Anne Erickson

Anne Erickson is President and CEO of the Empire Justice Center, a multi-faceted legal services organization working to advance social and economic justice in New York. A powerhouse of litigation, legal assistance, policy analysis and legislative advocacy, Empire Justice has shaped the state’s antipoverty efforts for over four decades.

Focused on building Empire Justice, Ms. Erickson is dedicated to expanding the capacity of the legal services community to meet the ever-increasing need for access to justice. She helped position Empire Justice to lead in the creation of the State’s foreclosure prevention services, working with the Office of the Attorney General to design the Home Ownership Protection Program. In addition, Ms. Erickson helped launch a joint project with the New York State Office of Victim Services to provide civil legal assistance to crime victims. She helped shape the early efforts to launch the Liberty Defense Project (LDP) with the New York State Office of New Americans.

Ms. Erickson continues to lead the annual state budget efforts to ensure that legal services are adequately funded; her work within the legal services community helped pave the way for the first allocation of general funding for civil legal services in New York in 1993. Ms. Erickson has provided support and leadership to the legal services community throughout her career and was named by then Chief Judge Jonathan Lippman to the State’s Task Force on Expanded Access to Legal Services, now the Permanent Commission on Access to Justice.

Serving as Legislative Coordinator for the Greater Upstate Law Project (now Empire Justice) from 1989 to 1999, Ms. Erickson rose to the position of CEO in 2000. Prior to joining Empire Justice, she was Assistant Director of Statewide Youth Advocacy, running the Children’s Collaborative, working on the first Child Health Plus legislation, helping to craft the first Prenatal Care Assistance Project and working to expand access to health care through Family Health Plus. Appointed by Governor Mario M. Cuomo to the State’s Health Care Financing Agency in 1992, Ms. Erickson’s was an early and steady voice for the uninsured in New York.

Born and raised on Long Island, Ms. Erickson is the sixth of 15 children born to Doris and Henry Erickson. She arrived in Albany as a student reporter for the Legislative Gazette in 1978, its inaugural year of publication. A legislative correspondent for WAMC Northeast Public radio in the early 1980s, Ms. Erickson now serves as Vice Chair of the WAMC Board of Trustees.