Cara Suvall

Cara Suvall is a Senior Staff Attorney with the New York Civil Liberties Union’s Racial Justice Center. Before joining the NYCLU, Cara was a Clinical Professor at Vanderbilt Law School. She created and directed the Youth Opportunity Clinic, which partnered with clients and community organizations to fight back against the criminalization of teens and young adults in Tennessee. Cara began her legal career at the Bronx Defenders, where she pioneered integrating education advocacy into the work of criminal defense and co-founded the Adolescent Defense Practice. She also worked as a Staff Attorney in the Southern office of A Better Balance: The Work and Family Legal Center, advocating for workers’ rights.

Cara served as a law clerk for Judge Jeffrey R. Howard of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit and for Judge Douglas P. Woodlock of the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts. She earned her J.D. from Harvard Law School and her B.A. from the University of Pennsylvania.