PERSONAL STATEMENT OF
CHRISTOPHER C. JAVILLONAR
FOR NAPABA SECRETARY

Currently, I serve as the Immediate Past President for NAPABA’s Kansas City Affiliate, AABAKC. As a founding member and Board Member since its inception, I have witnessed the tremendous growth and potential of this local affiliate. However, I have also experienced the difficulties facing smaller affiliates.

Perhaps the most significant reason why I wish to serve on NAPABA’s Board is to increase the diversity of the Board’s composition and increase NAPABA’s representation and network throughout the central regions of the country. In comparison to the more established coastal affiliates, many larger cities outside the coasts face unique challenges in both population and geography. Case in point, AABAKC’s closest affiliates are approximately 250 and 500 miles away. These challenges create additional hurdles in furthering NAPABA’s mission of promoting justice, equity and opportunity for the APA community.

For example, NAPABA contacted me concerning a woman that had been abandoned in California by her husband. While she visited family in Thailand, her husband moved to Kansas with their child and abandoned her without a place to live and without friends in this country. He filed for divorce and custody in Kansas. After Legal Aid declined representation, she faced a default judgment and the prospect of never seeing her child again. Thanks to NAPABA, I represent her on a pro bono basis. Now, she stands a good chance of sharing custody of her child. A few weeks ago, she spoke to her four-year old son for the first time in over a year.

This story demonstrates that huge gaps in representation exists in NAPABA’s network and people in need, such as my client, will fall through these cracks. Without the happenstance NAPABA knew to contact me in the Midwest, she would have lost her case without a fight. As a Board Member, I hope to close the gaps by continuing to build relationships and strengthening NAPABA’s network of affiliates in areas where it is most needed to adequately served the APA community.

In addition, I believe that my experience and leadership qualities speak to my qualifications as a Board Member, as well as my dedication to both diversity and NAPABA’s missions:

• At Bryan Cave, I serve in leadership roles on the Firm’s Recruiting Committee, Associate Task Force, Attorneys of Color Affinity Group Liaison, Summer Associate Committee and the Summer Associate Assignment Coordinator.

• I currently serve on the Board of Trustees for Legal Aid of Western Missouri (LAWMO) and the Board of Directors for the Kansas City Metropolitan Bar Association (KCMBA). The KCMBA represents the interests of approximately 12,000 attorneys in the metropolitan area. LAWMO provides free legal services to low-income and needy people throughout 40 counties in Missouri and provides services to over 20,000 people in a given year.

• I graduated from the Bar Leadership Academy, which is a year-long program designed to teach leadership skills to attorneys and provide them with the tools necessary to serve on non-profit boards. After graduating from the program, the Leadership Academy appointed me as Co-Chair to oversee the training and mentorship of its graduates.

• I serve as the Vice-Chair, and next year the Chair, of the Heartland Diversity Legal Job Fair. As a Core Team member since 2005, I have been involved in planning and organizing this annual job fair that receives hundreds of law student applications from approximately fifty law schools around the country. The job fair focuses on increasing the participation of under-represented groups in the practice of law, an effort that earned it the ABA Partnership Award in 2006.

• Finally, I provide pro bono services to Filipinos that have been victims of human trafficking. Once they arrived in the United States, they were forced by threat of deportation to live in poor housing while paying exorbitant rent and working jobs with little income. We interceded on their behalf to represent their interests before the Department of Justice in cooperating with a criminal investigation.

During my tenure as a Board Member of AABAKC, we matured from eight attorneys who met for lunch to a fledging affiliate to the host of this year’s Central Region Conference that features the current NAPABA Board and Charlie Wunsch, the General Counsel of Sprint Nextel. As a spearhead of this effort to bring greater exposure to NAPABA in the Midwest, I am passionate about promoting the interests of the APA community and taking on new challenges. I hope to bring this same passion and enthusiasm to the NAPABA Board as its Secretary.