First Friday Forum: Community Supports & Public Defense

April Frazier-Camara is the Director of Leadership and Professional Development at the National Legal Aid and Defender Association (“NLADA”). She is a nationally recognized trainer in the area of leadership, holistic defense, diversity and inclusion, and criminal justice reform. Prior to joining NLADA, April worked as a community public defender at the Public Defender Service for the District of Columbia, which is widely recognized as the national model for quality public defense. She later served as the Special Assistant in the Juvenile Defender Unit at the Law Office of the Shelby County Public Defender where she was responsible for implementing Department of Justice reforms and helping to build the first-ever holistic and team-based juvenile defense practice in Shelby County that employed both social workers and attorneys. She also has experience working on national policy reform at the American Bar Association in Washington, D.C. and Legal Action Center in NY. She is a leader within the American Bar Association currently serving as vice-chair of the ABA Criminal Justice Section and member of the ABA Women in Criminal Justice Taskforce. As a former co-chair of the ABA CJS Diversity and Inclusion Committee, she was responsible for the creation and implementation of the CJS Diversity and Inclusion Fellowship Program. She is also the co-founder of the new Black Public Defender Association, which is a membership section of the NLADA. April is a graduate of Tennessee State University and Howard University School of Law.

Meghan Guevara is an Executive Partner with the Pretrial Justice Institute, where she serves as a member of the leadership team and oversees PJI’s learning communities and technical assistance efforts. She has spent 20 years providing training and technical assistance to criminal justice and human services professionals engaged in systemic justice system reform.

At PJI, she works with elected officials, advocates, policymakers and practitioners in pursuit of safe, fair, and equitable pretrial systems. Meghan began her career as a health educator working with young people in the youth justice and child welfare systems. She received a Master of Public Health degree in social and behavioral sciences from Boston University.