Teresa Hepler

Teresa joined the Civil Rights & Racial Justice Program at LAJC in Spring 2021. She worked as a public defender in New Hampshire for about three and a half years before coming to LAJC. During her time there, she witnessed the heartlessness of the police and prosecutors who refused to see people as human beings, which inspired her to work toward transferring power from the criminal legal system to the people. Teresa earned her B.A. from the University of Maryland, College Park and her M.A. in Humanities from the University of Chicago. She earned her law degree from the University of Virginia School of Law where she was a student in the Housing Law Clinic at LAJC and received the Mortimer Caplin Public Service Award.