YWCA Leadership Breakfast 2024: Empathy in Action

Welcome to the YWCA Leadership Breakfast 2024: Leadership in Action event! Join us for a morning of inspiration and empowerment as we celebrate and recognize the work of the YWCA and share our vision for the future. The event will take place on Friday, September 20, 2024 at the Hotel Bellwether Ballroom. Get ready to network, learn, and be motivated by our keynote speaker, Sara Rankin. Don't miss this opportunity to be a part of a dynamic gathering of leaders committed to making a difference. See you there!

Sara Rankin, a law professor at Seattle University School of Law, is a national expert on legal and policy issues relating to people experiencing homelessness and deep poverty. Her research and teaching explores the impact of homelessness on marginalized groups, including people of color, immigrants, and people with disabilities, as well as the intersectionality of homelessness and incarceration. Professor Rankin is the founder and Director of the Homeless Rights Advocacy Project at Seattle University School of Law, where she works with law students to advance the civil, constitutional, and human rights of unhoused people. She sits on several boards, including the King County Public Defense Advisory Board and the National Homelessness Law Center. She is also co-founder and co-chair of the Third Door Coalition, an alliance of Seattle researchers, service providers, and business leaders advancing permanent supportive housing as the most humane and cost-effective solution to chronic homelessness. Professor Rankin regularly partners with national and local leaders in homeless rights advocacy, presents across the nation on homeless rights issues, and writes extensively on the criminalization of homelessness and the need to find nonpunitive responses to chronic homelessness.

Before teaching, Professor Rankin earned nearly a decade of experience in private practice at major law firms such as Kirkland & Ellis, LLP and Sidley Austin, LLP, where she specialized in complex litigation. She also gained an in-house perspective, serving as assistant general counsel for a national accounting firm.

Prior to her legal career, Professor Rankin received her M.Ed. from the Harvard Graduate School of Education and her J.D. from New York University School of Law. Professor Rankin's teaching and scholarship interests include legal and policy issues relating to people experiencing homelessness, policy advocacy, the policing of poverty, and housing justice.

Host or Publisher Samantha Roeder, REALTOR