies and priorities. Founded as an advocacy organization in 1998, Charlottesville PHAR, where Joy continues to serve, she is a major force in Charlottesville, giving residents of low-income and affordable housing extraordinary influence in the planning and policy decisions impacting their lives and the lives of many others.

Under Joy’s leadership, PHAR has significantly reformed the landscape for low-income and affordable housing residents in Charlottesville. The organization led key initiatives such as a 2012 class-action lawsuit against the Charlottesville Redevelopment and Housing Authority (CRHA) combatting excessive utility fees, formed crucial partnerships with local and national housing advocacy networks, produced the Positive Vision for Resident-Directed Redevelopment publication to guide the work of the CRHA, and secured employment opportunities for low-income residents. Joy’s most enduring legacy lives in others. Through its innovative six-month internship program, PHAR provides the leadership and advocacy skills necessary for residents to become changemakers in their communities. Graduates of the program have gone on to well-paying jobs, work as housing advocates, and serve on city boards and commissions, including the board of the CRHA.

Joy began her community service as a member of the Head Start Policy Council. She has since served on or chaired a number of boards and commissions at the local and national levels including the Charlottesville Redevelopment and Housing Authority Board of Commissioners, University of Virginia Employee Council, Virginia Association of Neighborhoods, Offender Aid and Restoration Board, West Haven Tenant Association, Everywhere and Now Public Housing Residents Organizing Nationally Together (ENPHRONT), Monticello Area Agency Community Action (MACAA), Connecting People to Jobs, Quality Community Council, Charlottesville CBDG Task Force, Legal Aid Justice Center, Charlottesville Social Services Advisory Board, and the City of Charlottesville’s Housing Advisory Committee, and Legal Aid Justice Center. In the early 2000s, Joy also served on the board of directors of NLIHC, bringing her phenomenal activist- leadership to shape the work of the Coalition. In 2020 she also received the Cushing Niles Dolbeare lifetime service award and in 2023 the Jefferson School Reflector Award in Charlottesville.

Currently, Joy serves on PHAR Advisory Board, sits on the Local Steering Committee of the Center for Community Partnership at the University of Virginia, UVA Housing Committee, the Charlottesville Redevelopment and Housing Authority’s Redevelopment Committee, the University of Virginia’s Billing and Collections Advisory Council, UVA President Council, PHAR’s Residents for Respectful Research Advisory Committee, Charlottesville Housing Advisory Committee and NOCA.

Joy has successfully completed numerous workshops and training with HUD, NHLIC, LAOSHAC, Mary Reynolds Babcock Foundation, and the Legal Aid Justice Center, and has completed CITI certification. Not one to keep all this knowledge to herself, Joy has presented workshops at National Low Income Housing Coalition, NLADA, Virginia Legal Aid’s Statewide, Pennsylvania Legal Aid’s Statewide, and the Virginia Governor’s Conferences and NOCA. She also works with J.r. Fleming of Chicago Anti-Eviction Campaign in Chicago.

Since childhood, Joy has been a member of Mt. Zion First African Baptist Church. In her spare time, she enjoys gardening, dancing, spending time with friends who are supportive, but most of all, spending time with her grandchildren and great grand children. Joy Johnson is an example of how we must all live our lives: in service of improving the lives of others.

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.

Katie Blum

Katie Blum is the Civil Rights Managing Attorney at Empire Justice Center located in Rochester, New York. In this position, Katie oversees the civil rights practice and represents clients in school discrimination and special education matters. In 2022, Katie helped develop Empire Justice Center’s school discrimination helpline, a free legal service available to all New Yorkers facing school discrimination. Katie also co-wrote a comprehensive report on the policing practice of pretext stops and the harms they cause communities of color. She used this report to help establish a New York coalition to support a bill to end these stops.

Prior to joining the Empire Justice Center in 2022, Katie served as an Excelsior Fellow at the New York State Division of Human Rights headquarters in the Bronx, New York. Katie investigated and filed complaints of systemic discrimination throughout New York and negotiated settlements on individual complaints of discrimination. Katie also worked as a Labor and Employment Associate at a law firm in the Greater Boston Area. Katie graduated summa cum laude from Cornell University and graduated cum laude from the University at Buffalo School of Law. While in law school, Katie worked as a student attorney in several law school clinics, in which she filed federal civil rights lawsuits on behalf of indigent clients and also represented survivors of domestic violence in family court matters. Katie was also an Editor of The Buffalo Law Review and was a teaching fellow for first year writing classes.

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.

Dan Glazier

Dan Glazer served as the Executive Director of Legal Services of Eastern Missouri (LSEM) from March 2005 through July 2026.  He started his career as a Reginald Heber Smith Fellow at LSEM in 1981 and spent his entire 45-year legal aid career at LSEM.  Receiving his JD/MSW degrees from Washington University in 1981, Dan believed strongly in community-based legal work, first as a Reggie doing public benefits advocacy work with welfare rights groups, and then as a housing attorney working with tenants and homeless persons to help effectuate their rights. He served as the Co-Managing Attorney of the Housing Program and Director of the Homeless Legal Project from 1998 to 2005.

As Executive Director, Dan championed holistic advocacy integrating social workers with legal staff to ensure both clients’ legal needs and social service challenges were addressed.  He strongly supported impact advocacy at LSEM in such areas as healthcare, housing, public benefits and education.  As ED, he was a member of the NLADA Civil Policy Group from 2015-2020, President of the Midwest Project Directors Association from 2013-2015 and Co-Chair of the Delivery of Legal Services Committee of the Missouri Bar 2010-2012. Dan received numerous awards and recognition throughout his career including the Access to Equal Justice Award, Fiftieth Anniversary Clinical Education Award, Distinguished Young Alumni Award and an Honorary Order of the Coif all from Washington University School of Law, the Clarence Darrow Public Interest Award from Saint Louis University School of Law and in 2023 Saint Louis Magazine recognized him as one of 50 leaders working to deliver solutions for the region’s most pressing challenges.

Arthur Read