Board of Trustees

Laurie O. Robinson is Director of the Master of Science Program in the University of Pennsylvania's Department of Criminology, a position she has held since 2003. Since 2001, she has also served as a Distinguished Senior Scholar in the University's Jerry Lee Center of Criminology, and as Executive Director of its Forum on Crime & Justice. The Forum holds regular programs for Capitol Hill staff and other Washington policymakers on state and local criminal justice innovation.

Robinson served as a Presidentially-appointed and Senate-confirmed Assistant Attorney General in the United States Department of Justice from 1993-2000. In that capacity, she headed the Office of Justice Programs, the Department’s research, statistics, and state and local criminal justice assistance arm, which includes the National Institute of Justice, the Bureau of Justice Statistics, and the Bureau of Justice Assistance. Under her leaderships, the annual appropriations for OJP grew from $800 million to over $4 billion. She spearheaded initiatives in such areas as violence against women, law enforcement technology, drug abuse and corrections, and oversaw the largest increase in federal spending on criminal justice research in the nation’s history. In 1998, she established a new OJP office on domestic terrorism preparedness for state and local first responders.

Prior to joining the Justice Department, Ms. Robinson served for 14 years as Director of the American Bar Association's Section of Criminal Justice in Washington.

Robinson chairs the Board of Trustees of the Vera Institute of Justice in New York. She also sits on a number of other boards, including those of the Police Foundation, the Constitution Project, the National Center for Victims of Crime, and the George Mason University Administration of Justice Program as well as on the American Judicature Society's Commission on Forensic Science and Public Policy.