All registration cancellations must be submitted in writing to accounting@publicdefenders.us at least 7 days prior to the first day of the event. Refunds will be processed via the original payment method, minus a $25 administrative fee, after the event. In lieu of a refund, an organization may transfer the registration to another attendee at no additional cost. No refunds will be issued for cancellations received less than 7 days in advance. Should NAPD find it necessary to cancel the event for any reason, a refund will be issued in full.
Learn more about NAPD Online Academy Courses - 10 min video
Led by Ed Monahan, Ernie Lewis & Hilary Potashner
Audience - Defender Chiefs, Deputies, and Leadership Team Members
Often defender leaders feel as if they are “ballroom dancing in the middle of a minefield” as they face the complexities of the pandemic, demonstrations, riots, reduced resources, safety concerns, attacks on independence, and excessive workloads.
In the unpredictable chaotic and complex times defender organizations constantly face, NAPD offers an online course for chief defenders, deputy chiefs, office directors, and others in leadership positions.
When responding to a crisis, we have a choice. We can be overwhelmed, implement simple solutions, act out of anger. Or we can open the door and delight in the unknown. This is a course about delighting in the unknown and creating a field of possibilities. By the end of this course, the participant's journey will produce a plan for addressing a current adversity, complexity, and/or crisis in their office. The plan will build on their strengths and will take advantage of additional options on how they see and approach adversities, complexities, and crises.
There are a total of six sections, over six weeks. Each session section has videos to watch at your convenience and other materials to review at your convenience. Each session has an assignment that is based on your organization’s situation and you as a leader for you to complete. The videos and assignment will be discussed in a weekly small Zoom group with a structured discussion for an hour and a half. Through the course, you will learn common sense models for what leaders can choose to do in dealing with the unpredictable adversity, complexity, and crisis. You will develop a plan to address your organization’s complexity in a way that opens the door to opportunities. In taking this online course, you agree to keep conversations in the small group confidential. The course will take place over the course of two months. Time expectations for this course per week are as follows:
• Watching course videos - about 1-2 hours
• Weekly assignment - about 1 - 2 hours
• Weekly small groups - 1.5 hours
Ed Monahan, Ernie Lewis, and Hilary Potashner will guideand facilitate the small group discussions. These leaders have over ten decades of combined experience as deputy public defenders and have over three decades of combined experience of leading a statewide public defense program or a federal defender office.
Ed Monahan is a national public defense consultant, trainer, testifying and consulting expert. He began as a public defender in 1976 and was the chief defender of the Kentucky Department of Public Advocacy, the statewide public defense program, from 2008-2017. He is co-editor of the ABA’s Tell the Client's Story: Mitigation in Criminal and Death Penalty Cases (May 2017). Monahan is immediate past chair of the ABA Government and Public Sector Lawyers Division Council. He was a member of the National Association for Public Defense Board, and chaired the NAPD Education Committee. Ed is a charter board member of the Kentucky Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers and a past president. Ed is a 1976 graduate of Washington D.C.’s Catholic University of America’s Columbus School of Law.
Ernie Lewis received his undergraduate degree from Baylor University in 1969, a Masters of Divinity from Vanderbilt University in 1973, and a Juris Doctoris (J.D.) from Washington University in 1977. He was a VISTA Volunteer in Minnesota in 1970. He was with the Department of Public Advocacy from 1976 until 2008 in several different capacities, including appellate lawyer, local assistance branch manager, directing attorney of the Richmond Trial Office, and Regional Manager for the Central Kentucky Region. He was appointed Kentucky Public Advocate in 1996, overseeing the statewide public defender system, and served in that capacity until 2008 when he retired from state government. He served for two years as Chair of the American Council of Chief Defenders from 2006-2007. He has worked on indigent defense issues with various groups in Georgia, North Carolina, Minnesota, Texas, Ohio, Indiana, Tennessee, and Louisiana. In 2000, he was named Outstanding Lawyer by the Kentucky Bar Association. In 2007, he was given the Champion of Indigent Defense Award by the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers. In 2008, he was given the Chief Justice’s Special Service Award. He received the Department of Public Advocacy’s Professionalism and Excellence Award in 2003 and the Nelson Mandela Award in 2009. From September of 2013 until January of 2021, he served as the Executive Director of the National Association for Public Defense.
Hilary Potashner is a partner at Larson LLP. Hilary is the former Federal Public Defender for the Central District of California. While the Defender, Hilary led an office of more than 200 employees with an annual budget of approximately $40 million. The Central District is the largest federal district in the nation, with more than 16 million people, and encompassing the counties of Los Angeles, Riverside, San Bernardino, Santa Barbara, San Luis Obispo, Ventura, and Orange. Hilary joined the Federal Public Defender’s Office in 2001. She served as a deputy in the trial unit from 2001 until 2007, as a supervising attorney from 2007 until 2012, as the Chief Deputy from 2012 until 2014, as the Acting Federal Public Defender from 2014 until 2015, and as the Federal Public Defender from 2014 to 2019. Prior to her work at the Federal Public Defender’s Office, she was a deputy public defender for the Country of San Diego for seven years. During her twenty plus years as a criminal defense attorney, Hilary has represented individuals charged with infractions, misdemeanors, felonies, and death-eligible offenses. Hilary is a fellow in the American College of Trial Lawyers, a past President of the Federal Bar Association-Los Angeles, the recipient of 2020 Criminal Defense Lawyer of the Year Award by the Criminal Justice Section of Los Angeles County Bar Association, and has been named a “Leader of Influence” and a “Top Woman Attorney” by the Los Angeles Business Journal. Hilary received her undergraduate degree from Duke University, and she obtained her law degree from the University of California, Hastings College of the Law.
