We are just talking 2023 politics, the new movers and shakers, the rise of Black Women in Politics at all levels, and our playlists that uplifted us throughout the year. We end on a musical note. We are on break until January 2024!

Ann H. Kloeckner, Esq.

Executive Director

Ann Kloeckner joined Legal Aid Works^® in 2011 to take the helm from Bill Botts upon his retirement.  Ann hails originally from Vermont and most recently from Texas, with a non-linear career path emphasizing public service and advocacy on behalf of survivors of domestic violence.  With law licenses in four states (PA, NJ, TX, and VA), Ann is a graduate of Swarthmore College and Villanova University School of Law, where her stint at a legal aid clinical program nurtured her passion for equal justice and her tolerance of a nonprofit lifestyle.  She enjoys mentoring new attorneys and maintains a robust schedule of public speaking engagements throughout the seventeen-county service area.  Ann was appointed in 2016 by the Virginia Supreme Court to a three-year term as a member of the faculty of the Harry L. Carrico Professionalism Course, which is mandatory for every newly licensed attorney in Virginia, served as the chairperson of the Association of Virginia Legal Aid Programs, and interim chair of the statewide legal aid Inclusion, Diversity, Equity and Access committee

Pamela K. Kinney is an award winning published author of horror, science fiction, fantasy, poetry, and a ghost wrangler of nonfiction ghost books published by Schiffer Publishing. Her horror short story, “Bottled Spirits” published by Buzzymag.com was runner up for the 2013 Small Press Award.

Two of her nonfiction ghost books were nominated for Library of Virginia Awards. Her latest nonfiction ghost book to be published by Schiffer Publishing, Paranormal Petersburg, Virginia, and the Tri-Cities Area, will be released August 2015.

She also has done acting on stage and in films, is a Master Costumer–costuming since 1972— and she even does paranormal investigating, including for DVDs for Paranormal World Seekers, filmed by AVA Productions. She was casting director for High Mountain Films’ movie, The 19th (been an extra in the film, too), and wrote a horror screenplay, “Crawlspace Creep,” now with an Indie production company.

She’s a member of Horror Writers Association and the local Virginia chapter.

She admits she can always be found at her desk and on her computer, writing. And yes, the house, husband, and even the cat sometimes suffer for it!

To find out more about Pamela’s acting, costuming, and directing, click here.

Under the pseudonym, Sapphire Phelan, she has published erotic and sweet paranormal/fantasy/science fiction romance along with a couple of erotic horror stories. Her erotic urban fantasy by the pseudonym, Sapphire Phelan, Being Familiar With a Witch is a Prism 2010 Awards winner and a Epic Awards 2010 finalist. The sequel to Being Familiar With a Witch, A Familiar Tangle With Hell was released June 2011 from Phaze Books. Both eBooks were combined into one print book, The Witch and the Familiar, released April 24, 2012.

Find out more about Sapphire Phelan at Sapphire Phelan.

Sondra Goldschein is the Executive Director of the Campaign for a Family Friendly Economy, which focuses on building grassroots support for family-friendly policies, and the Campaign for a Family Friendly Economy PAC, which focuses on electing candidates who support paid family and medical leave and affordable elder and childcare. Sondra is an expert in developing and executing nationwide, state-based campaigns to advance policy change. Most recently, she served as the ACLU’s Director of Program and Strategy. In this role, she worked with the ACLU’s 54 affiliates to achieve high-impact civil rights and liberties wins by building program capacity and organizational power, with an emphasis on battleground states and the South.

Previously, Sondra was the ACLU’s Director of Advocacy and Policy and a Deputy National Political Director. In these roles, she led a team of strategists advancing ambitious goals such as marriage equality, repeal of the death penalty, criminal justice reform, expanding voting access, and disrupting the deportation pipeline. While at the ACLU, she also served as the Director of State Advocacy for the Reproductive Freedom Project where she designed defensive strategies for affiliates and their coalition partners facing attacks on abortion, contraception, and comprehensive sex education. Before her 20 years at the ACLU, Sondra was an attorney with a labor and employment law practice.

As a mother of two young children, Sondra is driven to build the systems of support needed for the next generation of working families to thrive.

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Dr. Andrea C. Simonelli holds a master’s degree and doctorate in political science from Louisiana State University focused on governance responses to human migration; specifically legal and institutional frameworks to address internal and cross border displacement due to climate processes. She earned a diploma from the United Nations University Environment and Human Security Programme and Oxford’s Refugee Studies Centre Summer School in Forced Migration. She is a speaker for the Climate Voices Network, sits on the roster of experts for the Adaptation Fund and the Climate and Development Knowledge Network, is a member of the Human Rights and Climate Change Working Group, is an associate with Millennium Alliance for Humanity & the Biosphere, and serves on the board of directors for Many Strong Voices.

Her first book, Governing Climate Induced Migration and Displacement: IGO Expansion and Global Governance (Palgrave Macmillan, 2015), was an institutional analysis of four intergovernmental organizations and their expansion, or lack thereof, to govern those becoming displaced by climate processes.

Dr. Simonelli’s work as a research associate on a project for the Norwegian Research Council regarding the Perceptions of Climate and Migration in the Maldives is continuing to yield many publications in both academic journals and edited volumes. Her next project stems from her work in the field, evaluating the facets of community resilience in the Pacific.

Prior to her academic career, Dr. Simonelli received her bachelor’s degree in political theory and constitutional democracy from Michigan State University’s James Madison College. She spent more than 10 years as a finance director for U.S. political candidates and a state party, electing officials at both the state and federal legislative levels.