Amy Barasch, Esq.

Innovator in Residence

Amy Barasch, Esq. refers to herself as both a recovering lawyer and a recovering bureaucrat. She has dedicated her career to combining law, advocacy, and creativity to make legal and bureaucratic systems work for people, especially women, with a particular focus on individuals and families living in poverty. Much of her career has been dedicated to the issue of intimate partner violence, which taught her that siloed services are ineffective and inefficient, and that centering those who use systems is the only way to make them work.

From 2014 to 2024, Barasch served as the Executive Director of Her Justice, a non-profit that stands with women living in poverty in New York City by recruiting and mentoring volunteer lawyers to provide free legal help in family, divorce, and immigration law, and to address individual and systemic legal barriers. Under her leadership, Her Justice developed a policy department, reached over 3,000 clients each year, and increased its budget by more than a third. From 2007 to 2012, Barasch served as the Executive Director of the New York State Office for the Prevention of Domestic Violence. During her tenure, she was central to the launch of a statewide database of police-reported domestic incidents; the passage of an anti-strangulation statute; the inclusion of domestic violence as a high-priority issue in all State-level anti-crime initiatives; and ensuring responsive and up-to-date training for local governmental employees in the areas of child welfare, public safety, temporary assistance, healthcare, and probation.

Prior to joining state government, Barasch was a member of the New York City Office to Combat Domestic Violence (now ENDGBV) where she designed and ran an interagency, high-risk domestic violence case conferencing program, which became the basis of the Brooklyn Family Justice Center (FJC). Barasch led the design team and ran the Brooklyn FJC from its launch in 2004 until she joined the State. Prior to joining City government, Barasch represented victims of domestic violence in family court in private practice and created and directed a law student externship program in Westchester, New York, at the Pace Women’s Justice Center.

Upon graduation from Columbia Law School in 1996, Barasch worked at Hughes Hubbard & Reed LLP as an associate, where she served as the associate in charge of pro bono. She also has a B.A. from Brown University. Prior to attending law school, Barasch worked as a journalist and translator in the US and France. Barasch has published and spoken publicly about partner violence, family courts and gender throughout her career. She currently teaches the class Gender, Violence and the Law at Fordham Law School as an adjunct professor. She is a native New Yorker.

Publications