Leadership and Staff

Chris Mumma, Executive Director

For nearly two decades, Chris Mumma has served as the Center’s Executive Director. Instrumental in fighting for criminal justice reform in North Carolina, Chris has spearheaded legislation on eyewitness identification, the recording of interrogations, preservation of biological evidence, enhanced support for exonerees, and the establishment of the only Innocence Inquiry Commission in the United States. As the Center’s Executive Director, she also represented Dwayne Dail, Joseph Abbitt, Greg Taylor, Willie Grimes, Larry Lamb, Joseph Sledge, and Johnny Small in their successful post-conviction proceedings. Before joining the Center, Chris had a nine-year career in corporate finance at Nortel Networks. She then went on to attend law school and clerk for I. Beverly Lake, Jr., the Chief Justice of the North Carolina Supreme Court. She is the recipient of the 2007 Tar Heel of the Year Award, the 2008 Business Leader Magazine Pro Bono Impact Award, the 2009 Z. Smith Reynolds Susan Reynolds Award for Advocacy, the 2010 Advocates for Justice Kellie Crabtree Award, the 2012 Lawyer’s Weekly Women of Justice Public Service Practitioner Award, the 2017 North Carolina Advocates for Justice Thurgood Marshall Award, and the 2018 North Carolina Justice Center Defender of Justice Award.