We are proud to honor these individuals for their incredible advocacy, partnership, and storytelling. We're immensely grateful for all they have done to advance the movement to end the extreme sentencing of children, and we look forward to celebrating their legacies at our Healing & Hope reception.
Clint Smith is the author of the narrative nonfiction book, How the Word Is Passed: A Reckoning With the History of Slavery Across America, which was a #1 New York Times bestseller, winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award for Nonfiction, the Hillman Prize for Book Journalism, the Stowe Prize, and selected by the New York Times as one of the 10 best books of 2021. He is also the author of the New York Times bestselling poetry collection Above Ground and the award-winning poetry collection Counting Descent. His writing has been published in The New Yorker, The New York Times Magazine, Poetry Magazine, The Paris Review, and elsewhere. Clint received his B.A. in English from Davidson College and a Ph.D. in Education from Harvard University. He is a staff writer at The Atlantic.
Herschella G. Conyers is the Lillian E. Kraemer Clinical Professor in Public Interest Law and the Director of the Mandel Legal Aid Clinic's Criminal and Juvenile Justice Project. Before joining the Law School, she served as an assistant public defender, supervisor, and deputy chief in the Office of the Cook County Public Defender from 1986 to 1993. During her time at the Public Defender’s Office, she represented CFSY Executive Director Xavier McElrath-Bey when he was sentenced as a child at 13 years old. A native of the South Side of Chicago, Conyers became interested in criminal defense and juvenile justice after doing her law school clinical work at the Criminal Defense Consortium of Cook County, in Woodlawn. Conyers is actively engaged in criminal and juvenile justice policy, locally and nationally. She received both her JD and her BA from the University of Chicago.
Mary Lou Hartman served on the board of CFSY for six years. She is deeply committed to human dignity, social justice, and human rights. She currently accompanies and advocates for refugees seeking asylum. Mary Lou also has been active in reforming juvenile justice and in combatting gender discrimination, with a focus on addressing violence against women and girls in countries ranging from the Democratic Republic of Congo to Afghanistan, as well as here at home. She previously was Director of the George Mitchell Scholarship program for the US-Ireland Alliance. She also was a television news producer for CBS News and CNN and a Peabody Award-winning producer of documentary films.
