CCRC’s Board of Directors is delighted to announce that Rob Poggenklass has accepted its offer to serve as CCRC Deputy Director.  Rob has served as a public defender and legal aid lawyer in Virginia and Iowa for more than a decade, and has the technical legal skills, the field experience, and the passion for the policy issues that make him an ideal fit for the position.

“I’m excited to join an organization dedicated to many issues I care so deeply about,” Rob told the CCRC board. “Everyone deserves a chance to live with dignity, and the effects of a criminal record often stand in the way. I have spent much of my career fighting against these barriers. I look forward to elevating these issues across the country at CCRC.”

We first met met Rob three years ago, when he was seeking amicus support for a cert petition to the U.S. Supreme Court in a case involving an Iowa woman who the state courts had ruled ineligible for record clearing because she could not pay the costs of the court-appointed lawyer who had represented her in her diversion case a decade before. CCRC was happy to file an amicus brief in support of Rob’s excellent petition, and while in the end the petition was not granted, Rob impressed us all then as a supremely talented and committed advocate.

We at CCRC are thrilled at our good fortune to have been able to lure Rob away from the client work that has engaged him for more than a decade.  We will welcome him on board in September.

Here are some of Rob’s career highlights:

• Argued at two state supreme courts (Virginia, Iowa). Won a unanimous decision from the Iowa Supreme Court holding that a person could not be denied expungement of a non-conviction criminal record because of fines and fees owed in other cases.
• Produced 30 expungement and employment barriers clinics across the state while at Iowa Legal Aid.
• Organized and lobbied for passage of Virginia’s 2021 record sealing law, which will allow sealing of convictions in Virginia for the very first time when it takes effect in 2025. Wrote the Legal Aid Justice Center’s “know your rights” materials on the new law, as well as a comment for the CCRC website.
• Authored a report on the unparalleled power of Virginia’s commonwealth’s attorneys during a legal fellowship at the ACLU of Virginia.
• Represented hundreds of indigent clients in misdemeanor and felony cases as a public defender in Newport News, Va.