Alex, a veteran legal aid attorney, joined BayLegal in January 2014. With twenty-eight years of experience as a poverty law advocate and nineteen years as an executive director Alex brings a wealth of experience to BayLegal. Alex is nationally recognized as a leader in the civil justice and anti-poverty movement. A life-long social justice advocate, Alex practiced as a legal aid lawyer in Appalachian Kentucky and in Wisconsin before moving to Virginia in 1994 to become the Executive Director of the Legal Aid Justice Center (LAJC). As Executive Director of the LAJC, Alex earned a national reputation for his tenacity and creativity in overcoming the severe restrictions put on federally funded legal aid programs in 1996 by the U.S. Congress. Under his tenure the one-office, eight person program with a $350,000 budget grew into a four-office, forty person program with a budget of approximately $4 million. The program also gained a reputation for its hard-hitting advocacy and close connections to its client communities. Alex also has extensive experience as a consultant assisting legal aid and other advocacy programs with strategic planning, quality improvement and peer review assessments. He has performed consulting work in eighteen states.