Emily Coward serves as Director of the Inclusive Juries Project within the Center for Criminal Justice and Professional Responsibility at Duke University School of Law. From 2012 to 2021, Emily was a member of the UNC School of Government’s Public Defense Education group, serving as Director and Project Attorney of the NC Racial Equity Network. She received the UNC School of Government Margaret Taylor Writing Award in 2015 for co-authoring Raising Issues of Race in North Carolina Criminal Cases and the James E. Williams award in 2016 from the North Carolina Public Defenders Association. From 2009 to 2011, she represented clients in civil and post-conviction matters as an attorney with North Carolina Prisoner Legal Services. Emily served as a law clerk for Judge James Robertson of the United States District Court for the District of Columbia and for Justice Thembile Skweyiya of the Constitutional Court of South Africa. She earned a BA from Oberlin College and a JD magna cum laude from Duke University School of Law. 

Emily currently serves as Chair of the Data, Study, and Evaluation Team of the NC Governor’s Task Force for Racial Equity in Criminal Justice, a Commissioner on the NC Commission on Racial and Ethnic Disparities in the Criminal Justice System, and is a member of the NC Campaign to Remove Confederate Monuments from Courthouse Spaces.