© 2014 The Texas Lawbook.
By Brooks Igo – (July 14) – After serving for a decade as a board member, Kathleen LaValle is transitioning out of her longtime litigation practice at Jackson Walker to become the executive director and president of Dallas CASA (Court Appointed Special Advocates).
LaValle said she has always found the nonprofit’s cause – to provide advocacy for children who have been removed from their homes because of abuse or neglect – to be compelling.
“It is a unique opportunity to have my professional life match directly to a cause this profound,” said LaValle, who served as the board’s vice president of community outreach prior to assuming her new role. “It is very humbling and a privilege to be selected.”
Dallas CASA had been looking for someone to succeed Beverly Levy after she gave a year’s notice that she was stepping down after serving more than 20 years as executive director. LaValle, who was part of the search team, said she felt a “nagging feeling” to consider taking it on. She submitted her application in mid-May and went through a “rigorous review,” which she credits with strengthening her resolve to do the work.
“Our search committee formed last fall and Kathleen had been very active with CASA and had served on CASA’s board,” says Pioneer Natural Resources Executive Vice President Mark Berg, who is the past chairman of the CASA board.
“When Kathleen decided to put her hat in for the job, she immediately became a finalist,” says Berg, who oversees Pioneer’s legal and regulatory efforts. “Kathleen is a great leader and she is exactly the person we need as CASA grows so quickly to serve our community. As a lawyer, she is familiar with the courts.”
As president of the board in 2006, LaValle helped the nonprofit form a new auxiliary group, the Dallas CASA Children’s Council, which has increased awareness and funding for Dallas CASA. The SMU Dedman School of Law graduate is taking on leadership of the nonprofit during a $37 million fundraising campaign already underway to double the number of children served by 2016 and meet all children’s needs by 2019.
If LaValle and Dallas Casa achieve the latter, Dallas would be the first metropolitan area in the country to have a volunteer advocate assigned to every child in protective care. LaValle says Dallas CASA currently has 700 volunteer advocates now and would need 1,400 by 2019. The nonprofit serves more than 2,000 children in protective care – less than three out of five children that could benefit from a volunteer advocate.
“One of my hopes is to make Dallas CASA a household name and reach a critical mass of volunteers to reach all children in need,” she said.
Another initiative LaValle wants to spearhead is a sponsored research project to develop data to support the difference a CASA advocate makes. She says this data would help Dallas CASA measure and share what the impact of having an advocate is beyond anecdotes. A couple examples of the questions she hopes the research would address are, “Is the child more likely to graduate from high school?” and “Is the child more likely to go back into protected care?”
LaValle will continue to serve Jackson Walker as of counsel in an advisory role on some ongoing matters to fulfill commitments she made to clients. While she will have a much more limited practice, she says she will continue to support the firm’s diversity efforts, such as jw2, the firm’s women’s initiative that she founded.
“We fully support Kathleen as she begins a new chapter with Dallas CASA,” Wade Cooper, Jackson Walker’s managing partner, said in a statement. “As a firm, we have a culture that encourages and supports our attorneys in their work in the community, and Kathleen fully embodies those values through the leadership she has demonstrated both within the firm and in the community.”
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