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Elizabeth Vartkessian on "The Deserving"

Hear directly from Elizabeth Vartkessian as she shares insights, stories, and the experiences behind her work, The Deserving, in conversation with Professor Ngozi Ndulue. Books will be available for purchase and signing. Don’t miss this opportunity to gain a deeper understanding of her work in criminal defense mitigation and engage with powerful perspectives on justice, trauma, and rehabilitation.

Elizabeth Vartkessian works with criminal defense teams as a mitigation specialist. She isn’t part of the Innocence Project; her clients are often legally guilty, and often of serious crimes. Rather, her job is to spend hundreds of hours per case talking to the parents, siblings, teachers, and neighbors of a defendant, situating their crimes in context.

Founder and director of the nonprofit mitigation team Advancing Real Change Inc., Vartkessian weaves powerful, gripping stories from her extraordinary career into an inspiring argument for dignity in American justice. Her unique experience has taught her that when personal or generational trauma enters the body, it finds its way out eventually—sometimes through violence. She contends that we cannot hold her clients solely responsible for their actions, nor can we continue to impose harsh penalties that deny real justice to perpetrators and victims alike.

Amid the Trump administration’s record-high executions and calls to expand the use of the death penalty after decades of progress, "The Deserving" is required reading for a dangerous new era of rollbacks. Vartkessian offers a compelling, hope-filled vision of true rehabilitation replacing retribution.

Ngozi Ndulue is an Associate Professor of Law at the University of the District of Columbia David A. Clarke School of Law and Director of the Post-Conviction Criminal Defense Clinic, where students represent clients in post-conviction challenges to criminal convictions. The clinic focuses on developing core skills for post-conviction work, including legal research and writing, client relationship building, post-conviction investigation, and the integration of racial justice claims.

Before joining UDC Law, Professor Ndulue held several nonprofit leadership roles focused on racial justice, the criminal legal system, and indigent defense. Most recently, she served as the Innocence Project’s first Special Advisor on Race and Wrongful Conviction, where she provided expertise on racial justice, equity, bias, and discrimination in the criminal legal system, particularly as it relates to wrongful convictions.

Earlier in her career, she held leadership roles at the Death Penalty Information Center, the NAACP, and the Ohio Justice & Policy Center, and served as an Assistant Federal Public Defender in the Arizona Capital Habeas Unit (2008–2011). Professor Ndulue holds a JD from Yale Law School and a BA from the University of Cincinnati.