2026 Ben J. Altheimer Symposium Panelists

Justice Rhonda K. Wood

Justice Rhonda K. Wood is in her twentieth year on the judicial bench.  She was elected and served six years as a circuit judge, she was elected and served two years on the Arkansas Court of Appeals and was elected to the Arkansas Supreme Court in 2014 and reelected in 2022. She is in her twelfth year as an Associate Justice on the Arkansas Supreme Court. 

Justice Wood serves many legal organizations. Justice Wood has been Chair of the Supreme Court’s Commission on Children, Youth, and Families since 2014. She presided over a Juvenile Drug Court and Teen Court. She has served in many judicial leadership roles both in Arkansas and nationally. Justice Wood has focused the last twenty years on juvenile justice and child welfare reform and automation reform. She co-hosted a national podcast Lady Justice: Women of the Court and she contributes annually to the Green Bag Annual Almanac on Exemplary Legal Writing.

Justice Wood earned her B.A. with distinction in politics, magna cum laude, from Hendrix College, and her J.D. from the University of Arkansas at Little Rock Bowen School of Law with highest honors. She received the highest score on the Arkansas Bar Exam. She was the 1^st recipient of the Bowen School of Law’s Dean’s Distinguished Certificate of Service by serving 300 hours of community service during law school.  

Drew Shover, M.S. M.S.H.E.

Drew Shover is currently the chief juvenile probation Officer for Benton County, with over 30 years of experience in juvenile justice. 

Throughout his career, Drew has worked with incarcerated youth and the court system in various roles, including detention administrator, juvenile probation officer, and intake officer. He currently serves on the Arkansas Supreme Court Commission for Children, Youth, and Families as the data chair and as the county Juvenile Detention Alternatives Initiative (JDAI) coordinator through the Annie E. Casey Foundation.

While with the juvenile court, Drew conducted three years of research on youth detained for domestic violence at the juvenile detention center and wrote a grant to convert part of the center into the first nationally recognized state-licensed residential shelter within a juvenile justice complex. Placement in this facility provides an alternative to detention, as well as case management for community re-entry and aftercare services. Drew is approaching the completion of his Doctor of Education at Purdue University to further support his work in juvenile justice through data collection, research, and development.   

Brenda Stallings

Attorney Brenda Stallings is a 1993 cum laude graduate of the University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff (UAPB) and a 1996 graduate of the William H. Bowen School of Law. She is licensed to practice law in Arkansas, Michigan, and Tennessee and has practiced for 30 years, with her entire career grounded in community service. 

She previously served as a staff attorney for the Sixth Judicial Circuit Court Division 1 and The Center for Arkansas Legal Services. She currently works for the Pulaski County Public Defender’s Office, representing Arkansas’ most vulnerable populations. In 2025, Stallings prevailed in a federal racial discrimination lawsuit against the Arkansas Public Defender Commission, reaffirming her longstanding commitment to justice and equity. 

Stallings is an adjunct professor and mentor at William H. Bowen School of Law and a certified law enforcement instructor at the Criminal Justice Institute. She is also certified as both a Dependency-Neglect and Domestic Relations Attorney ad Litem. 

Stallings serves as President of the W. Harold Flowers Law Society and the UAPB/AM&N Pulaski County Alumni Chapter. She is a member of Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, Inc.®, Full Counsel Metro Church, a Life Member of the Arkansas Democratic Black Caucus, and a PRIDE member of the UAPB/AM&N National Alumni Association. 

Ken Schmetterer

Ken Schmetterer is a litigation attorney at DLA Piper. Ken maintains a significant pro bono practice, most recently in matters involving prisoner rights, reentry and clemency efforts, federal civil rights claims, mental health support, and sexual exploitation. He consistently serves on or assists non-profit organizations and boards, including those advancing youth defense and youth justice (including the Gault Center), reentry and mentoring support, education equity, social/emotional learning, and restorative practices.

Among his other policy advocacy efforts, Ken served as a leader of DLA Piper’s large-scale signature Juvenile Justice Project. As part of this effort, he served as the senior editor of From Juvenile Court to the Classroom: The Need for Effective Child Advocacy, a substantial policy study assessing and working to improve the transition of children from the juvenile court system back to school. Ken has authored other policy studies on topics involving policing in schools and bail for children. He has co-authored four amicus briefs for the American Bar Association before the United States Supreme Court supporting youth in the criminal justice system, and he recently served as a guest lecturer at Lewis University’s Corrections class.

