Madeline (Maddy) deLone joined the Alliance for Justice Board in 2020. She was excited to join at the time because she had long used — and referred many organizations to — the Bolder Advocacy team and had always been an enormous fan of AFJ’s. Over the past several years, Maddy has worked with the Board on strategic planning, Board governance, and strategic initiatives.
In 2025, Maddy worked alongside staff and the executive recruiting firm to hire AFJ’s new President, Rachel Rossi. Also in 2025, Maddy became AFJ’s Board Chair. AFJ could not be luckier to have Maddy as both a Board member and now our Chair.
Maddy brings to AFJ a lifetime of experience fighting for justice, often for the most disenfranchised: incarcerated individuals. She also brings decades of nonprofit leadership, expertise in helping to successfully grow sustainable organizations, and a commitment to never letting the mission slide. In her career as a lawyer, Maddy advanced many of the causes on which AFJ focuses. Her most recent full-time role was Executive Director of the Innocence Project for more than 15 years, where she grew the organization’s staff from eight employees in 2004 to 80 in 2020. Prior to that, Maddy was an attorney with the Prisoners’ Rights Project of the Legal Aid Society, a Skadden Fellow and staff attorney with Children’s Rights, Inc., and a law clerk to the Honorable Robert W. Sweet of the Southern District of New York.
Before becoming a lawyer, Maddy served as the Deputy Director of the New York Board of Correction, where she oversaw the creation and implementation of health standards for people confined to New York City jails. Prior to this work in the early 1990s, the Board of Correction had no rules defining the minimum standards for health care delivery in the jails. The implementation of these standards helped raise the level of care in New York City’s jails and provided a national standard for delivering community-level care for incarcerated persons throughout the country. True to form, she would be the first to minimize her significant leadership role and to point out that more work is needed.
Maddy is excited to lead AFJ’s Board during these challenging times because the work in the federal and state judiciary systems and AFJ’s support of nonprofits has never been more critical. What excites her most about AFJ’s work is the bold approach that its talented team takes in all its project areas.
How Maddy finds the time is anyone’s guess, but she also works as an interim Executive Director and consultant for several nonprofits. Maddy serves on the boards of JustLeadershipUSA and Cicatelli Associates Inc., and has served on several other boards, including the North Star Fund, the Hazen Foundation, Cornerstone Theater Company, and the Innocence Network. Maddy graduated from Harvard and Radcliffe Colleges, holds a master’s in Health Policy and Management from the Harvard School of Public Health, and earned her law degree from New York University School of Law, where she was an Arthur Garfield Hays Civil Rights and Civil Liberties Fellow.
AFJ is profoundly grateful for Maddy’s lifetime of extraordinary work and her current service to our organization and mission. Thank you, Maddy!