Morning Speaker Details

Emily Coward, Director, Duke Law Inclusive Juries Project

Emily Coward directs the Inclusive Juries Project within the Center for Criminal Justice and Professional Responsibility at Duke University School of Law. The Inclusive Juries Project partners with lawyers, scholars, students, court actors, and community members on initiatives aimed at ending juror discrimination and ensuring a fair, inclusive, and transparent jury system. From 2012 to 2021, Emily was an attorney with the UNC School of Government’s Public Defense Education group, serving as Director and Project Attorney of the North Carolina Racial Equity Network. She serves on the North Carolina Governor's Task Force for Racial Equity in Criminal Justice and the North Carolina Commission on Racial and Ethnic Disparities in the Criminal Justice System.

James E. Williams Jr., Board Chair, NC CRED

Mr. Williams received a B.A. in Political Science and J.D. from Duke University. He was Chief Public Defender for Orange and Chatham Counties from 1990-2017 and previously the Felony Chief of the Mecklenburg County Public Defender’s Office. While a member of the N.C. Advocates for Justice Board of Governors, Mr. Williams helped establish and served as Chair of the Task Force on Racial and Ethnic Bias in the Criminal Justice System which ultimately led to the establishment of the NC CRED. Mr. Williams is also a founder and Board member of the N.C. Public Defender Committee on Racial Equity and serves on numerous boards, including the N.C. Fines and Fees Coalition, National Consortium on Racial and Ethnic Fairness in the Courts, N.C. Association of Black Lawyers, Orange Bias Free Policing Coalition. He serves as Co-chair of the District 18 Bar Racial Justice Force. He has received numerous awards, including the N.C. Advocates for Justice Thurgood Marshall Award, the MLK University/ Community Planning Inc. MLK Jr. Citizenship Award, the N.C. ACLU Champion of Justice Award, and the North Carolina Bar Association James McNeil Smith Jr. Award.

Judge Donovan Foughty, President, National Consortium on Racial and Ethnic Fairness in the Courts

Donovan Foughty is Presiding Judge of the Northeast Judicial District in North Dakota.

He was admitted to the bar in 1983. He began his judicial career by election to the county bench in 1987. Judge Foughty was elected to the district bench in 1995, where he continues to serve. He has also served as a trial judge in tribal courts in North Dakota and as an appellate court judge for tribal nations in Nebraska and the Dakotas.

Judge Foughty co-chaired the Tribal/State Court Forum in North Dakota, with a final published report being submitted to the chief justice in December of 1993. He is past chair of the standing Committee on Tribal and State Court Affairs. He is a past chair of the Judicial Conduct Commission. Judge Foughty co-chaired the North Dakota Commission to Study Racial and Ethnic Bias in the Courts, submitting a final published report to the Chief Justice in June of 2012. He is past chair of the Minority Justice Implementation Committee.

He is the current President of the board of directors of the National Consortium on Racial and Ethnic Fairness in the Courts. The Secretariat for the Consortium is the National Center for State Courts. He sits on the Justice Commission for Three Affiliated Tribes in North Dakota, an advisory group to the nation's court system. He is on the advisory board for the Spirit Lake Tribe Senior Services' Elder Protection Program.

Judge Foughty traveled to Norway to study the Norwegian/European prison system.

He and his wife, Marca, have two children.

Professional Memberships

American Bar Association
National American Indian Courts Judges Association
National Council of Juvenile and Family Court Judges
National Consortium on Racial and Ethnic Fairness in the Courts
Salus Populi Advisory Board
State Bar Association of North Dakota

Judge Susan Maven, New Jersey Superior Court

Judge Maven, of the New Jersey Superior Court, served in the Family Division, the Criminal Division, and the Appellate Division from 2001 until her retirement in 2022, and recently returned to the bench on active status.

Judge Maven is an ardent proponent of diversity and equity initiatives for the court system. Judge Maven was appointed chair of the Atlantic/Cape May Vicinage Advisory Committee on Minority Affairs and the Supreme Court Committee on Minority Affairs (SCCMC) in 2004. In 2009, she was appointed to Chair the SCCMC as the first and only woman to serve as Chairman in the Committee’s 35-year plus history. She served until her tenure on the Committee ended in 2014.