Caren Harp

Ms. Harp was appointed by President Donald J. Trump to serve as Administrator of the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, in the U.S. Department of Justice, from 2018 to 2021. Harp is a former director of the National Juvenile Justice Prosecution Center at the American Prosecutors Research Institute, and she served as Chief of the Sex Crimes Prosecution Unit in the Family Court Division of the New York City Law Department.

During her career, Ms. Harp spent 20 years on the prosecution side of the court system, either prosecuting cases or training prosecutors, and five years as a public defender. As a deputy prosecutor in Arkansas, she prosecuted a variety of cases including sexual assault, robbery and murder. As the current deputy public defender in Columbia County, Arkansas, she defends indigent clients charged with all major felonies, drug offenses and murder.

Ms. Harp also served for five years as an Associate Professor at Liberty University School of Law where she taught writing courses, legal methods, basic and advanced trial advocacy and professional responsibility. Ms. Harp is admitted to practice in Arkansas and New York.

Jennifer Brinkman

Jennifer Brinkman is an Assistant Professor of Law and Director of the Children’s Law Center Clinic at Northern Kentucky University Salmon P. Chase College of Law. She teaches and writes in the areas of child and family law, juvenile justice, and trauma-informed legal practice.

Before entering academia, she served as a judicial law clerk to Justice Michelle M. Keller of the Kentucky Supreme Court and spent years representing children and adults as a public defender. Her work focuses on improving advocacy for children through ethical practice, policy development, and experiential legal education.

andré douglas pond cummings

andré douglas pond cummings is Dean and Professor of Law at the Widener University Commonwealth Law School having served as Dean since 2024. At Widener Law Commonwealth, Dean cummings has taught Civil Procedure, Sales & Leases, Essential Legal Skills, and Hip Hop & the American Constitution.

Dean cummings was formerly Associate Dean for Faculty Development and the Charles C. Baum Distinguished Professor of Law at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock William H. Bowen School of Law where he taught Business Associations, Contracts I and II, Corporate Justice, Entertainment Law, Policing & the Use of Force, Progressive Prosecution, and Hip Hop & the American Constitution. cummings was also Co-Founder and Co-Director of Bowen Law’s Center for Racial Justice and Criminal Justice Reform.

cummings was previously a Professor of Law at West Virginia University College of Law and has been a Visiting Professor at numerous law schools. Before embarking on his academic career, cummings worked as a judicial law clerk for Chief Judge Joseph W. Hatchett of the United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit and for Chief Justice Christine M. Durham of the Utah Supreme Court. In addition, he practiced law at Kirkland & Ellis LLP in Chicago IL, focusing his practice on complex business transactions including mergers, acquisitions, and securities offerings of publicly traded corporations.

Todd J. Clark

Todd J. Clark is the current Dean of Widener University Delaware Law School.  Dean Clark is an avid scholar and writes on legal issues involving: employment discrimination, sports, the intersection of hip-hop culture and the law, and corporate justice.

Prior to joining Delaware Law School, Dean Clark was the Senior Associate Dean of Academic Affairs and a Professor of Law at the St. Thomas University Benjamin L. Crump College of Law (“STU”) in Miami, Florida where he worked for four years.  During that time, Dean Clark was the Upper-Level Division Professor of the Year in 2020-2021; the Upper-Level Division and the 1L Division Professor of the Year in 2021-2022; and in the 2022 -2023 academic year, he was named the Most Valuable Person in the law school.

Clark is the author of numerous published articles and book chapters. He also co-authored a textbook with Dean andré douglas pond cummings entitled Corporate Justice, that explores issues of social justice, corporate power, and diversity. They are presently working on a second edition of their book.

Kellyn O. McGee

Kellyn O. McGee is an Associate Professor at Widener University Commonwealth Law School and teaches core courses and seminars in the areas of Civil Procedure and Professional Responsibility. She also serves as Co-Director for the law school’s Center for Equity and Justice, which is dedicated to promoting social justice and creating equal opportunities for marginalized communities in the legal profession and beyond.

