Vincent Southerland
Vincent Southerland joined the Center on Race, Inequality, and the Law as its inaugural Executive Director in February 2017. He has dedicated his career to advancing racial justice and civil rights. Vincent came to NYU Law after serving as an Assistant Federal Public Defender with the Federal Defenders for the Southern District of New York since 2015. Prior to that, he spent seven years at the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, where he was Senior Counsel. There, he engaged in litigation and advocacy at the intersection of race and the criminal system, including the successful representation of people sentenced to death across the American South and children sentenced to life imprisonment without parole. Vincent previously served as a staff attorney at The Bronx Defenders, and an E. Barrett Prettyman Fellow at Georgetown University Law Center, and a law clerk to two federal judges.