Judge Maven was elected to the Board of Directors of the National Consortium on Racial and Ethnic Fairness in the Courts (NCREFC) in 2008. She served as the President/Moderator from 2018-2022 and remains on the Board. Judge Maven has participated and presented at diversity awareness and educational conferences, and community engagement programs in various states including Illinois, Nebraska, Florida, Minnesota, Louisiana, Virginia, Colorado, Nevada and Washington, DC., on Native American tribal lands and virtually for educational webinars. and annual conferences.

Judge Maven participates in the National Center for State Courts’ Blueprint For Racial Justice, a national initiative to develop immediate and recognizable steps toward improving racial justice, equity, and inclusion in the justice system.

She is currently the Vice President of the Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Collaborative, an initiative sponsored by the National Council of Juvenile and Family Court Judges. Through a series of collaborative summit meetings, representatives from leading national organizations within the judiciary and legal profession collaborate to amass the collective strength of our memberships to make a demonstrable impact on the legal profession on issues of common interest.

Judge Nancy Gertner (Ret.), Senior Lecturer, Harvard Law School

Judge Nancy Gertner was a United States District Court Judge in the District of Massachusetts for seventeen years. She was appointed to the bench in 1994 by President Clinton, leaving in 2011 to be a Professor of Practice at Harvard Law School.. Gertner is a graduate of Barnard College and Yale Law School where she was an editor on The Yale Law Journal. She received her M.A. in Political Science at Yale University. She has been an instructor at both Harvard and Yale Law Schools, teaching sentencing and comparative sentencing institutions, since 1998. Prior to 1998 she taught evidence, including issues in expert evidence, at Harvard and Boston University. She has written (judicial opinions and scholarly articles) and spoken widely on various legal issues including forensic science. She served as a Senior Advisor to the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (2016) and a member of the McArthur Foundation Research Network on Law and Neuroscience. She is presently a member of the Massachusetts Forensic Science Oversight Board and a managing director of the MGH Center for Law Brain and Behavior. In 2008 she received the Thurgood Marshall Award from the American Bar Association, Section of Individual Rights and Responsibilities, only the second woman to receive it (Justice Ginsburg was the first). In 2010 she received the Morton A. Brody Distinguished Judicial Service Award. In 2011 she received the Massachusetts Bar Association's Hennessey award for judicial excellence, and an honorary Doctor of Laws degree from Brandeis University. In 2012 she received the Arabella Babb Mansfield award from the National Association of Women Lawyers, and the Leila J. Robinson Award of the Women's Bar Association of Massachusetts. She was selected to receive the Margaret Brent Women Lawyers of Achievement from the American Bar Association Commission on the Status of Women in the Profession in August 2014. She has been profiled on a number of occasions in the Boston Globe, the ABA Journal, Boston Magazine, and The Wall Street Journal. Her autobiography, In Defense of Women: Memoirs of an Unrepentant Advocate, was released on April 26, 2011. Her book, The Law of Juries, co-authored with attorney Judith Mizner, was published in 1997 and is continuously updated. Her two volume book, Opinions of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg was published in 2022. She is presently working on a judicial memoir (focused on sentencing) entitled Incomplete Sentences: Judging, Guidelines, and Gangs (Beacon Press, forthcoming).

Senior Associate Justice Anita Earls, Supreme Court of North Carolina

Anita Earls is an Associate Justice of the North Carolina Supreme Court. Before taking office on January 1, 2019, she was a civil rights attorney litigating voting rights, police misconduct and other civil rights cases for 30 years. Anita was the founder and Executive Director of the Southern Coalition for Social Justice, a non-profit legal advocacy organization in Durham, North Carolina. Appointed by President Clinton, Anita was a Deputy Assistant Attorney General in the U.S. Department of Justice, Civil Rights Division from 1998 to 2000. She has served on the North Carolina State Board of Elections, the North Carolina Equal Access to Justice Commission and currently Co-Chairs the Governor’s Task Force on Racial Equity in Criminal Justice. Anita has taught as an adjunct professor at UNC and University of Maryland Law Schools and in the African and African-American Studies Department at Duke University. A graduate of Yale Law School and Williams College, Anita lives in Durham with her husband Charles Walton. She has two grown sons and two grandchildren.

