In 2013 NCVLI’s Board of Directors formally created a Victims’ Rights Advisory Council. The function of the Council is to advise and make non-binding recommendations to NCVLI in order to strengthen the impact of NCVLI’s work to protect, advance, and enforce victims’ rights, to raise awareness about victims’ rights, and to call the larger community to action. The creation of the Advisory Council was inspired by invaluable contributions of long-time Advisory Board Member Diane Humetewa who demonstrated by example how community members can make tremendous contributions to the work of NCVLI without being full Board members.
Valenda Applegarth, JD
Valenda Applegarth is a Senior Staff Attorney at Greater Boston Legal Services in Boston, Massachusetts and founder of the nation’s first Relocation Counseling Project. This model project, created in 1999, transformed victim services surrounding victim relocation and was a 2006 recipient of The Mary Byron Foundation “Celebrating Solutions Award” for innovative programming. In 2008, the original project was expanded to the current Relocation Counseling and Identity Protection Initiative, an OVW funded national technical assistance project in partnership with the NNEDV Fund. Ms. Applegarth has represented victims of sexual and domestic violence and stalking for more than 20 years. She has trained extensively on victim relocation, privacy, child custody jurisdiction and other related legal issues throughout the U.S. for the past 14 years. She is a graduate of Thomas M. Cooley School of Law and the University of Michigan.
Jennifer A. Brobst, JD, LLM
Jennifer A. Brobst, JD, LLM is an Associate Professor at Southern Illinois University School of Law, cross-appointed in the SIU School of Medicine. Since the 1990s, she has served in varied roles related to fairness in the criminal justice system, in grass roots advocacy and as an attorney in government.
Shelbi Day, JD
Shelbi Day has devoted her career to civil rights work, and has had the privilege of working on several precedent setting cases on a diverse range of issues. In 2014 she joined Bouneff & Chally, a boutique law firm in Portland, Oregon that provides legal care for families of all kinds and at all stages. Over the years Shelbi has focused her work exclusively on LGBT- and HIV- related issues. Prior to Bouneff & Chally she was a Staff Attorney in the Western Regional Office of Lambda Legal, the oldest and largest national legal organization committed to achieving full recognition of the civil rights of lesbians, gay men, bisexuals, transgender people, and people with HIV. Prior to Lambda Legal, Shelbi worked as a Staff Attorney at the ACLU of Florida, Southern Regional Office of the National Center for Lesbian Rights, and Southern Legal Counsel. In 2011, she taught “Sexual Orientation and the Law,” as an adjunct professor at University of Florida Levin College of Law, and in 2013, she was a guest lecturer in Lewis & Clark Law School’s Crime Victim Litigation Clinic on the unique hurdles LGBT people face in accessing criminal and civil justice. From 2002-2003, Shelbi was a law clerk for Hon. Charles R. Wilson of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit. She is a member of the California, Florida, and Oregon Bars.
Anne P. DePrince,PhD
Anne P. DePrince, PhD, is Distinguished University Professor in Psychology and Director of the Center for Community Engagement to advance Scholarship and Learning (CCESL) at the University of Denver. She is a nationally-recognized expert in trauma whose program of community-engaged research addresses pressing policy and practice questions about interpersonal violence.
Andrea Doyle Hugmeyer, MA
Andrea currently serves as the Director of the Gender Resource & Advocacy Center at Willamette University. In this role, she serves as the certified confidential campus advocate, violence prevention coordinator for university-wide comprehensive programming, and oversees other initiatives related to gender justice and equity. At Willamette, Andrea serves on the Title IX Response Team, university Title IX Advisory Committee, and oversees the Transgender Advocacy Committee and the Student Affairs Bias Education Committee. She also supervises students who volunteer for Willamette’s confidential peer advocate program. Andrea is a member of the Campus Advocate Cohort coordinated by the Oregon Attorney General’s Sexual Assault Task Force, and was a member of their Campus Subcommittee from 2015-2016. Over the last 12 years, she has participated in numerous training programs related to Title IX policy, campus advocacy, and violence prevention. Andrea received an Honors Bachelor of Science degree in Sociology and a Master of Arts in Interdisciplinary Studies: Women’s Studies and Sociology from Oregon State University. She has previously worked as an instructor of Women’s Studies at OSU and as the Assistant Director of Abby’s House Center for Equity and Gender Justice at Western Oregon University.
