ASHEVILLE · August 5, 2019—The North Carolina Bar Association honored TeAndra Miller, the head of our Domestic Violence Prevention Initiative, with the Deborah Greenblatt Outstanding Legal Services Attorney Award at the association’s Pro Bono Awards Ceremony on June 20 in Asheville.
The Greenblatt Award is given annually to a legal aid lawyer who has made exemplary contributions to the provision of legal aid to North Carolinians in poverty. The award is named after the late Deborah Greenblatt, the former executive director of Disability Rights NC and an inspirational leader in the legal aid and disability rights communities.
“I am truly honored to receive the Greenblatt Award,” TeAndra said, “and I am equally grateful for the opportunity to do such important work on behalf of some of Legal Aid’s most vulnerable clients. My colleagues and I advocate for people whose lives are literally at stake, a fact which infuses our day-to-day work with incredible purpose and meaning—a true blessing.”
TeAndra has been a legal aid lawyer for nearly her entire 25-year legal career. In 1994, after earning her J.D. from N.C. Central University School of Law, she became a family law attorney with East Central Community Legal Services in Raleigh, the predecessor to our Raleigh field office. TeAndra left legal aid for private practice in 1996 but returned in 1999 and has focused on domestic violence ever since.
As the head of our Domestic Violence Prevention Initiative, TeAndra coordinates the delivery of legal services to victims of domestic violence and sexual assault across the state. She ensures that advocates throughout our field offices have the training, supervision and resources necessary to provide consistently high-quality and compassionate representation to some of our most vulnerable clients.
She has built strong relationships with partner organizations and funders, and plays a major role in expanding our capacity to serve victims by securing and managing critical funding to support our advocacy. She also serves as the public face of our advocacy by conducting outreach and providing training to law enforcement, social services agencies, the larger legal community and other stakeholders at the local, state and national levels.
TeAndra has served on a variety of local and statewide task forces that focus on domestic violence and sexual assault. She is currently a member of the N.C. Equal Access to Justice Commission, the Administrative Office of the Court’s Family Court Committee and the Wake County Fatality Task Force.
TeAndra’s parents inspired her to become a public-interest lawyer. Her father, Louis Martin, was a Reginald Heber Smith Fellow for a civil legal aid organization in Little Rock, Ark., in the 70s. He went on to serve as the Executive Director of the Connecticut Commission on Human Rights and Opportunities and Deputy Director of the Maryland Commission on Human Relations.
When her mother, Delores Martin, was 32, Gov. Bill Clinton appointed her to serve as Acting Director of the Arkansas Department of Aging. She went on to direct the Aging Division of the Illinois Attorney General’s office and the Illinois Court of Claims. TeAndra and her mother were both sworn in to the U.S. Supreme Court at the same ceremony in 2009.
TeAndra lives in Wake County with her husband. They have two daughters and one grandson.