CAP Faculty and Staff

Child Advocacy Program

CAP's team includes:

Professor Elizabeth Bartholet, Faculty Director

Professor Martha Minow, Faculty Advisor

Lecturer on Law Jessica Budnitz, Managing Director

Eleanor Topping , 1/2 Time CAP Program Assistant

Anna Pierce, 1/3 Time CAP Program Assistant

Nationally renowned child welfare expert Elizabeth Bartholet (Morris Wasserstein Public Interest Professor of Law) is the Faculty Director of CAP. She teaches family law, specializing in child welfare, adoption and reproductive technology, as well as employment discrimination. Before joining the HLS Faculty, she was engaged in civil rights and public interest work, first with the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, and later as founder and director of the Legal Action Center, a non-profit organization in New York City focused on criminal justice and substance abuse issues. Bartholet graduated from Radcliffe College in 1962, and from Harvard Law School in 1965. Her publications include: Nobody's Children: Abuse and Neglect, Foster Drift, and the Adoption Alternative (Beacon Press, 1999), and Family Bonds: Adoption, Infertility, and the New World of Child Production (Beacon Press, 1999), as well as numerous law review articles. Bartholet has won several awards for her writing and her related advocacy work in the area of adoption and child welfare. Other awards include a “Media Achievement Award” in 1994 and the Radcliffe College Alumnae Recognition Award in 1997. For more information about Proessor Bartholet and to view her publications, please visit her website.

Leading education and human rights scholar Martha Minow (William Henry Bloomberg Professor of Law) also plays a central role in CAP. Her research and teaching interests include education law and advocacy, including special education issues, as well as equality and inequality, human rights, law and social change, and issues related to women, children, and family. Minow graduated from the University of Michigan in 1975, from Harvard Graduate School of Education in 1976, and from Yale Law School in 1979. She is the author of many books and law review articles. She has served on the boards of numerous organizations including various child welfare agencies as well as the American Bar Foundation, the W.T. Grant Foundation, the Bazelon Center for Mental Health Law, and the Carnegie Corporation Task Force on Education in the Early Years. For more information about Proessor Minow and to view her publications, please visit her faculty webpage.

Jessica Budnitz (Lecturer on Law) is CAP's Managing Director. Before working at CAP, she founded and directed Juvenile Justice Partners, a child-focused legal clinic in Cambridge, Massachusetts. She is an Echoing Green Foundation Fellow, the 2003 recipient of HLS's Gary Bellow Public Service Award, and a 2004 recipient of the YWCA of Cambridge Award for Outstanding Women. Ms. Budnitz is currently a Prelaw Residential Tutor in Leverett House at Harvard College. She is a 2001 graduate of Harvard Law School and a 1998 graduate of Duke University.

CAP's 1/2 time Program Assistant is Eleanor Topping.

Anna Pierce spends one third of her time supporting CAP as Program Assistant. Prior to this, she worked closely with the Director of the Harvard University Commencement Office. Anna has spent the majority of her time since graduating from Smith College in 2003 doing public interest work. Her experience includes fundraising and public outreach with a number of organizations such as the State PIRGs, Save the Children, Sierra Club, and the Human Rights Campaign. She has also served as a substitute teacher in the Littleton Public Schools and interned at the Cambridgeport Children's Center. Anna has a B.A. in Anthropology and Sociology with a focus in African American Studies.