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Nancy Newman

Nancy Marcus Newman

Lecturer-in-Law

Nancy Marcus Newman, Esq., CRS, is a practicing public interest and nonprofit attorney in Pennsylvania, the District of Columbia and New York, where she was a former Associate of Skadden, Arps. She founded the Bridge Foundation, a nonprofit Recovery Community Organization, to support young people for whom current systems have failed.

A child welfare and family advocate and certified recovery specialist, Nancy recently developed the first and only Tri State area Collegiate Residential Recovery Community in University City, Philadelphia for Penn and Drexel students struggling with substance use. Newman has advocated for the rights of disenfranchised youth who are abused, neglected or otherwise fall through the cracks of government and private systems for support and protection, including chairing Pennsylvania’s Children’s Trust Fund Board under the Ridge Administration. She formed and chaired the Pennsylvania Legislature’s Joint State Government Commission Advisory Committee on Adoption Law, which revised the State’s entire Adoption and Foster Care Law. She served on the Pennsylvania and New Jersey Parity Implementation Coalitions, the Pennsylvania Joint State Government Commission Legislative Advisory Committee on Public Health Law and the Commission’s Task Force on Prevention of (Youth) Violence (formed as Pennsylvania’s response to the Sandy Hook tragedy).

She has had extensive personal experience with systems aimed at treating and supporting youth and families facing challenges including addiction and the failure of current systems to address the needs of disadvantaged populations, persons with disabilities, and individuals and families in crisis.

Newman is an Adjunct Professor at Delaware County Community College since 2016 teaching Contract Law for Paralegals, and has presented lectures and workshops on areas of law including civil rights of Persons in Recovery, community building and collaborative mobilization for systems change, strategic philanthropy, and legislative reform. Most recently she developed and presented a national Webinar on Housing and Homelessness within the Addiction Recovery Community for SAMSHA and Faces and Voices of Recovery.

Since 1991 her practice has included child welfare advocacy, public policy initiatives and legislative reform, pro bono adoption and family law, and educational, philanthropic and cultural projects, and she is an active Member of the Pennsylvania, New York and District of Columbia Bar and the Federal Circuit Court, Middle and Eastern Districts of Pennsylvania where she has represented the interests of Recovery Housing owners and operators in Federal Fair Housing and Civil Rights Discrimination litigation.

Newman has initiated and put into action legal, nonprofit and public interest programs and collaborative community outreach initiatives in a variety of areas, including child abuse prevention, adoption and foster care reform, juvenile justice, the arts, early childhood education, public health, and presently in the area of promoting awareness and providing resources for adolescents, young adults and families in Recovery or struggling with substance use disorder and addiction. Her work has created collaborative initiatives allowing lawmakers and experts to apply best practices at the grass roots community level, especially in underrepresented or disadvantaged populations.