Rebecca Henry is the Deputy Chief Counsel of the Commission, responsible for policy, program, and financial management. In that role, she, along with the Chief Counsel, serves as an expert resource on gender-based violence and the law to ABA leadership and staff, attorneys, judges, legislators, the media, and others; manages program activities and budgets; serves as liaison and staff to Commission members; and coordinates national policy initiatives, including representing the Commission on the Steering Committee of the National Task Force to End Sexual and Domestic Violence (supporting VAWA, FVPSA, and VOCA Reauthorization).
Rebecca has been advocating for survivors since 1998, beginning with her work on a successful class action to prevent pat frisks of women incarcerated by the state of New York, the vast majority of whom have a history of domestic and/or sexual violence. After clerking on the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals in Nashville, Tennessee, Rebecca worked as a Coffin Fellow at Pine Tree Legal Assistance in Portland, Maine, representing DV survivors and their children in complex family matters. Upon completing her Fellowship, Rebecca was staff attorney and then project director of the OVW- funded Elder Justice Project at Maine’s Legal Services for the Elderly.
Rebecca is admitted to the New York and Maine bars. She earned her law degree from New York University, where she received the New York Bar Association’s Legal Ethics Award and served as a senior editor of the Review of Law and Social Change. Rebecca earned her MA (and ABD) in philosophy and feminist theory at the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities.