About

Christi Griffin has been a tireless advocate for others since early in her college career. She received a Bachelor of Science degree from Webster College where she worked in the minority resource office and published the college’s first directory of scholarships for Black Students. While there she was named Who’s Who Among Students in American Colleges and Universities and was awarded the Mary McCleod Bethune Award and The Black Student Association’s Who’s Who Among Students Award. Griffin went on to receive a Juris Doctorate from St. Louis University School of Law and Griffin opened her law practice as a ministry the following year. Over the course of 23 years, her practice grew it into one of the largest consumer bankruptcy practices in the State of Missouri.

While facing a false bar complaint involving a powerful law firm, Griffin experienced firsthand the broad misconduct of attorneys and judges within the Office of the Chief Disciplinary Council of the Missouri Bar. In response to the unsubstantiated and unlawful suspension of her license, Griffin founded The Ethics Project to reduce similar wrongful prosecutions within the criminal justice system.  Initially focused on educating the public about professional ethics that pertain to lawyers, prosecutors, judges and law enforcement, awareness of the staggering increase in jail and prison populations prompted expansion of the organization to directly addressing the impact incarcerations and injustice have on children, families and the community.  Under her leadership, the non-profit has received civic recognition as well as the coveted What’s Right with St. Louis Award by Focus St. Louis for outstanding impact and service to the community.

Griffin has served as Chair of the St. Louis Civil Rights Enforcement Commission, as a Director of the Joint Boards of Health and Hospitals for the City of St. Louis, the Missouri Catholic Conference Public Policy Advisory Committee, the Public Safety Advisory Council of St. Louis, the St. Louis Initiative to Reduce Violence, the Today and Tomorrow Educational Foundation and Kenrick-Glennon Seminary among others. As a member of the Board of Directors of the United Way of Metropolitan St. Louis, Griffin served as a volunteer, as chair of the attorney market of the Charmaine Chapman Society and as a Cabinet member of the De Tocqueville Society. She co-founded The Coalition to Abolish the Prison Industrial Complex and founded the Mother 2 Mother, Father 2 Father and Man 2 Man platforms in response the tragic killing of Michael Brown and its aftermath.  A composite of those two Conversations was filmed at the National Civil Rights Museum for a nationally aired PBS documentary. The d0cumentary, The Talk, Race in America, can be viewed at www.PBS.org.

A former adjunct professor at St. Louis University teaching Criminal Law and Procedure, Dr. Griffin has also served as a guest lecturer, panelist, plenary and keynote speaker and has been featured in a number of documentaries. She has been interviewed by CNN, Time Magazine, The New Yorker among others and has appeared on MSNBC, PBS News hour and PBS.

As a writer, Griffin penned her first book, 21 Days to Joy, A Daily Devotional to Finding Joy in 2008. Incarcerations in Black and White, The Subjugation of Black America was released in 2013. She is a guest columnist for the St. Louis American newspaper. Christi Griffin is the recipient of numerous awards including being twice presented with the President’s Call to Service Award and the Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Drum Major for Justice Award. She was most recently awarded the prestigious Woman of Leadership Award presented by The Urban League of Metropolitan St. Louis and Delux Magazine’s Power 100 Award. Griffin is the mother of three adult children and the grandmother of five.