Kristen Dama

Kristen Dama is the Managing Attorney of SSI and Medical-Legal Partnership.  In that role, she oversees CLS’s work connecting individuals with serious disabilities to Social Security income supports.  She also oversees the SSI Unit’s work fighting for local, state, and federal systemic reforms that stabilize and improve the lives of individuals with disabilities.  Additionally, Ms. Dama manages CLS’s medical-legal partnerships, which provide direct legal services to patients at primary care health centers in two Philadelphia neighborhoods.

Ms. Dama joined CLS in 2007 as an Independence Foundation Public Interest Law Fellow.  In her first decade of practice, she was a member of CLS’s Welfare Unit, where she represented clients seeking public benefits from the Pennsylvania Department of Human Services and worked on health policy issues and class action litigation affecting low-income Pennsylvanians.

Prior to entering law school, Ms. Dama worked as a grassroots organizer and lobbyist for NARAL Pro-Choice New Hampshire.

Education

Ms. Dama received her J.D. cum laude from the University of Pennsylvania Law School. She earned an M.B.E. from the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine. Ms. Dama is a magna cum laude graduate of the University of Michigan, where she studied Political Science and History.

Honors & Publications

Jennifer Burdick et al., How One Legal Aid Program Is Responding in an Era of Political Uncertainty, 31 M.I.E.J. 43 (2017).

Who’s Next in Health Honoree, Awarded by Billy Penn & The Knight Foundation (2016).

Gina Mannix et al., What Process Is Due in a “Modernized” Public Benefits System?, Clgh. Rev 1 (2016), http://povertylaw.org/files/docs/article/ClearinghouseCommunity_Mannixetal.pdf

Kristen M. Dama, Comment, Redefining a Final Act: The Fourteenth Amendment and States’ Obligation to Prevent Death Row Inmates from Volunteering to Be Put to Death, 9 U. Pa. J. Const. L. 1083 (2007).