NAPD 2024 Women's Virtual Conference

This presentation was created to educate and empower female Attorneys and Investigative professionals when work takes them into the field and community. Many potentially dangerous situations can be mitigated by taking different proactive measures to plan ahead for such encounters. A myriad of safety topics and techniques will be discussed ranging from analyzing potential threats to self-defense, including how to teach oneself easy ways to practice hypervigilance and threat assessment. The goal of this presentation is for attendees to feel empowered, having learned tangible tools they can utilize to protect themselves and avoid placing themselves or their staff in the way of danger, which will lead to a stronger sense of preparedness and better investigative effort outcomes.

This session will propose a comprehensive mentorship program designed to empower young women across the country, with a specific focus on the legal sector. This initiative aims to address the critical need for positive role models and guidance in an era where societal pressures and social media often misdirect young women's focus and aspirations. We seek support from legal professionals, educators, and community leaders to bring this vital program to fruition.
By investing in our young women today, we are shaping a more equitable and just society for tomorrow.

Key Program Elements:

Legal Sector Exposure
Internship opportunities
Shadowing legal professionals
Interactive workshops on various legal career


Why It's Needed:

Lack of Positive Mentors: Many young women lack access to positive, professional female role models.
Social Media Influence: Increasing pressure to focus on superficial attributes rather than personal and professional growth.
Self-Esteem Challenges: Young women often struggle with self-esteem issues, impacting their career aspirations and life choices.
Limited Exposure: Many young women have limited exposure to diverse career paths, especially in the legal sector.

This session will highlight how African American women law professors are leveraging their scholarship and teaching to drive social and legal reform, with a particular focus on criminal justice and public policy. Panelists will discuss how their research influences public policy and how their advocacy efforts bridge the gap between academic work and on-the-ground public defense. They describe how they strive to mentor the next generation of law students toward public interest and social justice careers. Attendees will better understand how these trailblazing professors are shaping legal change inside and outside the classroom to advance equity and justice.

Disability justice represents a powerful paradigm shift in how we approach issues of accessibility and social change. Rather than viewing disability through a narrow, medical lens that seeks to "fix" or "normalize" bodies, disability justice activists are championing a more expansive, intersectional understanding of disability as a fundamental part of the human experience. They recognize that ableism, the systemic discrimination against disabled people, is deeply intertwined with other systems of oppression like racism, sexism, and classism. By centering the diverse lived experiences of disabled people across race, gender, class, and other identity lines, disability justice challenges us to grapple with the realities of bodily difference and limitations in all their complexity. This means moving beyond one-size-fits-all approaches to accessibility and instead cultivating mixed-ability organizing spaces and communities that foster genuine solidarity.