Balancing the Scales

We’ve all been asked, “Whoever said life was fair?”

However, for many among us, that imbalance is beyond reason — and for at least one Hartwick graduate, it is beyond acceptance.

Lisa Bailey Vavonese ’03, a public defender turned change advocate, has seen far too many injustices throughout her career — at home and abroad — and she has made it her life’s work to reduce them.

Bailey Vavonese is chief of staff at Community Justice Solutions, part of the New York City-based Center for Justice Innovation. The organization works to build strong and safe communities in partnership with courts, system actors and the people directly impacted. Its staff includes attorneys, social workers, researchers, urban planners, community organizers and justice system professionals, all working to reimagine justice.

“In law school, you get asked, ‘What would you rather see: an innocent person go to jail or a guilty person go free?’” she said. “When I began as a public defender in Monroe County (N.Y.), it often felt very David-vs.-Goliath, with the limited resources we had for public defense compared to the overwhelming power of the prosecution system.”

It bothered her deeply when she saw innocent people incarcerated or low-income people given harsher sentences than those with greater resources and other advantages.

“I became completely obsessed with, ‘How can we do better?’” she explained. “’How can we create a more balanced justice system?”

It is a path Bailey Vavonese began at Hartwick, long before she became a student. Her father, Charles Bailey, was a locksmith on campus for three-plus decades, so the native Oneontan was well-acquainted with Oyaron Hill. Still, when she enrolled, she was fairly undecided on a career.

“I knew I was interested in politics…in what was happening globally,” she recalled. “I enjoyed history, writing and researching. I also loved an economics class, where we were put into teams of ‘business entrepreneurs’ and competed with other ‘startups.’”

She eventually majored in political science, but it was two travel opportunities that sharpened her interests. First, she completed the Washington (D.C.) Semester Program at American University, where she studied justice. Then, she studied in Germany and Hungary, where she learned about their national socioeconomic structures.

“Even though I didn’t know exactly what I wanted to do, I had a feeling those experiences would help me figure it out,” Bailey Vavonese said. “Opportunities to get outside of your comfort zone are really important. I made sure I took advantage when they were presented — or I went and found them.”

She followed that advice in law school, too, where she earned a scholarship to travel to Malaysia to advocate for survivors of domestic violence. She then wrote a letter to a University at Buffalo dean suggesting that they fund her travels to The Hague, Netherlands, where she conducted legal research for judges at the International Criminal Tribunal. (And they did!) She also traveled to Tanzania, where she assisted refugees with resettlement applications.