There was a moment during Vonda Brown’s first years as a mother when she saw the power of a child advocate. That advocate was her own mother.
As she searched for daycare in her hometown in Texas, Brown recalls not being treated well by the owners of daycares and not knowing what to ask. Fortunately, her mother had come along and spoke up, advocating for her daughter and grandchild.
Years later, when she was a law student at Thurgood Marshall School of Law, the idea of being a child advocate stayed with her. “I’ve always viewed child advocacy and family law as a kind of civil right,” said Brown. “The importance of attorneys in what are very personal moments can’t be understated.”
After graduating law school, Brown joined the Texas attorney general’s office in 2016 and was an assistant attorney general in the child support division. There, she was appointed by courts to represent children and advocate for them in legal proceedings. “I often reflected on how much my mother helped me when I was a young mother,” she said. “She doesn’t have a law degree, but she sure knows how to advocate for her family.
“I saw how those support structures don’t always exist for people, which made our work so important.”
It was in the Texas attorney general’s office that Brown also gravitated to a culture of teaching; she spent the last three years in the division traveling the state, training new assistant attorneys general. She soon joined Mitchell Hamline as a part-time adjunct, teaching...
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