NATIONAL CRIMINAL DEFENSE COLLEGE FACULTY

Where hasn’t Fredi worked? She’s been an Assistant Federal Defender in Omaha, Nebraska; Boise, Idaho; Reno, Nevada and Asheville, North Carolina, with side stops in Washington, DC as visiting counsel at the Defender Training Branch and at the U.S. Sentencing Commission. She’s in such “high demand” that she recently received a recruiting email asking her if she would like to be a legal assistant in an up and coming workers’ comp firm. She wrote back thanking them but she was having too much fun being an advocate for poor people and had to decline their lovely offer. Then she killed her LinkedIn account.

An honors grad of Cornell University and New York University School of Law, Fredi has served on the faculty for numerous programs around the country. Her favorite tag line during her teaching sessions is, “You understand this is interactive, right?” To date, no one has successfully slunk down low enough for her to not make eye contact and ask for a volunteer.

Fredi co-authored Trial in Action: The Persuasive Power of Psychodrama and expects to be an answer to a trivia question one day because of it. She’s written article/chapters on various topics: child pornography, voir dire, cross examination and the effects of incarceration on families. Her two passions are psychodrama (where she’s certified as a practitioner, not to be confused with being certified period) and Improv. She will play improv games all day if allowed, and you’ll often hear her muttering, “Whoosh, Bang, Pow!”

Karen Smolar is the Legal Training Director of the Criminal Practice at the Committee
for Public Counsel Services in Massachusetts, where she develops and conducts
innovative trial training programs for every public defender and court-appointed attorney
representing the indigent accused statewide. At CPCS, Karen also lends her expertise
to other practice areas in the Training Department to help conceptualize curriculum
across the agency. In addition, Karen is a member of the agency’s Anti-Racism Team,
and she serves as lead on its DEI Recruitment Sub-Committee.

Karen spent her three previous decades representing the indigent accused in New York
City, including twenty years of dedicated work at The Bronx Defenders. Karen spent a
decade their Trial Chief, deservedly earning the informal title of Persuasion Guru.
Karen’s time at The Bronx Defenders was marked by formal and informal brainstorming
of a countless number of cases, as she mentored, trained, and supervised dozens and
dozens of younger public defenders representing clients charged with nearly every
crime imaginable.

Karen’s trial training legacy lives on at The Bronx Defenders, embodied in the
Defenders' Academy, the annual, intensive five-day program that Karen created from
scratch in 2007. The Academy was the first training program in the country to focus on
the intersection between trial skills and performance work, and it continues to attract
and welcome interested attorneys in criminal, family, and civil practices from across the
United States. Many Academy graduates from over the years would acknowledge the
debt they owe to Karen when they speak of having been “Smolarized” in their approach
to trial work.

Since 2017, Karen has also been the co-Dean at the National Criminal Defense
College, America’s preeminent trial training school for criminal defense practitioners.
Prior to her appointment as Dean, Karen had served for a decade on the College’s
faculty as a presenter, lecturer, and small-group leader. Her work at the College allows
her to develop and implement creative programming and pedagogy to train lawyers
from around the country and beyond. Since her Deanship began, Karen has been
especially proud of both the College’s successful efforts to diversify its faculty, staff, and
participants as well as the College curriculum’s new emphasis on racial and social
justice.

Karen is herself a renowned lecturer and guest trainer on everything from storytelling to
closing argument, cross-examining expert witnesses to voir dire, having presented at
trainings for the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, the New York State
Defenders Association, and many other state-wide public defender offices around the
country. Karen also has more than a decade of experience teaching in law school
classrooms. She is currently an Adjunct Professor of Law at Roger Williams University
School of Law in Rhode Island, where she is a sought-after Trial Advocacy Instructor
and where she coaches the school’s Trial Team. Before moving to Rhode Island, Karen
served in similar positions at St. John’s School of Law in New York and at Seton Hall
Law School in New Jersey.

Dr. SunWolf was Training Director for Colorado’s Public Defender Office when she left to get her Master’s and Ph.D. at the University of California, studying juries and persuasion. Two decades of trial work as a criminal defense attorney included a three-year stint in the appellate division. Now a professor studying social behavior, her research has won numerous national awards, including her book, “Practical Jury Dynamics2: From One Juror’s Trial Perception to the Group’s Decision-Making Processes,” translating academic concepts into practical trial tools. She published a new theory (Decisional Regret Theory), which explains how deliberating jurors use counterfactual thinking to avoid anxiety about unwanted verdict outcomes. Her newest book is: “God-Thinking: Every Juror’s Moral Brain” (LexisNexis). As a trial attorney, she survived angry judges, misguided prosecutors, strange juries, and the most creative of clients.

