She is the President and Chief Executive Officer of the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights. Previously, she was the Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General and acting head of the Civil Rights Division at the U.S. Department of Justice until January 20, 2017. She was appointed to lead the division by Barack Obama in October 2014.[2] Formerly, she was a civil rights lawyer and the Deputy Legal Director of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), where she oversaw its national criminal justice reform efforts.[3] Prior to that, she was Assistant Counsel at the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund (LDF). Throughout her career, she has drawn support from a wide range of liberal and conservative activists, as well as law enforcement leaders, for building collaborative support and finding common ground on policing and criminal justice reform.[4][5]