One of the first women ever to be named United States Attorney. Former President of the Federal Executive Council. First woman president of the Association of Trial Lawyers of America. Founder of the Civil Justice Foundation. Founder and first chair of the Iowa Women’s Political Caucus. Named by the National Law Journal as one of the fifty most influential women lawyers and one of the top 10 litigators  in America.

Roxanne Conlin, JD/MPA, is a legal trailblazer and a lifelong advocate for women. In 1977, Roxanne was the one of the first two women to be named U.S. Attorney, where she prosecuted white-collar crimes and political corruption in the Southern District of Iowa. In the 1970s, Roxanne was the head of the Civil Rights Division of the Iowa Department of Justice and fought race and sex discrimination as an Assistant Attorney General. In 1982, Roxanne ran to become Iowa’s first female governor, and she ran in 2010 to become Iowa’s first female senator.  She was the first woman president of the Association of Trial Lawyers of America, a 60,000 member organization of consumer attorneys, and was the first woman to chair the Roscoe Pound Foundation, a trial lawyers think tank named for the former Dean of Harvard Law School.  Roxanne was also the founder and first chair of the Civil Justice Foundation, which provides direct support to grassroots organizations and disabled individuals, and served as president and general counsel of the NOW Legal Defense and Education Fund.  

In the words of the HLS community member who nominated her, “Roxanne has spent much of her career mentoring other women and men and creating institutional change that will long outlast her own career.”