Rebecca Epstein

Rebecca Epstein is the Executive Director of the Center on Gender Justice & Opportunity at Georgetown Law. Under Rebecca’s leadership since 2012, the Center has driven policy changes in courts and schools and influenced national discussions on critical issues, such as the criminalization of girls and the biases faced by Black girls.

Among other publications, Rebecca co-authored Criminalized Survivors: Today’s Sexual Abuse to Prison Pipeline for Girls (2023) and was the lead author of Girlhood Interrupted: The Erasure of Black Girls’ Childhood (2017), which first quantified adultification bias against Black girls.

Rebecca serves as an expert advisor in several capacities, including the Family Training Committee of the Superior Court of the District of Columbia and Brown University’s Pembroke Center for Teaching and Research on Women. She has held leadership roles at the Girls @ the Margin National Alliance and the National Girls Initiative of the U.S. Department of Justice. Rebecca regularly briefs government agencies on girls’ issues, ranging from the White House to local task forces. Her work is widely published, appearing in media such as The New York Times, Washington Post, and NPR.

Previously, Rebecca was a senior trial attorney in the Civil Rights Division of the U.S. Department of Justice, a staff attorney at Public Justice, and Policy Counsel at the National Partnership for Women and Families. An honors graduate of Brown University and NYU School of Law, she clerked for Judge Raymond A. Jackson and is a member of the District of Columbia, New York, and Supreme Court bars.