Andy Izenson, Senior Legal Director

As an attorney, mediator, and restorative and transformative justice practitioner, Andy Izenson brings a varied skillset, radical compassion, and an anti-oppression focus to engage with family, community, and organizational conflict. 

Andy is a passionate advocate and educator around alternative family law and family creation, gender and sexuality, and restorative and transformative justice. This advocacy extends both to education work, including cultural competency trainings for legal professionals, consent and communication workshops at high schools and colleges, and extensive alternative justice system education across the country, as well as to direct services work as an attorney, mediator, consultant, and practitioner of restorative and transformative justice. 

In Andy’s legal work, they are most passionate about supporting family creation and communication by aiding clients with family agreements, assisted reproduction technology work, and estate planning and advance directives. Andy is also a mediator and practitioner of collaborative divorce and separation, and assists families in restructuring peacefully and compassionately.

Andy is a dedicated to working with New York families to resolve conflict without state intervention and is a member of the NYC chapter of the National Lawyers Guild, serving as a past-President, Executive Committee member, and protest support; the selective Family Law Institute of the National LGBT Bar Association; and the Family and Matrimonial Law Committee of the LGBT Bar Association of Greater New York.  Andy also works with and advocates for LGBTQIA+, polyamorous, and non-nuclear families as the Clinical Instructor on Policy at the LGBTQ+ Advocacy Clinic at Harvard Law School.  

Andy currently educates at organizations, schools, and conferences all over the country, including the New York State Bar Association, the Brooklyn Bar Association, the LGBT Bar Association Conference, Creating Change, the Woodhull Sexual Freedom Summit, Columbia University, New York University, Harvard University, Rutgers University, Cooper Union, Skidmore College, and the Family and Divorce Mediation Council on gender, sexuality, consent and communication, and alternative justice systems and community accountability.

Andy is an attorney admitted to the First Department of the New York State bar and has received extensive training in alternative dispute resolution and justice systems, including as a mediator through the New York Center for Interpersonal Development, as a collaborative attorney through the New York Association of Collaborative Professionals, in transformative justice processes with Dr. Mimi Kim and Kay Pranis, and in facilitating Newburgh Model Restorative Justice processes through the Restorative Center.

 
Pronouns:  They/He