PJDC Staff

Brooke Harris is the Executive Director of the Pacific Juvenile Defender Center. Before joining PJDC, she was the Director of the Juvenile Justice Clinic at Loyola Law School, and a Visiting Clinical Professor. At Loyola, Ms. Harris supervised and trained clinical law students in the zealous representation of Los Angeles’ most vulnerable youth in juvenile delinquency court and taught Juvenile Delinquency Law and Procedure and Advanced Criminal Litigation Skills. Prior to her work at the CJLP, she was a legal fellow and Post-Disposition Reentry Attorney at the National Juvenile Defender Center, where she facilitated reentry services for underserved youth reentering the community after a juvenile adjudication in Contra Costa County (California). She also spent nearly five years representing indigent clients in misdemeanor, felony, and juvenile cases as a trial attorney at the Contra Costa County Public Defender’s Office. Ms. Harris is a certified JTIP trainer with the Gault Center, and served on PJDC’s Advisory and Executive Boards before becoming Executive Director. She earned her B.A. from Colby College and JD from UC Davis School of Law (King Hall).

Ms. Manning-Villar is the Operations Director at Pacific Juvenile Defender Center. She also practices appellate law with an emphasis on juvenile delinquency appeals, taking appointed cases from the First District Appellate Project, Sixth District Appellate Project, and California Appellate Project – Los Angeles. She is a Member of the Board of the California Appellate Defense Counsel. Among Ms. Manning-Villar’s modest collection of published opinions, her favorite without question is In re T.F. (2017) 16 Cal.App.5th 202, a juvenile confession case [holding a 15-year-old youth did not knowingly and intelligently waive his Miranda rights due to his age, learning disability, lack of experience in the criminal justice system and the manner in which his interrogators advised him of his rights and employed the now discredited Reid technique]. Over the past three years, she has been part of the team managing PCDC’s OJJDP funded project – developing a collateral consequences manual, a record sealing toolkit, and increasing the capacity of defenders in underserved parts of California. Ms. Manning-Villar is a graduate of Mills College and UC College of the Law, San Francisco, and a certified Juvenile Training Immersion Program trainer.

Patricia Soung is currently an independent consultant working with the W. Haywood Burns Institute to facilitate stakeholders in Los Angeles in transferring the county’s juvenile justice system out of the Probation Department into another agency, with the goal of creating a rehabilitative, health-focused, and care-first system. From 2016-2020, Patricia was the Director of Youth Justice Policy and Senior Staff Attorney at the Children’s Defense Fund-California, leading its work to reform juvenile and criminal justice systems, and increase investments in youth development and communities. Previously, Patricia worked at the Center for Juvenile Law and Policy at Loyola Law School, the National Center for Youth Law, and the Children and Family Justice Center, Northwestern University of Law as a Soros Justice Fellow. Throughout, she has represented youth in juvenile trial, appellate and post-conviction matters, and taught college and law students. Patricia earned her JD from Northwestern University School of Law and B.A. from Stanford University.

Emily Croston is a UVA Kennedy Fellow working with the Pacific Juvenile Defender Center. She is one of four children and originally from Richmond, Virginia. She attended the University of Virginia School of Law. While in law school, she worked on class action prisoners’ rights cases with the ACLU’s National Prison Project and supported local community organizers with the Legal Aid Justice Center in Virginia. She now lives in Arlington, Virginia with her boyfriend, her small, bouncy dog, and way too many plants.