Vice President of Training Programs

Ellen Hemley brings over 30 years of experience in the equal justice community to her role as Vice President of Training Programs. Prior to joining the Shriver Center, Ellen served as executive director of the Center for Legal Aid Education, which provided training and leadership development programs to equal justice advocates nationally. Previously, Ellen was Director of Training at the Massachusetts Law Reform Institute where, among other things, she oversaw CLAE's predecessor, the Legal Services Training Consortium of New England. She also served for many years as an independent consultant; her clients included the American Bar Association, the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts, the Florida Bar Foundation, the Washington Access to Justice Commission, the Jewish Community Relations Council, the Massachusetts Immigrant and Refugee Advocacy Coalition, the Massachusetts Union of Public Housing Tenants, and scores of other legal aid networks, bar foundations and justice-related programs across the country.

Courses Taught

• 2006-2007 NE Leadership Institute
• 2008-2009 NE Leadership Institute
• 2009-2010 Florida Leadership Institute
• 2010-11 Florida Leadership Institute
• Affirmative Litigation
• Board Development
• Board Development - May
• Community Lawyering
• Community Legal Education
• Essential Skills for Hotline Supervisors
• Supervision Skills for Equal Justice Providers
• Supervision Skills: Difficult Conversations & Constructive Feedback
• Whole Client / Whole Advocate

Ross Dolloff brings more than 25 years of varied legal services experience to his position as National Training Director of the Center for Legal Aid Education. After receiving his JD from the American University’s Washington College of Law in 1980, Ross began his career-long commitment to legal services as a staff attorney in the Selma office of the Legal Services Corp. of Alabama, where his practice involved civil rights and discrimination, voting rights, public benefits entitlement and transactional assistance to community based organization throughout Alabama’s black belt. More recently, after a stint as managing attorney of the Holyoke office of Western Massachusetts Legal Servlces, Ross spent the last fifteen years as the Director of Neighborhood Legal Services in Massachusetts.

Throughout his career, Ross has written extensively about legal services practice, delivery systems and program management and to the development of training for legal services staff. His articles have appeared regularly in both the Management Information Exchange Journal, Clearinghouse Review and legal publications in his home state of Massachusetts. While a managing attorney and then program Director, Ross contributed to the design of training packages for Basic Lawyering Skills, Community Lawyering, and Affirmative Litigation Training and has served as a trainer or presenter for dozens of programs in New England and elsewhere, sponsored by the Center for Legal Aid Education, the New England Training Consortium, individual legal services organizations, state CLE providers and community based organizations.

In 2006, Ross left his Director position to join the Center (then called Legal Aid University). "Throughout my career in legal services, I felt that I had gradually seen a loss of a shared national sense of what it means to be a legal services staff member and advocate and a shared set of expectations and standards for how to do the work creatively and effectively.. I remember the series of training programs available to me when I was starting out – Basic Lawyering Skills, Federal Practice, what was then called Multi-forum advocacy - as invaluable, both in helping me learn the essential skills and craft of lawyering, but perhaps even more in helping me understand the potential role of my legal services practice in the broader effort to change the conditions of poverty in America.

"It was from this shared vision of the potential importance of our work in a larger social change effort that much of my own work and personal vision and values as a legal services worker developed and emerged. As I reached this next stage of my career, having served in many different capacities for much of my adult life in individual local legal services organizations, I looked around and asked myself, what would I want to help establish in our national legal services community in a more general sense. Ultimately, the answer was the redevelopment of that shared system of vision and values, transmitted through a shared set of learning experiences that combined these elements with practical skills training to improve our overall effectiveness and the quality of the work experience for advocates and emerging new leaders. With that as a goal, there was nowhere else to be than here at LAU. I’m thrilled to have the opportunity to devote myself to this effort."

Courses Taught

• 2006-2007 NE Leadership Institute
• 2008-2009 NE Leadership Institute
• Case Planning & Discovery
• Community Lawyering
• Essential Skills for Paralegals and Legal Assistants
• Supervision Skills for Equal Justice Providers

Joan comes to the Center for Legal Aid Education with over 20 years of not-for-profit accounting experience. She served as Business Manager of the Jewish Community Center of the North Shore in Marblehead, MA for 16 years and spent another 4 years as Staff Accountant of the YMCA of the North Shore.

After graduating college with a degree in sociology, Joan worked for two years as a case worker for Catholic Charities in New York City. From there she worked as a systems analyst for A T & T and New England Telephone.

Joan’s life took a different direction when she married and became the mother of two daughters. With two young children, Joan volunteered as a math aid in their school and worked as a special education aid in the Salem Public School system. When her husband started his own business, Joan took several accounting courses and worked for him. From there she worked for three years as a bookkeeper for a small business and then launched her career in nonprofit work with the Jewish Community Center.

Joan’s current position with the Center for Legal Aid Education has given her the opportunity to again be part of an organization which gives so much back to the community.

As the Center for Legal Aid Education's Program Coordinator and Office Manager Jaime Roosevelt brings over 6 years of experience in the nonprofit world to her work at CLAE.  She comes to us from the ALS Therapy Development Institute, an organization created to find a cure for ALS [Lou Gehrig’s Disease], where she served as the Customer Relations Director and Office Manager and is still actively involved with fundraising for the Institute. She participates in an annual 275 Bike Ride from Newton, MA to White Plains, New York to raise much needed funds and awareness.

Jaime is pleased to be working with CLAE and is thankful for the opportunity to be part of an excellent organization that makes such a meaningful impact on the community.1

It is with great sadness that we let you know that our beloved colleague, Shari Zimble, died on Thursday, October 23, after a long battle with cancer.

Shari was a long-time legal aid attorney – starting out in 1988 as a staff attorney at Legal Assistance of Central MA; over the years, she also worked at Cambridge & Somerville Legal Services, the Harvard Law School clinical program, and Massachusetts Law Reform Institute. In 2001, Shari joined the training team at MLRI that was to become Center for Legal Aid Education. As one of CLAE's co-founders and as CLAE's Director of Curriculum & Training Development, Shari joyfully took on the task of helping build a national organization that would ensure that legal aid advocates across the country had ready access to the continuing education, training and leadership development necessary for them to deliver on the promise of equal justice.

A natural educator, Shari brought a rare mix of passion, legal expertise, creativity and innovation to her work at CLAE. She designed and delivered scores of training programs for legal aid staff in New England and nationally; she was a leader in designing CLAE's online campus and developing our web-based training programs. Her most recent, and perhaps best loved project, was the year-long New England Leadership Institute, a nationally recognized model for building strong, diverse equal justice leadership. The Institute’s first class of twenty-four fellows and mentors uniformly described her as the Institute’s “heart and soul.” 

Shari once wrote that “the responsibility we have as leaders is not just to inspire others; it also includes a willingness to be inspired by today’s new and emerging leaders.” In so many ways, Shari epitomized this aspect of leadership. She was truly inspired by the younger advocates she taught through the Leadership Institute and all of her other courses.

Shari was fervently committed to the legal aid community and to the clients and communities we serve. And as much as she contributed to the legal aid community (which is vast), she was equally sustained by the community – both in terms of the opportunities to contribute her many talents to the cause of equal justice but also by so many of you – her legal aid friends and colleagues. Even in the final months of illness, Shari continued to contribute her vision and endless talents to her legal aid work. She completed her final project, an innovative training video on “Working with Clients with Limited English Proficiency,” in late July 2008.

Community pillar,
Inspiring teacher,
Trusted colleague,
Dear friend -
Greatly missed.