COLETTE TVEDT is the founder and owner of Tvedt Law, where she represents individuals charged with complex felony cases in state and federal court. Prior to starting her law firm in Denver, she served as the Director of Public Defense Training and Reform for the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers (NACDL). In that capacity, she focused on developing and delivering premier training programs for public defense provider’s nationwide focusing on racism in the criminal justice system, police misconduct, pretrial detention, challenging forensic evidence, and trial skills. Colette has devoted her career over the past 25 years to representing poor people accused of crimes.

Prior to moving to Denver, she was a public defender in Massachusetts and Washington State and in private practice as partner with the Seattle law firm, Schroeter, Goldmark & Bender. She has organized training programs for thousands of defense lawyers and served as a Clinical Professor of Law at Suffolk University Law School in Boston as well as an adjunct professor at the University of Washington School of Law and at Seattle University Law School. She is a faculty member and board member of the National Criminal Defense College (NCDC). Colette Tvedt is an honor graduate of Rutgers University, where she also attended law school. She is a certified yoga instructor.

Lisa Monet Wayne is an attorney in private practice in both state and federal courts around the country. She is also “Of Counsel” to Gerash and Steiner P.C.. She represents individuals and corporations in both the investigation phase and criminally accused capacity. Previously, Wayne was a Colorado State Public Defender for 13 years where she served as office head, training director, and senior trial attorney. She lectures nationally with NACDL, National Criminal Defense College, National Institute of Trial Advocates, Numerous Public Defender Organizations, American Bar Association, and many other legal organizations. Wayne is currently an adjunct law professor at the University of Colorado where she teaches trial advocacy, and she serves on faculty at the Trial Practice Institute at Harvard Law School, The National Criminal Defense College, and Cardoza Law School.

Ms. Wayne is an advocate in all venues of the media addressing important issues confronting the criminally accused. She is a legal analyst for numerous media outlets including, ABC, CBS, CNN, Al Jazeera, World Radio and Fox regarding high profile cases around the country. She is frequently quoted in print media such as the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Washington Post, Detroit Free Press, and the AP wire. Ms. Wayne testified before the United States Sentencing Commission in 2012 against the implementation of the Federal Sentencing Guidelines as mandatory. In 2005, Wayne was honored with the Robert J. Heeney Award, NACDL’s most prestigious recognition. Wayne is the Past President of NACDL, President of the Foundation of Criminal Justice, and serves on numerous committees’ around criminal justice issues.

Wayne is a law graduate of Pepperdine University Law School in Malibu, CA, and an undergraduate degree in Psychology from the University of Colorado.

LaToya Simone Williams began her quest for excellence at an early age. She graduated as Valedictorian of the 2005 senior class of George Washington Carver High School in Columbus, GA. LaToya then continued her tedious journey through education at Albany State University, where she graduated Cum Laude with a Bachelor of Arts in English. She then went on to matriculate at Mercer University’s Walter F. George School of Law where she obtained her Juris Doctor and then an LL.M. (Master of Laws) in Federal Criminal Practice and Procedure.

LaToya is a servant leader who believes in providing her clients with zealous advocacy and compassionate service. LaToya is currently a Senior Assistant Public Defender in the Houston Judicial Circuit Public Defender’s Office in Warner Robins, GA. She is also an adjunct professor of paralegal studies and business technologies at Central Georgia Technical College and adjunct professor of criminal justice and business law Miller-Motte Technical College. She is a member of Georgia Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers where she has served as a faculty member of the Bill Daniel trial advocacy program, Faculty member of the National Criminal Defense College, Past-President of the Houston County Bar Association, Past-president of the Houston County Young Lawyers Division, member of the Macon Reentry Coalition, member of Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, Inc. and many more civic and social organizations. She is the owner of Vision Venture Consulting, LLC, a business consulting firm that specializes in personnel development and commodity building and branding. She is also the owner of The Dream Team Events and Planning, an event coordinating, catering, and design business.

LaToya believes that a curve in the road doesn’t mean the end of the road unless you fail to make the turn.