The Council for Court Excellence’s (CCE) Executive Committee has selected Cynthia W. Roseberry to succeed June B. Kress as executive director, effective June 12, 2017. Ms. Roseberry most recently served as project manager for the historic Clemency Project 2014, which has been referred to as the nation’s largest law firm of nearly 4,000 lawyers providing unprecedented pro bono support to more than 36,000 applicants for presidential clemency. She also has served on the Charles Colson Task Force on Federal Corrections — a nine-member, bipartisan, blue-ribbon panel created by Congress.
Previously, from 2009 to 2014, Ms. Roseberry was the executive director of the Federal Defenders of the Middle District of Georgia, Inc. From 2007 to 2009 she taught advanced criminal procedure and co-taught in the death penalty clinic at DePaul University College of Law in Chicago, where she also founded the misdemeanor clinic. For more than 10 years prior to teaching, she practiced federal and state criminal defense in Georgia.
Ms. Roseberry is a founding board member of the Georgia Innocence Project, and was the first African-American female president of the Georgia Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers. She earned her Bachelor of Science from Wilberforce University in Ohio and her Juris Doctor from Georgia State University College of Law.
Dr. Kress has been CCE’s executive director since January 2004. She previously held senior-level policy, planning, and project management positions at the U.S. Department of Justice and in the corporate, legal, and nonprofit sectors. Dr. Kress, who announced in December that she would step down, will continue at CCE until mid-July to ensure a smooth transition.
James H. Hulme, a partner at Arent Fox LLP and chair of CCE’s Executive Director Search Committee, said, “We are thrilled that Cynthia Roseberry will join CCE as executive director. The search committee and executive committee were impressed with Cynthia’s track record of building consensus among diverse stakeholders and building strong staff teams.”
CCE’s president
Irvin B. Nathan commented, “We’re confident that Cynthia will provide the leadership that CCE needs to build upon June’s many successes over the past 13 years. I look forward to working with her.”
Besides Messrs. Hulme and Nathan, CCE’s Executive Director Search Committee included James D. Berry Jr., Michael Frohm, Victor E. Long, Julia A. Matthews, and Natalie S. Walker.
A national and international trainer, Ms. Roseberry has presented in nearly every U.S. state and in Europe. Click here to view her recent TEDx talk, My Father, My Hero, which she delivered at the State Correctional Institution in Chester, Pennsylvania.