McKinley Wooten, Assistant Secretary at North Carolina Department of Revenue

Wooten has over 30 years of North Carolina State government service, beginning as a civil magistrate in Wake County in 1992. After serving in several leadership positions in Council of State and Executive Branch agencies, he came to the Administrative Office of the Courts (AOC) in 2009 as deputy director. He served in that role until 2019 when he was named Interim Director. In 2020 Wooten was named Director, becoming the first African American to lead the unified court system in North Carolina, and served until January 2021. He presently serves as Asst. Secretary for Tax Processing, Research & Equity at the NC Department of Revenue. Wooten is a Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Morehouse College, and he earned his J.D. at the Vanderbilt University School of Law.

Dean Patricia Timmons-Goodson, NCCU Law

Former North Carolina Supreme Court Associate

Patricia Timmons-Goodson currently serves as Dean and Chief Academic Officer at North Carolina Central University School of Law. In her role as Dean, she elevates the school of law as an institution that prepares practice ready law graduates. Appointed to the Supreme Court of North Carolina in 2006, Timmons-Goodson was the fourth woman, and the first African American woman to sit on the state’s highest court. Her service on the Supreme Court of North Carolina followed years on the intermediate appellate court and the trial court. Her 28 years of judicial service to the people of North Carolina have been recognized with numerous awards, such as the Order of the Long Leaf Pine and induction into the North Carolina Women’s Hall of Fame.

Timmons-Goodson earned her B.A. and J.D. degrees from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and a Master of Laws from Duke University School of Law.

New Mexico Chief Justice Shannon Bacon

Chief Justice Bacon was appointed to the New Mexico Supreme Court on January 25, 2019 after being recommended by a nonpartisan Judicial Nominating Commission. She took the oath of office on February 4, 2019. Prior to her appointment, Justice Bacon served as a district court judge on the Second Judicial District Court and as the Presiding Civil Judge. While serving on the district court, Justice Bacon presided over thousands of cases spanning complex civil litigation, class actions, adult guardianship and conservatorship cases, real estate and contract disputes, election issues, domestic and children's court cases and appeals. Justice Bacon was also the Bernalillo County Water and Middle Rio Grande Conservancy District Judge.

Justice Bacon currently serves on the New Mexico Supreme Court’s Equity and Justice Commission, the New Mexico Access to Justice Commission, the New Mexico Working Interdisciplinary Networks of Guardianship Stakeholders, The New Mexico Supreme Court Judicial Recruitment and Retention Commission, and the National Judicial College Dividing the Waters. Prior to joining the Supreme Court, Justice Bacon served on numerous commissions and committees. She served on the New Mexico Supreme Court Adult Guardianship and Conservatorship Steering Committee (Chair) and Rules Committee, the Access to Justice Commission, the Bernalillo County Pro Bono Committee (Co-chair), the Supreme Court Personnel Rules Committee (Chair), the Supreme Court Rules of Evidence Committee (Chair), and the District and Metropolitan Judges Association (President). Justice Bacon has also served on non-profit boards that address the needs of youth experiencing homelessness for more than a decade.

Justice Bacon has been honored for her work and is the recipient of the 2022 Albuquerque Bar Association Distinguished Service Award, the 2020 Felipe Quintana Memorial Award of Excellence, and the 2015 Albuquerque Bar Association Outstand Judge Award. She has also been named the 2024 New Mexico Woman of the Year by USA Today.

Justice Carla Wong McMillan, Georgia Supreme Court

Justice Carla Wong McMillian was appointed to the Supreme Court of Georgia by Governor Brian Kemp, taking office on April 10, 2020. Born and raised in Augusta, Georgia, she is the first Asian Pacific American to serve on a state’s highest court in the Southern United States.

Prior to joining the Supreme Court, Justice McMillian served on the Court of Appeals, where she was appointed by Governor Nathan Deal and took office in 2013. With her election the following year to that court, Justice McMillian became the first Asian Pacific American to be elected to a statewide office in Georgia.

Justice McMillian has also served as the State Court Judge for Fayette County, a position to which she was appointed by Governor Sonny Perdue in 2010.

Before her appointment to the bench, Justice McMillian was a partner in the litigation group of Sutherland Asbill & Brennan LLP where she focused on complex business litigation and appeals. Justice McMillian also had the privilege of starting her legal career as a federal law clerk for the Honorable William C. O’Kelley of the United States District Court for the Northern District of Georgia.

