Biography

Sherrilyn Ifill is a civil rights lawyer and scholar. From 2013-2022, she served as the President and Director-Counsel of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc. (LDF), the nation’s premier civil rights law organization fighting for racial justice and equality. She recently served as a Ford Foundation Fellow and as the Klinsky Visiting Professor for Leadership & Progress at Harvard Law School, and as a fellow at the Museum of Modern Art. Ifill is currently the Vernon Jordan Distinguished Professor in Civil Rights at Howard Law School Ifill where she founded the 14th Amendment Center for Law & Democracy. 

Ifill’s tenure at the helm of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund was widely praised for elevating the profile, voice and influence of the organization, and for expanding and deepening its work across multiple areas of civil rights law. Ifill’s voice and analysis played a prominent role in shaping our national conversation about race and civil rights during a tumultuous period of racial reckoning in our country. Her strategic vision and counsel remain highly sought-after by leaders in government, business, law, grassroots organizations, and academia.   

Ifill began her legal career as a Fellow at the American Civil Liberties Union, before joining the staff of the LDF as an Assistant Counsel, where she litigated voting rights cases in the south. In 1993 Ifill left LDF to join the faculty at University of Maryland School of Law in Baltimore where she taught for twenty years before rejoining LDF in 2013 as its President & Director-Counsel. 

Ifill is a scholar whose work has appeared in leading law journals, periodicals, and the nation’s leading newspapers. Her  book ON THE COURTHOUSE LAWN: CONFRONTING THE LEGACY OF LYNCHING IN THE 21ST CENTURY, was highly acclaimed, and is credited with laying the foundation for contemporary conversations about lynching and reconciliation. She is currently completing a new book about race and the current crisis in American democracy entitled, “Is This America?” which will be published by Penguin Press. 

Ifill is a graduate of Vassar College and earned her J.D. from New York University School of Law. She is the recipient of numerous honorary doctorates and many of the most prestigious medals in the legal profession including, the Radcliffe Medal, the Brandeis Medal, the Thurgood Marshall Award from the American Bar Association, and The Gold Medal from the New York State Bar Association. Ifill was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2019, and was named by TIME Magazine as one of the 100 Most Influential People in the World in 2021.