Vera Institute of Justice

Kevin Keenan was Vera’s vice president of innovation and new initiatives. He helped lead Vera's efforts to transform the U.S. justice system, as well as Vera’s infrastructure and support for idea creation and scaling. Kevin previously served as the COO and general counsel of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund and executive director of the ACLU of San Diego. As an Equal Justice Works Fellow, he served as an attorney for children in Virginia’s juvenile prisons and succeeded in pressing for new laws to improve reentry services for children with mental health and educational difficulties. As a volunteer, he assisted the Committee on the Administration of Justice with police reform efforts in Belfast, Northern Ireland, following the Good Friday Agreement and, with the OSCE, monitored elections in the former Yugoslavia. He wrote the reference handbook Invasion of Privacy (2005) and, with Sam Walker, co-authored a law review article “An Analysis of Law Enforcement Officers’ Bills of Rights” (2005). He graduated from Yale Law School and Swarthmore College. He served as a term member of the Council on Foreign Relations and as treasurer and vice president of the Yale Law School Alumni Association Executive Committee.