Justice McMillian attended law school as a Woodruff Scholar at the University of Georgia School of Law. She also graduated with high honors from Duke University. Justice McMillian has been married since 1997 to her husband Lance, a professor at Atlanta’s John Marshall Law School. They have two children and live in Fayette County where they have been long-time members of Dogwood Church.

Edwin T. Bell, Director of Racial Justice, Equity, and Inclusion, National Center for State Courts

Edwin T. Bell is an accomplished public sector executive with a distinguished career spanning over 25 years. He currently serves as the Director of Racial Justice, Equity, and Inclusion for the National Center for State Courts. Edwin holds both Bachelor of Science and MBA degrees, as well as numerous court management certifications, the Public Leadership Credential from the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, and is a Fellow of the Institute for Court Management. Edwin’s journey is defined by his visionary leadership. He possesses a rare ability to drive change, build impactful partnerships, and spearhead transformative initiatives. His unwavering commitment to justice continues to leave an indelible mark on the organizations in which he works and within the community in which he lives.

Tom Ross, National Center for State Courts (NCSC) Board of Directors and former Director of NC Administrative Office of the Courts

Thomas W. Ross currently serves as Lead Independent Director of Bausch & Lomb Company, a Canadian eye care company. Previously, he served as president of the Volcker Alliance, a New York City based non-profit founded by former Chairman of the Federal Reserve, Paul Volcker. Ross is President Emeritus of the 17-campus University of North Carolina and of Davidson College.

Prior to serving as President of UNC and of Davidson College, Ross was executive director of the Z. Smith Reynolds Foundation, director of the North Carolina Administrative Office of the Courts, a Superior Court judge, chief of staff to a U. S. Congressman, a member of a Greensboro, NC law firm and an Assistant Professor of Public Law and Government at UNC-Chapel Hill’s School of Government.

Ross is a fellow of the National Academy of Public Administration and served as the first Sanford Distinguished Fellow in Public Policy at the Duke University Sanford School for Public Policy. He has received numerous awards and accolades for his public service and professional achievements including the William H. Rehnquist Award for Judicial Excellence (2000), given annually to one state judge in the nation; Governing Magazine’s National Public Official of the Year Award (1994); and the Foundation for the Improvement of Justice Award (1995); the North Carolina Chamber of Commerce Distinguished Public Service Award; the Echo Foundation Award Against Indifference; and the William Friday Award for Public Service, among others.

Born and raised in Greensboro, N.C., Ross holds a bachelor’s degree in political science from Davidson College (1972) and graduated with honors from the UNC-Chapel Hill School of Law (1975). He is married to Susan Donaldson Ross with whom he shares two adult children and four grandchildren.

Tonnya Kennedy Kohn, South Carolina State Court Administrator

Tonnya K. Kohn was appointed State Court Administrator by Supreme Court of South Carolina Chief Justice Donald W. Beatty in July 2017. Prior to beginning her tenure in South Carolina Court Administration as a staff attorney, she was in private practice, clerked at the Columbia law firm of Johnson, Toal & Battiste P.A., and clerked for the Honorable Clifton Newman of the South Carolina Circuit Court. Before attending law school, she was an editor at daily newspapers in Nashville, Tenn., Norfolk, Va., Lexington, Ky., and Columbia, SC, and twice a judge for the Pulitzer Prize in Journalism.

Tonnya K. Kohn is a Board of Directors Member of the Conference of State Court Administrators (COSCA) and the South Carolina Women Lawyers Association. She is also an Executive Committee Member of the National Judicial Task Force to Examine State Courts’ Response to Mental Illness, and the Blueprint for Racial Justice, both of which are national task forces of the Conference of Chief Justices (CCJ) and COSCA; Co-chair of the CCJ/COSCA Security and Emergency Preparedness Committee; and Chair of COSCA’s Language Access Advisory Committee.

She is a member of the Lexington County Bar Association, Richland County Bar Association, South Carolina Bar Association, and the South Carolina Black Lawyers Association.

Tonnya K. Kohn received her Bachelor’s Degree from Vanderbilt University, Master’s Degree from Murray State University, Juris Doctor from the University of South Carolina School of Law, and completed Northwestern University’s Advanced Media Management Executive Program.

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