Jenna Collins ’08 (she/her) is the director of supervision and professional development at Community Legal Services (CLS) and an attorney in the housing unit. In her role, she oversees and supports CLS’s supervision and training systems to ensure all staff have access to excellent supervision and training necessary to provide high-quality representation and advocacy for CLS and their clients.
Previously, Jenna was a supervising attorney and a Harvard Fellow in CLS’s housing unit and a member of the energy unit working on Pennsylvania utility policy and providing direct representation on utility issues. Before returning to CLS, she spent five years at the AIDS Law Project of Pennsylvania as their housing attorney and was a visiting professor in Drexel’s Community Lawyering Clinic. Jenna has extensive expertise in subsidized housing and has focused her housing policy work on the intersection of housing and domestic and sexual violence, as well as housing and racial justice. Her other advocacy work is centered around equitable supervision and professional development in the legal and non-profit sectors.
Jenna received her Doctor of Jurisprudence in Law from Harvard University Law School and her Bachelor of Arts with honors from Amherst College.
How do you use your liberal arts education in the work you do today?
“I use my liberal arts education in a few different ways. First, at Amherst I learned a particular kind of intensive analysis and thought. My classes were always teaching me to look at the whole picture and understand the history and complexities of underlying issues. Second, my work now involves a lot of systems thinking and systemic advocacy, and having a well-rounded basis in history, politics, literature, and philosophy has been incredibly helpful in doing that work.”