Sherrilyn Ifill is a civil rights lawyer and scholar. She currently serves as the Vernon E. Jordan, Jr. Distinguished Professor of Civil Rights at Howard University School of Law. Ifill previously served as the President & Director-Counsel of the NAACP Legal Defense & Educational Fund, Inc. (LDF) from 2013 2022. Her leadership was widely credited with transforming and growing the organization, elevating the visibility and importance of civil rights issues, and shaping the national conversation about race and justice. Since stepping down from LDF she has been a Ford Foundation Fellow, a Fellow of the Museum of Modern Art in New York, and a Visiting Professor at Harvard Law School. For more than 30 years Ifill has been at the forefront of civil rights advocacy, first as a young voting rights litigator at the LDF, and then as a professor for 20 years at University of Maryland School of Law. Ifill’s voice and scholarship, including her 2008 book, ON THE COURTHOUSE LAWN: CONFRONTING THE LEGACY OF LYNCHING IN THE 21ST CENTURY, has powerfully shaped our national narrative about race during volatile years of unrest and “racial reckoning.” Ifill is currently completing a new book entitled “Is This America?”, which will be published by Penguin Press in 2025. Ifill has been named one of the “100 Most Influential People in the World” by TIME Magazine. She is a recipient of numerous honorary doctorates, and prestigious honors in the legal profession including the Radcliffe Medal, the Brandeis Medal, the Thurgood Marshall Award from the American Bar Association and the Gold Medal from the New York State Bar Association. Ifill was inducted into the American Academy of Arts & Sciences in 2019. Ifill served on President Biden’s Supreme Court Commission, and current serves on the ABA Task Force on Democracy. She is a board member of the NYU School of Law, the Mellon Foundation, and the Baltimore Museum of Art.