Previously, she was Associate Dean of Students and Associate Professor at Savannah Law School. Her career prior to academia included litigating lawyer disciplinary cases for the State Bar of Georgia, providing advice on lawyer ethics rules, and directing Georgia’s Transition Into Law Practice Program. She is licensed to practice law in Georgia and is admitted to the Supreme Court of the United States. She is a member of the American Bar Association and serves on the Standing Committee on Professional Regulation. She is also a member of the Pennsylvania Bar Association and serves on its Legal Ethics and Professional Responsibility Committee.

Angela Albertus, Esq.

Angela Albertus is a national trainer on juvenile justice and youth and law enforcement relations and a practicing attorney in New York City. She currently works on Child Victims Act and Adult Survivors Act cases. She is the former Juvenile Justice Director at the National District Attorneys Association, having served from September 2022 – April 2025 pursuant to a grant from the U.S. Justice Department’s Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention.

Ms. Albertus’ juvenile justice experience includes serving as Division Chief of the Family Court Division of the NYC Law Department from 2010-2020 where she oversaw juvenile prosecutions; prior to that she served as Deputy Division Chief from 2005 – 2010.

From 2014-2019, Ms. Albertus was an adjunct professor at the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law, where she co-taught a juvenile delinquency seminar. Other positions she has held in NYC include Executive Assistant District Attorney, Chief of Staff, and Executive Director of the Mayor’s Commission to Combat Family Violence. Throughout her career, Ms. Albertus has conducted trainings on youth and law enforcement relations, juvenile justice, and domestic violence. In 2024, her article on Working with Victims was published in NDAA’s Handbook for Juvenile Court Prosecutors, and in 2025, her article on Building on Improving Relationships Between Youth and Law Enforcement: How Prosecutors Can Make a Difference was published in Juvenile Justice Update. Additionally, Ms. Albertus led the creation of the 2025 film entitled “Are You Good: Working Together to Build and Improve Relationships Between Youth and Law Enforcement.”

Becky L. Jacobs

Becky L. Jacobs, a Waller Lansden Distinguished Professor of Law at the University of Tennessee Winston College of Law, is a Tennessee Rule 31 listed civil and family mediator and is listed as specially trained in domestic violence issues.

She directs the Civil and Family Mediation Clinics at the University of Tennessee Winston College of Law and teaches and writes in the areas of dispute resolution and family law-related topics as well as other areas. Professor Jacobs serves as a member of several subcommittees of the ABA Dispute Resolution Committee and has served as a member of the Board of Directors and the Executive Board of the Knox County Community Mediation Center. 

Nicholas Bolden, PhD

Nicholas Bolden, PhD, is an Associate Professor in the School of Policy, Justice, and Public Safety at Columbus State University, where he teaches graduate-level courses in conflict resolution, negotiation, and collaborative problem-solving. His academic research focuses on the design of effective dispute resolution systems within public and educational institutions. He is also the Founder and Managing Partner of The Bolden Group LLC, a firm providing mediation, training, and consulting services to public agencies, school districts, and legal practitioners.

Dr. Bolden has over 15 years of experience at the intersection of education, government, and conflict resolution. His mediation practice includes labor and employment, personal injury, special education, Section 504, and Title IX matters. He has mediated hundreds of cases throughout his career, including complex special education disputes involving behavioral disabilities, eligibility determinations, disciplinary removals, and programmatic disagreements. His work emphasizes procedural fairness, relationship repair, and durable, student-centered outcomes.

He is a registered mediator with both the Alabama Center for Dispute Resolution and the Georgia Office of Dispute Resolution. Additionally, he serves on mediation panels for the Chattahoochee Judicial Circuit and the Fulton County ADR Program and is a mediator for the Alabama Department of Education Special Education division. Dr. Bolden is also a member of the American Bar Association Section of Dispute Resolution.

Vanessa Miller

Vanessa Miller is an Assistant Professor of Law at FIU Law. She is an interdisciplinary scholar who researches the policing of American schools and universities. Her academic writing considers how the law governs police authority and police interactions within and around educational institutions, and she relies on legal and qualitative methodologies to address educational inequities.

Her work has been published in law and peer reviewed journals, including Harvard Education Review, Denver Law Review, Buffalo Law Review, and Educational Researcher. She has also authored book chapters on the power and practices of campus police. Miller was a faculty member at Indiana University and the postdoctoral associate at the Race and Crime Center for Justice at the University of Florida Levin College of Law. Miller received her JD and PhD from The Pennsylvania State University.