Bonnie Allen

Bonnie Allen divides her time between the Mississippi Center for Justice and the University of Maryland School of Law. At the Center, Bonnie serves as Director of Training and Foundation Development. At the law school, she is a clinical law instructor and teaches Ethics and Professional Responsibility and the Mississippi Summer Recovering Communities Clinic. Bonnie also is helping to launch the law school’s Leadership, Ethics and Democracy-Building Initiative funded by the Fetzer Institute.

Previously, Bonnie served as President of the Center for Law & Renewal, based at the Fetzer Institute. She also held the Executive Director position at Just Neighbors Immigrant Ministry, Inc. in Arlington, Virginia, and she co-directed the Project for the Future of Equal Justice based at the National Legal Aid and Defender Association and the Center for Law and Social Policy. Bonnie also served as Director of the American Bar Association Center for Pro Bono. Ms. Allen began her legal career as a Judicial Law Clerk for the Second District Court of Appeal in Florida, and she practiced law in the private and local government sectors in Tampa for seven years.  

Ms. Allen is a 1984 graduate of the University of Florida College of Law where she was an instructor in the Appellate Advocacy program. She also holds a B.A. in International Studies from Rhodes College and a Master’s Degree in Theological Studies from Garrett-Evangelical Theological Seminary. Ms. Allen earned a certificate in International Human Rights and Humanitarian Law at American University’s Washington College of Law 2004 Summer Program. She also holds a Certificate in Transformational Leadership from Georgetown University, and she is a Senior Research Fellow at the James McGregor Burns Academy of Leadership at the University of Maryland, College Park.

Ms. Allen is a member of the Florida Bar and the American Bar Association. She consulted with the ABA’s Rule of Law Initiative as a commentator on proposed legal aid laws in Ukraine and Moldova. She has published numerous articles on public interest law, and she edited and co-authored the book Shifting the Field of Law and Justice: Reshaping the Lawyer’s Identity, published in 2007 by the Center for Law & Renewal. She also authored an essay in Leading from Within: Poetry That Sustains the Courage to Lead, edited by Sam Intrator and Megan Scribner and published by Jossey-Bass.