Kimberly Griffith, JD
Kimberly Griffith was a student of the inaugural class of NCVLI’s Crime Victim Litigation Clinic, graduating from Lewis & Clark Law School in 2004. She is a former federal judicial law clerk and has extensive experience with prisoner litigation. Kimberly worked in private practice for many years, focusing on complex tort litigation, before returning to the federal judiciary where she currently serves as a staff attorney.
Gen. Richard Harding, JD
Richard Harding graduated from the University of Arkansas with a BS in political science (1975) and a Juris Doctor (1979). He was awarded a Direct Commission in the United States Air Force and became a Judge Advocate in 1979. He then served for more than 34 years as a military attorney. He was initially assigned as a prosecuting attorney and as a defense counsel where he became acquainted with victims of crime. Subsequently he was assigned as a staff judge advocate (legal office director) at two Air Force bases (Dyess AFB, TX and Elmendorf AFB, AK), Eighth Air Force (Barksdale AFB, LA), Air Force Space Command (Peterson AFB, CO), and United States Strategic Command (Offutt AFB, NE). Upon his promotion to brigadier general, he served as the staff judge advocate for Air Combat Command (Langley AFB, VA) and then the Commander for the Air Force Legal Operations Agency, where he led the prosecuting attorneys, defense attorneys, civil litigation attorneys, contract attorneys, environmental law attorneys, labor law attorneys, Air Force law school faculty, and information legal services technicians for the Air Force. In 2010, he was promoted the Lieutenant General (3-star general) and appointed by President Obama as the Air Force’s 16th Judge Advocate General (TJAG). As TJAG, he supervised 4400 Air Force attorneys, paralegals and support staff and served as the legal advisor to the Secretary of the Air Force and the Air Force Chief of Staff. As TJAG, he advocated for and created the Department of Defense’s first “Special Victims Counsel” program, providing attorneys free of cost to victims of sexual assault. To date, Air Force SVCs have represented over 1200 clients. Lt Gen Harding also started an appellate litigation shop to represent SVC’s claims at appellate level. As a result, in 2013 the Court of Appeals for the Armed Forces in LRM v. Kastenburg held that, to the extent that a victim has a right to be heard at trial, the victim has a right to be heard through counsel. Gen Harding’s advocacy for victims’ rights resulted in Chuck Hagel, the Secretary of Defense, directing other military services to start up their own SVC programs and resulted in Congress directing in the 2014 National Defense Authorization Act that military services provide victims of military sexual assault with Special Victims Counsel. Currently, Lt General Harding has tirelessly advocated that the universities and the Veterans Administration adopt their own SVC programs to represent student and veteran victims of sexual assault.
Claire Harwell, JD
Claire Harwell has worked in prevention and response to sexual assault for over three decades, serving as a victim advocate, trainer, police officer, prosecutor, and currently as a civil attorney. She has been a victim advocate and prevention expert with rape crisis centers in North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Virginia, and New Mexico. She is a former prosecutor in both a district attorney’s office and the New Mexico Attorney General’s office, prosecuting a variety of high profile cases featured on true crime shows, a documentary film, and in news media. As consultant, she advises universities, the U.S. military, prosecutor’s offices, and the U.S. Dept. of Justice on matters relating to effective response to crimes of sexual violence. She frequently serves as a local and national trainer on these topics. She is the manager of the New Mexico Coalition of Sexual Assault Programs’ Community Justice Project, a specialized nonprofit legal practice at eight sites, exclusively serving sexual assault survivors and rape crisis centers. Through the project, Claire represents sexual assault survivors statewide. Ms. Harwell received her BA from the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill and her JD from the University of New Mexico School of Law. She was a state-certified law enforcement officer attaining the rank of Corporal (a training officer) in the state of North Carolina.
