Brenda Shum

Staff
Senior Managing Director, Legal Advocacy

Brenda Shum is Senior Managing Attorney at the National Center for Youth Law where she provides strategic guidance and leads the organization's Legal Advocacy team to bring impact litigation and advocacy to enforce the rights of children and youth and advance racial justice. Brenda plays a key role in strategizing across issue areas and supporting the professional development of legal staff.

Brenda has over twenty years of litigation experience at the intersection of youth justice, education, immigration, mental health and disability. She started her legal career as a children's attorney, representing youth in dependency and delinquency court. She served as Project Director at the ABA Center on Children and the Law, where she worked with juvenile court judges, child welfare agencies and attorneys to decrease the amount of time that children spend in foster care. Brenda was a clinical instructor at Stanford Law School's Youth and Education Law Project and an adjunct professor at Howard Law School. Prior to joining the National Center for Youth Law, she led the Educational Opportunities Project at the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law where she served as lead counsel on a number of impact cases enforcing the rights of students in federal and state court.

Brenda is originally from the Pacific Northwest and currently lives in Washington DC. She enjoys hiking, running and kayaking with her husband and son and their dog Farley.