Alicia L. Aiken, JD | Curriculum vitae

Principal Consultant | 312-278-1136 | alicia@danucenter.org | alicia@confidentialityinstitute.org

Alicia “Lish” Aiken has spent 25 years working within the public and non-profit sector to advance social justice for people living in poverty and surviving violence. Alicia brings a deep understanding of the legal and social services non-profit sector, having spent 15 years at Legal Aid Chicago, where she was a trial attorney, as well as Director of Training, Pro Bono and Client Support Services and a member of the Executive, Budget, and Strategic Planning Management Committees.

Lish is the Director of the Danu Center’s Confidentiality Institute, a national policy and technical assistance project that supports helping professionals to protect privacy for violence survivors and crime victims. In 2016, Lish became the Faculty Fellow for Practising Law Institute’s Interactive Learning Center where she designs innovative programs that teach lawyers to work well with individual clients. Since 2019, she has been the host of PLI’s podcast Pursuing Justice: The Pro Bono Files. In 2020, Lish adapted her popular interactive simulation Tight Budgets & Tough Choices: Poverty, Decisions & Why Legal Aid Matters to be available as remote training via Zoom. Lish regularly strategizes with direct service non-profits, local coalitions, government entities, and professional organizations on a wide range of issues, including service delivery models, organizational structure, internal procedures, legal compliance, litigation strategy, policy advocacy, professional development, and distance learning design.

Clients and partners include the American Bar Association, National Network to End Domestic Violence, National Task Force to End Sexual and Domestic Violence, Arizona State University, Illinois Supreme Court Commission on Access to Justice, Management Information Exchange, Allstate Foundation, National Association of IOLTA Programs, National Council of Juvenile and Family Court Judges, Break the Cycle, Legal Aid Chicago, Kirkland & Ellis LLP, Katten Muchin Rosenman LLP, DLA Piper, Latham & Watkins LLP, Mayer Brown LLP, National Crime Victim Law Institute, and domestic violence/sexual assault coalitions in more than 25 states, territories, and tribal nations.

Lish attended the University of Michigan, where she received a Law degree (’95) and a Bachelor of Arts in English/History (’92). She is a Michigander by birth & family ties, but she was raised near the strawberry fields outside of Los Angeles, learned to appreciate food and the farmers that grow it in Vermont, and finally put down true roots in Chicago.

In 2006-2007, Lish was awarded the Chicago Foundation for Women Founder’s Award, enabling her to study organizational change at Northwestern University and to undertake a national study of model domestic violence courts. Most recently, she received the American Bar Association’s 2018 Sharon L. Corbitt Award for Exemplary Legal Service to Victims of Domestic Violence, Sexual Assault and Stalking.