Twyla Carter: Twyla Carter (she/her) is the Attorney-in-Chief and Chief Executive Officer of The Legal Aid Society, becoming the first Black woman and first Asian American to lead the organization in its 145-year history.
Prior to joining Legal Aid, Carter was the National Director of Legal and Policy at The Bail Project (TBP), a national nonprofit organization that pioneered a national movement to bring free bail assistance and pretrial support to thousands of low-income people every year. At TBP, Carter created the department’s strategic mission and directed the legal, policy, and advocacy efforts at the federal, state, and local levels. After over 22,000 bailouts over nearly 5 years, and with 90% of their clients returning to court, The Bail Project’s model has proven that the nation’s wealth-based pretrial detention system is broken.
Carter has also served as a senior staff attorney in the Criminal Law Reform Project at the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) national office, where she litigated local and state bail inequities and right-to-counsel protections in the federal courts and designed alternative bail and representation policies and procedures for targeted jurisdictions. In this role, Carter litigated Booth v. Galveston County, a pretrial bail case in Texas, where the magistrate court held that people accused of crimes have a right to counsel in initial bail hearings under the Sixth Amendment, one of the only jurisdictions in the nation to guarantee legal representation at this critical stage of trial.
At the ACLU, Carter was also co- or lead counsel in the following class action lawsuits: Bairefoot v. Beaufort, a right-to-counsel case in South Carolina; Mock v. Glynn County, a pretrial bail case in Georgia; White v. Hesse, a pretrial bail case in Oklahoma that alleged violations under the American Disabilities Act and Rehabilitation Act; Allison et al. v. Allen et al., a pretrial bail case in Alamance County, North Carolina, and Ross v. 36th District Court, a pretrial bail and right-to-counsel case in Detroit, Michigan, the fifth busiest court in the country.
Prior to working at the ACLU, Carter was a public defender for ten years. She was the Misdemeanor Practice Director for the King County Department of Public Defense in Seattle, where she oversaw all misdemeanor casework across the four divisions of the department. As a Staff Attorney at The Defender Association, Carter handled felony and misdemeanor trial caseloads, represented juveniles, and appealed misdemeanor convictions. She won a published decision from the Washington State Court of Appeals, Division One, in State v. Green, which affirmed the due process rights of parents accused of trespassing in public schools.
Against the backdrop of the legislative attacks against the teaching of white supremacy and anti-Black racism in schools, Carter serves as Vice President of the Board of Directors of The Who We Are Project. Founded by Jeffery Robinson, a renowned expert on the role of racism in the criminal legal system, the project aims to correct the social, legal, political, and economic aspects of racism in the United States through educational materials, including through a feature-length documentary entitled Who We Are: A Chronicle of Racism in America. She also serves as a board member for the NAPD Fund for Justice. The goal of the Fund is to enhance the right to counsel through public defense in the United States.
Carter is admitted to practice law in New York, Washington State, and numerous federal courts. She is a nationally recognized expert on bail reform and is a frequent speaker on all aspects of the criminal legal system, including police reform, right-to-counsel issues, and how to incorporate race and culture into criminal, death penalty, and civil cases. Carter received an associate degree from Seattle Central Community College, a bachelor’s degree from Seattle University, summa cum laude, and a J.D. from the Seattle University School of Law.
Comments for past participants
Identifying areas to improve -- very helpful because it made me actually frame issues that we were facing. creating message and learning from leaders was helpful because it was inspirational and gave support that anyone can make a positive difference. Taking time to consider words and their importance. The importance of this was really expressed by Maya Angelou.
In many ways, this course was transformational. The most helpful part of this course was the understanding that the complex part of leadership - not knowing all the answers - is okay. Leadership is a constant and evolving journey, sometimes with mistakes and sometimes with successes. The course brought home the concepts of listening to learn, understanding the motives of those who may have different views than me, and has given me a new confidence that solutions to challenges and problems are a team effort. I've consistently found that every organization within NAPD has very similar challenges so the group discussions always lead to a we faced something similar in our organization and this is what we did. Attendance at these events has helped me confront and address other challenges that I did not identify as my primary challenges.
I thought quite a lot about your perspective of my strengths -- seeing in me what I wouldn't or have not seen before. So that set the tone for me -- having that objective perspective or baseline to spring from, was a nice/effective way to take in from there, ideas for improvement and means to achieve adaptive, resilient leadership.
I enjoyed the four frames and adaptive leadership discussions. I was surprised at how i fell among the four frames. That being said, I enjoyed history and learning about leaders in history. That was probably what I found most helpful. It gave me a reference point. How did former presidents and figures in our history deal with adversity. Thinking about, writing my story, and then presenting my story was both terrifying and eye opening. That was the first time I sat down and thought about my life story.
I found the Resilient Leadership course to be extremely helpful - both in the content and the group sessions. When I face different problems as a PD or PD leader, I often feel that I am alone and few can understand and relate. This course provided a community to share ideas, vent, etc. with many compassionate and helpful colleagues.
NAPD Cancellation Policy
All registration cancellations must be submitted in writing to accounting@publicdefenders.us at least 7 days prior to the first day of the event. Refunds will be processed via the original payment method, minus a $25 administrative fee, after the event. In lieu of a refund, an organization may transfer the registration to another attendee at no additional cost. No refunds will be issued for cancellations received less than 7 days in advance. Should NAPD find it necessary to cancel the event for any reason, a refund will be issued in full.
***NAPD doesn't apply for CLE or track attendance to provide certifications for our live webinars, conferences and online courses. This helps us keep the price as low as possible and avoids the disruption of the flow of the training required by many states to verify attendance.
We are able to provide CLE for dozens of recorded sessions from previous training for NAPD members in most states. These sessions are only $10 per credit hour. For more details, log in with your NAPD credentials at this link.