Judith Halfpenny Volkart, B.A. Economics,
1981
Judith Volkart entered Sonoma
State University in 1977, the wife of a Vietnam-era veteran and mother
of an infant daughter. She proceeded to graduate cum laude with departmental
distinction in 1981 with her bachelor's degree in Economics. During her
student tenure at SSU Volkart published an article on Women in the Labor
Force in the Sonoma Management Review, a publication of SSU, and she team
taught a course in the management department with professor Robert Girling.
In addition to her course work and family responsibilities while attending
SSU, Volkart volunteered at a Woman's Shelter in Santa Rosa, providing
lay legal counsel to its needy residents. She also served on the board
of Directors for the Cooperative Association of Sonoma County (popularly
known as the Santa Rosa Co-op), a food retailing organization which at
its height achieved an annual volume of two million dollars.
Volkart went on to receive
her law degree from the University of California's Hastings College of
Law in 1984. As a law student, Volkart worked as an extern at the California
Supreme Court and with the Sonoma County Public Defender's Office, reflecting
her long-standing interest in the legal rights of the indigent accused.
She passed the bar on her first attempt and was offered a position with
the California Department of Insurance. From there she joined Fireman's
Fund Insurance company, headquartered in Novato in 1985, where after a
series of promotions, she now serves as a senior member of the Trade Regulation,
Anti-Trust, and Corporate Litigation Section of the General Counsel's
Office. She is not only a trial lawyer, but manages corporate litigation
and appellate matters for Fireman's Fund nationally. Articles reporting
the judgments won on her cases have appeared in The Wall Street Journal,
Barron's, and other regional and industry newspapers.
Volkart is the current Chair
of the American Civil Liberties Union of Sonoma County, and has been actively
involved in the Coalition on Police Accountability, a Sonoma County community-based
organization addressing reform of local police practices. She has been
asked by members of minority communities to help facilitate and coordinate
meetings of representatives of these communities with local law enforcement
agencies, and most recently with members of the United States Justice
Department in San Francisco. Under Volkart's facilitation, lines of communication
between minority communities and local law enforcement have been newly
opened.
Volkart was recently invited
by the Justice Department to testify at the US Civil Rights Commission
hearing investigating Sonoma County's high rate of police involved shootings.
She also is co-founder and chair of the board of the Democratic Enterprise
Foundation, a non-profit corporation which assists individuals from low
and moderate income groups in forming, sustaining and expanding employee
owned and democratically managed businesses. She helped establish the
first ACLU club at SSU, and currently is a lecturer in law and economics
in the School of Business and Economics at SSU.
| 
