Meredith Rapkin joined the Pennsylvania Legal Aid Network as Executive Director in December 2024. A seasoned nonprofit leader, Meredith has dedicated her career to advancing access to high-quality legal aid and amplifying the voices of individuals and families in need.

She began her legal journey as an Independence Foundation Public Interest Law Fellow in 2004, a fellowship that allowed her to work at HIAS and Council Migration Service of Philadelphia specializing in cases involving immigrant victims of interpersonal violence. After the conclusion of that fellowship, she remained at HIAS and continued assisting immigrant survivors of domestic violence under a larger grant from the Department of Justice Office on Violence Against Women.

Fluent in English and Spanish, Meredith has also served as a Clinical Teaching Fellow at the Farmworker Legal Aid Clinic at Villanova University’s Charles Widger School of Law, where she mentored law students representing farmworkers in employment and immigration matters. Additionally, she has served as a consulting attorney to the Consulate of Mexico in Philadelphia.

Before joining PLAN, Inc., Meredith led the Pennsylvania Innocence Project as Executive Director. She also spent more than a decade as the Executive Director of Justice at Work, a legal aid organization within the PLAN Network, where she drove the organization’s expansion and established it as a leading provider of legal services to low-wage and immigrant workers across Pennsylvania.

Meredith earned her J.D. from Temple University Beasley School of Law, where she was the Executive Editor of the Political and Civil Rights Law Review and received the International Law Prize upon graduation in 2004. She also holds a Bachelor of Arts from the University of Pennsylvania.