Kirsten Levingston is the Director of Public Initiatives for the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU School of Law and works on programs to influence the way citizens and decision makers understand, talk about, and make choices regarding criminal justice policy and practice. Ms. Levingston directed the National Defender Leadership Project at the Vera Institute of Justice in New York, where she designed training, produced publications, and fostered discussion, with the aim of helping defender managers take on active and creative roles as system leaders. Ms. Levingston handled civil and criminal litigation for a D.C. law firm and she earned her J.D. from Harvard Law School in 1990.