Angela Conway
Founder and CEO
Angela is a globally recognized leader in catalyzing opportunity for women and in transformation of legal systems, institutions, services, and professionals.
A social entrepreneur, global nonprofit executive, international development leader, and attorney, she brings diverse, comparative global perspectives to her work as a field-builder at the forefront of artificial intelligence and other innovation in law and in catalyzing opportunity for women in law. She holds expansive global networks, deep understanding of the global legal and technology sectors, and has led numerous pioneering initiatives to catalyze and capacitate large scale legal and justice systems change, advance gender equality, and leverage technology in complex settings in over 30 countries. Her first-hand experience includes leading transformative initiatives in novel political, technological, and legal contexts during moments of historic change and in navigating complex regulatory environments, high stakes challenges, uncertainty and extremely dynamic legal environments to bring new ideas, policies, systems, institutions, and solutions to life.
She holds extensive expertise in law-related and government innovation and as trusted cabinet-level advisor who has counseled and worked alongside dozens of Ministers of Justice, Chief Justices, Attorney Generals, and other cabinet level officials on legal system transformation. She has supported over 50 government institutions and judicial bodies in undertaking policy and programmatic initiatives, strategy, and institutional transformation. She has also advised law deans, faculty, and executive directors of national professional training bodies on transformation of legal and professional legal education and supported over 50 higher and professional legal education institutions with policy and programmatic initiatives, strategy, and institutional transformation. She has advised bar presidents and executive leaders of over 60 civil society organizations on law related transformation and programs. She has forged partnerships with business, universities, legal communities, social entrepreneurs, and philanthropy around the world to lead strategic initiatives from conception to implementation and scaling in complex, high stakes global settings. She is a connector, weaver, and strategist expert in building global collaboration to address pressing geopolitical and legal issues and in forging partnerships with global leaders and institutions as well as individual changemakers. A thought leader and advocate, she is committed to spreading knowledge and driving transformative change.
Prior to founding the Lady Justice Initiative, Angela served as a senior executive leader at the American Bar Association where she founded, built, scaled, and led its Middle East and North Africa Initiative. In this role, she transformed an “idea” into a 19 country initiative and operation, forging partnerships with governments, business, civil society, and higher education institutions, establishing offices and teams in Algeria, Bahrain, Egypt, Jordan, Iraq, Lebanon, Libya, Morocco, Netherlands, Oman, Tunisia, Turkey, and Yemen, and leading research, design, resource mobilization, and implementation of over 140 groundbreaking initiatives, which advanced the rule of law, democracy, gender equality, justice, and good governance throughout the region. She raised and managed over $150 million in program funding from U.S. Department of State, USAID, SIDA, the Dutch, British, and MENA governments, among others, as well as the Ford Foundation. Her work included: leading the building of 4 novel public interest technology platforms one of which helped over 12,000 Syrian refugees living in Turkey gain access to legal information and services and another which support election awareness and integrity, transforming higher and professional legal education and skills training in MENA by leading collaborations with 48 institutions to integrate experiential and competency-based learning for law students, lawyers, judges, court clerks, and prosecutors, leading pioneering research on the status of women, rule of law, justice, human rights, and legal education, and helping establish 6 NGOs and networks of women lawyers and judges.
Outcomes of her work include numerous initiatives that achieved institutional stickiness at scale— programs that institutions choose to fund and operate independently following donor exits; many have operated continuously for over 15 years.
Read about Angela’s vision for building an AI era of law where women in law capture opportunity and thrive in the DC Bar’s Washington Lawyer.
Read SpotDraft‘s recent spotlight on Angela in “Women Shaping the Future of Legal.”