Joan Meier, JD
Joan Meier is a Professor of Law and Director of the National Family Violence Law Center at George Washington University Law School. Joan has been a law professor for 29 years at the George Washington University Law School, where she founded three pioneering and nationally recognized interdisciplinary domestic violence clinical programs. Between 2003 and 2019 Joan founded and helped direct the Domestic Violence Legal Empowerment and Appeals Project (DV LEAP). While there, Joan filed fourteen briefs in the U.S. Supreme Court and represented friends of the court and survivors of family violence in state court appeals all over the country. Joan regularly trains judges, evaluators, lawyers, domestic violence advocates and others on best practices in adjudication of family violence and family court litigation. She has received numerous awards including the American Bar Association’s Commission on Sexual/Domestic Violence Inaugural Sharon Corbett Award in 2009, and the Battered Mothers’ Custody Conference’s Lifetime Achievement Award in 2019.
Rachel Monaco-Wilcox, JD
As an artist, lawyer, teacher and consultant, Rachel Monaco-Wilcox, JD is a creative and strategic change agent. Her work has served marginalized and exploited people (elders, those with special needs, and victims of labor trafficking, sexual exploitation or assault). Merging the power of the humanities with legal and social justice has been her unique professional niche. Rachel is the founder of LOTUS Legal Clinic, teaches Art Therapy doctoral students and has a private practice in Trusts and Estates. She is also an accomplished ultramarathoner. She divides her time between Herbster and Richfield, Wisconsin.
Katrina Rodriguez
Katrina Rodriguez is the Victim Services Coordinator and a system-based advocate at the Beaverton Police Department in Beaverton, OR. She offers emotional support, criminal justice system information, and connections to resources for victims of all types of crimes. She works closely with officers/detectives, the District Attorney’s Office and community partners.
Cari Simon, JD
Cari Simon is one of the Nation’s Top Title IX Attorneys representing survivors of sexual assault, stalking, dating violence, and sexual harassment in University and K–12 settings nationwide. A graduate of Harvard Law School, Cari represents survivors in school disciplinary proceedings and federal litigation. Cari has been credited with the inclusion of stalking and dating violence in the definition of sexual harassment under Title IX, and her impact litigation ensured universities are responsible under Title IX for sexual violence at fraternity houses.
Cynthia Stinson
Cynthia worked as a victim advocate for 26 years. She served as manager of the Crime Services Division at the Oregon Department of Justice for 16 years, then served as the interim Executive Director at the Oregon Sexual Assault Task Force in 2013. She is the former Director of Educational Equity Assurance and Deputy Title IX Coordinator at Willamette University. Ms. Stinson holds a BS in Psychology from Willamette and a certificate of Public Management & Public Administration from the Atkinson Graduate School of Management at Willamette University.
Randall Udelman, JD
Randall Udelman, a practicing attorney for almost 30 years, has been a past recipient of the Arizona Attorney General’s Office Distinguished Service Award and is currently a member of the Arizona Supreme Court Commission on Victims in the Courts. Randall’s private practice consists of insurance and commercial disputes and with AZCVRLG, he helps victims assert their rights throughout the criminal justice system from indictment through post-conviction efforts to collect restitution. Randall is the Co-Founder of Arizona Crime Victim Rights Law Group.
Nicole Wilkes, M.P.H.
Nicole Wilkes is a doctoral student in the School of Criminal Justice at the University of Cincinnati. Formerly, she worked at the Crime Victims’ Institute at Sam Houston State University conducting research on victimization issues. Nicole also worked as an advocate for victims of domestic violence, sexual assault, and child abuse in Minnesota.
Gen. Richard Harding, JD
