In 2005, Riya Saha Shah started her legal career as a fellow with the Philadelphia-based Juvenile Law Center, a venerated 50-year-old nonprofit litigation and advocacy group. Two decades later, she will lead the organization that gave her that start.
Just before the new year, the center announced that Shah, its senior managing director, would succeed Sue Mangold this month.
“This appointment comes at a critical juncture for the organization — young people ensnared in the juvenile legal and foster care systems face myriad obstacles,” said Dr. Tami Benton, Juvenile Law Center board chair and chair of the Department of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. “We are fortunate to have a leader of Riya’s caliber whose expertise will ensure that the organization can fight zealously for youth rights at every level.”
The Juvenile Law Center was launched in 1974 as the nation’s first public interest law firm focused entirely on children. Over the years it has led or supported action on a variety of key juvenile justice and child welfare issues, including a Supreme Court case on juvenile life without parole sentences, equity of support for kinship care providers, and the notorious “Kids for Cash” scandal in Pennsylvania.
Mangold is retiring after 10 years leading the Juvenile Law Center. She succeeded Bob Schwartz, one of the organization’s founders, who served as executive director from 1982 until 2015. Schwartz passed away last year at the age of 75. One of his fellow founders, Marsha Levick, remains the center’s chief legal officer for now but plans to leave the center in December.
Shah serves as co-chair of the Children’s Rights Litigation Committee of the American Bar Association, and has also served as an advisory member for the association’s Commission on Youth at Risk.