Bergmark Biography

Martha Bergmark is Vice President for Programs of the National Legal Aid and Defender Association in Washington DC. She directs the National Membership Association's programs and activities to advance and support equal access to justice. In 1997, as Director of the Project for the Future of Equal Justice, Martha launched a major foundation-funded effort to expand and strengthen the nationwide partnership of responsibility for equal justice and to promote the development in every state of a comprehensive, integrated system to provide low-income people with the information and assistance they need to resolve their civil legal problems. The Project is jointly sponsored by NLADA and the Center for Law and Social Policy and hosts the Equal Justice Network, www.equaljustice.org, a centerpiece of its communication activities.

Martha is a former President and Executive Vice President of the Legal Services Corporation, established by Congress to receive and grant federal funds to local civil legal services programs throughout the country. Her legal services career includes stints as Civil Division Director of NLADA, Project Co-ordinator of the Project Advisory Group (which recently merged with NLADA), and founding Executive Director of Southeast Mississippi Legal Services Corporation. She is a former Reginald Heber Smith Fellow and the 1990 recipient of the Kutak-Dodds Prize. She is a graduate of the University of Michigan Law School and Oberlin College.