Penda D. Hair, Esq.
A staunch advocate of civil rights, Penda Hair has spent the last 25 years defending the rights of those unjustly discriminated against. Former director of the Washington, DC, office of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Hair co-founded Advancement Project to serve as an innovative racial justice organization that would strengthen grassroots efforts to eradicate structural exclusion throughout the nation. It has done that and more. Under Hair’s direction, Advancement Project has reformed the electoral system in Florida, campaigned for the restoration of voting rights of people with felony convictions in Virginia, and secured the right to return and the opportunity to vote for thousands of displaced survivors of Hurricane Katrina. In 2008, she worked with organizations in Colorado to effectively challenge the state’s illegal purging and cancellation practices that had removed tens of thousands of voters from the rolls. Hair is the author of the Rockefeller Foundation’s report on innovative civil rights strategies, Louder Than Words: Lawyers, Communities, and the Struggle for Justice (2001), and she edited and supervised the drafting of Advancement Project’s report entitled, In Pursuit of an Affirmative Right to Vote (2008). A Harvard Law School graduate, Hair was named one of the top public interest attorneys under age 45 by The American Lawyer in 1998.
Hair is admitted in Washington, DC.
