Judith Browne Dianis

Washington D.C.

Executive Director
Advancement Project

Judith Browne Dianis always reminds herself that she’s “just a Black girl from Queens” who’s been exposed to and lived around people from “all walks of life.” The civil rights attorney told the Atlanta Voice that it’s important to keep that reminder in the forefront of her racial justice work, as she’s become a leading voice for multiracial civil rights.

Since joining the Advancement Project at its inception in 1999, Dianis has spearheaded major initiatives combating structural racism across institutions. In partnership with grassroots organizations, she has pioneered the organization’s movement to dismantle the school-to-prison pipeline and protect voting rights.

Hailed as a voting rights expert, Dianis since 2000 has propelled the organization’s litigation to thwart voter suppression efforts. That includes strict voter identification requirements, reductions in the timing for early voting, closure of polling locations and felony disenfranchisement.

She has authored groundbreaking education reports highlighting the continued criminalization and discrimination against students of color. That includes the 2003 report “Derailed: The Schoolhouse to Jailhouse Track.” These efforts, in alliance with grassroots community-based organizations, have led to the decline of student suspensions and arrests in school districts in Denver and Florida, specifically within the city of Baltimore.

Dianis, 57, attributes her passion for civil rights to her parents — her mother was an educator and community activist, and her father a businessman and veteran of the segregated U.S. Army. In 1987, she earned her bachelor of science from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania; and in 1992, she earned her juris doctor degree from Columbia University’s School of Law. She received the Skadden Fellowship and went on to become the managing attorney for the N.A.A.C.P.’s legal defense and educational fund in Washington, D.C., a position she held until 1997.  

Tapped as executive director in 2016, Dianis will be the first to say Advancement Project and its mission sets it apart as the civil rights legal group. “We are out in the streets with our partners,” she told NBC News. — Monée Fields-White