Colleen Cotter is a 1990 graduate of the law school and has been the Executive Director of The Legal Aid Society of Cleveland since 2005. Colleen also serves on the Board of Directors of the Cleveland Metropolitan Bar Association and the Saint Luke’s Foundation. She is President of the United Way of Greater Cleveland Council of Agency Executives and has served in many other leadership positions.

Last year, she was named by Cleveland-Marshall Law School as one of its 2021 Hall of Fame honorees. She was named a 2017 Crain’s Woman of Note. She also received the 2017 Cleveland Bar Association’s President’s Award and the 2015 Crain’s In-House Counsel Award, non-profit category. Before joining Cleveland Legal Aid, Colleen worked for Indiana Legal Services, and also Pine Tree Legal Assistance in Maine, where she served as a Skadden Fellow. Indeed, Colleen was the first Skadden Fellow to come from the law school. Colleen also clerked for the Honorable Cornelia Kennedy of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit. During law school Colleen was on the Indiana Law Journal, she founded our chapter of PILF in 1988, was Order of the Coif, and graduated magna cum laude.