Elizabethtown native Holly Harris, president and government director of Justice Action Network, has been named 1 of the “most effective women” in Washington, D.C., as element of a listing released by Washingtonian magazine.
The listing highlights D.C.’s most influential women in business, regulation, government, medication, media, nonprofits and the arts. Others stated include things like Vice President Kamala Harris, Supreme Courtroom Justices Coney Barret and Sonia Sotomayor.
“It looks absurd to me that I would be on a checklist with these females,” Harris stated in an interview Friday.
Harris, who commenced her expert career as a television information reporter in Louisville, afterwards gained a law diploma and worked in several capacities for Republican elected officials.
She labored on James Comer’s gubernatorial campaign in 2015. She said that difficult knowledge led her to want to reset items and get the job done on difficulties pertaining to legal justice. She has been aspect of the Justice Motion Community, a bipartisan lobbying work, for nearly six decades.
Harris stated effort started out small, but created slowly around the decades. She stated studying from her mother and her buddies led her to know how to take care of folks she works with.
After living in Washington, D.C., for about 2½ yrs, she has returned to Kentucky and now tends to make her home in Lexington.
The corporation has served pass a handful of different criminal justice reform payments like the First Move Act which was signed by previous President Donald Trump in 2018.
Harris mentioned the firm is generally concentrated on lessening incarceration, improving upon re-entry into society just after jail and about criminalization. She explained there is also collaboration with legislation enforcement on reforms as nicely.
Appropriate now, Harris claimed she’s at this time doing the job on laws known as the Equivalent Act to reduce the sentencing disparity between crack and powder cocaine.
“I assume it’s one particular of the worst vestiges of racial injustice in America’s drug plan,” Harris mentioned.
Harris explained her target with the organization is to chat about wide troubles and relate to the each day struggles of all those across the country, together with places like rural Kentucky.
Even with the lengthy hours and really hard function, Harris said in the long run she feels the organization has made a little something inspiring via the “old-fashioned way” of setting up interactions.
“You can develop a movement that is … wide, sustainable and profitable. And that is really been our purpose,” she mentioned.
Simply because of her relatives and help method back in Hardin County, Harris also claimed she felt that even if she failed, she’d be in a position to arrive back and be embraced no matter what occurred.
Many thanks to the Washingtonian list, she mentioned she hopes she can send a message to those who are also having difficulties to obtain a path in lifetime and to learn from failure.
“You can have … remarkable struggles in your existence, and … you can continue to make your existence everything you want it to be,” she claimed.
