Sharlyn Grace (she/her) is the Senior Policy Advisor at the Law Office of the Cook County Public Defender, where she helps identify and implement the Public Defender’s strategic goals inside and outside of the office. Prior to her current role, Sharlyn was a founding member of Chicago Community Bond Fund and served as CCBF’s first Executive Director. She has also been the Senior Criminal Justice Policy Analyst at Chicago Appleseed Center for Fair Courts. Sharlyn has played a leading role in developing, drafting, and passing several pieces of legislation in the Illinois General Assembly, including bills affecting sentencing, diversion, and the Pretrial Fairness Act, which made Illinois the first state to completely eliminate money bail. Outside of work, Sharlyn has provided legal and organizing support for grassroots movements in Chicago since 2012. She is a graduate of Northeastern University School of Law and an Illinois licensed attorney.

Keith Grant has been with the Lake County Public Defender’s Office since 1992 and is the Public Defender’s Senior Supervisor, responsible for the coordination and litigation of complex cases and for all training conducted for all employees (legal and otherwise) in the Office. Keith is also serves as Attorney Coordinator for the Public Defender’s Conflict Unit, overseeing assignment of private attorneys contracted to accept cases where the Public Defender must withdraw due to conflicts of interest. In 2017, Keith was certified as co-handler for Simba, the first and only trained Facility Dog placed in a Public Defender office in the United States. Previously, Keith served as the PD’s Chief of Special Defense, and before that as Felony Division Chief and before that as the Misdemeanor Division Chief. Before becoming an administrator, Keith was a line-assistant in the Public Defender’s Office, Felony Division, for nearly 10 years. During Illinois’ use of capital punishment, Keith was a Certified First Chair before the Illinois Capital Litigation Trial Bar. Keith graduated from Ripon College in 1984 and NIU College of Law in 1987. Prior to becoming an Assistant Public Defender, Keith was a prosecutor with the Army’s Judge Advocate General’s Corps, assigned to the First Infantry Division. In 1996, Keith deployed to Europe as a Trial Defense Officer with the Army Reserve in support of Operation Joint Endeavor, the Bosnian peacekeeping mission. Keith is a Past-President of Lake County’s Jefferson Inn of Court; Past-President of the Lake County Bar Association; and fourth-term President of the Illinois Public Defender Association. Keith formerly chaired the Lake County Bar Association Criminal Law Committee and is a frequent lecturer at LCBA seminars as well as seminars for the IPDA, Cook County Public Defender’s Office, the Office of the Appellate Defender and other organizations. He is published in the LCBA Docket magazine and in several IICLE criminal trial practice manuals. He has served as a primary organizer of the Annual LCBA Criminal Law Seminar since 2002. He is an appointed member of the Illinois Supreme Court Pretrial Practices Task Force and Co-Chair of that Task Force’s Guidelines Committee.

Elisabeth Pollock currently serves as the Chief Public Defender for Champaign County, Illinois, a job she accepted in December of 2022 after eleven years working as an Assistant Federal Public Defender in the Central District of Illinois. She works with clients charged with a variety of offenses, from possession of controlled substances to first degree murder. Prior to joining the FPD, Lis worked for six years as a general practice attorney at Beckett & Webber, P.C., in Urbana, Illinois, handling a variety of cases in the areas of civil litigation and state and federal criminal defense. Lis’s mission is, and has always been, to provide the highest quality of representation to every single client who enters her orbit. It is her belief that public defenders are the cornerstone of the criminal justice system, and no one’s rights are protected unless everyone’s rights are protected. Every single client is a whole person, a human being who is deserving of respect, empathy, and dedication. These principles are the foundation for the representation provided every day by the Champaign County Public Defender’s Office. In her spare time, Lis serves on the Scholarship Foundation Board of the CU One to One Mentoring Program, the East Central Illinois Women’s Association Program Committee, the Champaign County Bar Association Board of Governors, and she coaches her son’s 8th grade track team.