Laura Negrón has been selected by Vera Institute for Justice to be Director of its Guardianship Project.  The project is an innovative program that courts can appoint to provide legal, social, and other support services to elderly and disabled people in New York City whom a judge has determined cannot care for themselves.

As director, Negrón oversees a staff of lawyers, social workers, and financial managers. Working together, they arrange for health and home care and property- and money-management assistance that enable many clients to remain independent, rather than be sent to nursing homes. The result is a higher quality of life for clients and substantial Medicaid savings for the state.

Negrón has more than 30 years of public interest experience in nonprofit management, fundraising, community relations, and program development across a variety of areas including elder care, youth programs, higher education, government, social services, and the law. Most recently, she served as a staff attorney in the Nassau County Attorney’s Office. She previously served as dean of institutional advancement for Long Island University’s Brooklyn Campus and was a Charles Revson Public Interest Fellow at Human Rights Watch.

“Most lawyers assigned as guardians are paid from the clients’ assets,” said Negrón. “However, our clients often have no assets, which means that these lawyers would have little incentive to give them the time needed to ensure that they are able to remain safely in their own homes. It takes a great deal of time, planning, and energy to keep someone out of a nursing care facility, but our effort pays off in a better quality of life for extremely vulnerable people and a net savings for the state.”

“The director of the Guardianship Project must be like the project itself: well versed in the personal as well as the legal issues of guardianship care,” said Vera’s director, Michael Jacobson. “We are extremely fortunate to have found such a person in Laura Negrón.”

A graduate of Hunter College with a master’s degree in social work, Negrón also holds a JD from the City University of New York’s School of Law, where she was managing editor of the New York City Law Review.  

Negrón succeeds Jean Callahan, founding director of the Guardianship Project, who left Vera to become co-director of Hunter College’s Brookdale Center for Healthy Aging and Longevity and director of its Sadin Institute on Law and Public Policy.

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