Evora A. Thomas was admitted to practice law in New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Virginia and is a graduate of Georgetown University Law Center (JD ’77) and Princeton University (BA’74) where she was recruited during the first year it became co-ed. She spent more than 40 years in promoting, providing, and supporting the delivery of legal aid in civil cases to those unable to afford a lawyer. As a licensed attorney herself, the passion of this mission became the over-arching motivation of her legal career. In 2022, she retired from the Legal Services Corporation (LSC) in Washington, D.C. after nearly two decades of engagement with legal services providers nationally.

 

Prior to joining LSC, Evora served as Executive Director & General Counsel of Peninsula Legal Aid Center, Inc. in Hampton, Virginia; and as a Staff Attorney with the Virginia Legal Aid Society, Inc., and with Essex-Newark Legal Services, Inc. Ms. Thomas was also appointed as the first Black and first female Presiding Judge of the Municipal Court of East Orange, New Jersey in 1983.  Over the years, she has served as a board member for numerous non-profit organizations, including the Legal Services Corporation of Virginia, Peninsula Aids Foundation, Newark Recycling, TriCorp, Inc., and the Concerned Black Alumni of Princeton (CBAP), in addition to the Dreyfuss Bank, formerly headquartered in East Orange, New Jersey. She has also been a frequent trainer on non-profit board governance, leadership, and client engagement at national conferences, at grantee program events and at LSC.

 

Throughout her adult life, Evora has been actively engaged in ministry and currently serves at the First Baptist Church of Glenarden in Upper Marlboro, Maryland. In retirement, she looks forward to being more involved in support of the ministry within the local community, along with writing, and spending more time with her children and grandchildren.