BIOGRAPHY OF THE BOARD DIRECTORS
Melody Webb, Chief Executive Officer and Executive Director
Melody is a graduate of Harvard University and Harvard Law School. She has spent her career practicing public interest law, both paid and unpaid. After law school, she clerked for the Honorable Emmet G. Sullivan, then on the District of Columbia Court of Appeals. Since then, Ms. Webb has focused on legislative and policy advocacy as Systemic Reform Attorney at the Washington Legal Clinic for the Homeless, as Legislative Counsel for US Senator Robert Casey, and as Associate General Counsel for Service Employees International Union.

While at home raising her young children between 2002 and 2006 she ran several pro-bono advocacy campaigns on a variety of topics, working with local and national partners. She was quoted in the media often, including an appearance on the Dianne Rehm Show on NPR.

She has supervised public interest attorneys as Legal Director for the Employment Justice Center, and public interest attorneys as Pro Bono Counsel for Neighborhood Legal Services Program of the District of Columbia. In addition, Ms. Webb has represented indigent parents through the Counsel for Child Abuse and Neglect of the DC Superior Court, and served on the DC Superior Court, Court Improvement Program Advisory Committee.

In 2016, the student body of Harvard Law School selected her as the alumni Gary Bellow Public Service Award recipient.

From 2019 to 2021, Melody served as the Program Director of GW Law School Jacob Burns Community Legal Clinics , where she managed the legal operations and legal programming of the clinics. Additionally, she has designed and taught on the intersecting topics of race, class and family law and supervised students in the Family Justice Litigation Clinic.

Cheli English-Figaro, Treasurer
Cheli, an initial board director of Mothers Outreach Network, is a co-founder and president emerita of Mocha Moms, Inc.. She graduated from Yale University and Columbia University School of Law. Prior to leaving full-time employment outside the home, she practiced law in New York and Washington, D.C.
She currently works part-time from home. She has been featured in Ebony Magazine, the Washington Post, the Gazette, and has been a featured writer for the Proctor and Gamble website, HomeMadeSimple.com. She has also apppeared as a regular guest on National Public Radio’s Tell Me More with Michel Martin.

Rene Blocker, Secretary
Rene, a long-time advisor to Mothers Outreach Network, is a graduate of Cornell Law School. She worked as Deputy Attorney General for New Jersey, and then from 1994 to 2005 with the Multistate Tax Commission, rising through the ranks to become Interim Executive Director. Since then she has worked as a consultant to small businesses and nonprofit organizations.

Esther Coleman, President
Esther DeAnn Coleman is a proud native of Jacksonville, Florida.  At an early age, Esther became disillusioned with the images of children and teens being thrown into the juvenile justice system and resolved that she could be a part of the solution to this burgeoning problem.   After a harrowing trip with Youth Leadership Jacksonville to the county jail, where the students were allowed to speak with several teen inmates who were housed in the jail, Esther’s plans to become an attorney and legal advocate were solidified.  She knew at that point that the only way that she would be able to help those in her community fight the allure of crime and to fight against other civil injustices would be to be well versed in the tool that was being used against them– the law.  Esther found that the law would be a perfect utilization of her analytical skills and her gifts of language and creative expression.

Esther attended the Florida Agricultural and Mechanical University where she became president of the school’s section of the National Council of Negro Women; and completed internships at the Florida State Senate and the Levin College of Law’s Center for Governmental Responsibility at the University of Florida.  After moving to D.C. to matriculate at the Georgetown University Law Center, Esther nurtured her interest in constitutional law by interning at the Advancement Project and the D.C. Office of the Corporation Counsel.

Esther’s desire to empower her community through knowledge of law continues to be the motivating factor for all of the work that she does.  Esther is striving to continue to work with community based groups to create and facilitate their public policy platforms and to address the legal issues that the groups that they serve face.  Esther has a particular interest in advancing the rights of women and youth and works closely with small business startups.  She currently is principal attorney at Executive DC Legal Services and compliance manager for a behavioral health services provider; on the board of directors of Mother’s Outreach Network, and Words, Beats and Life, Inc.; as a trustee of the Shiloh Baptist Church of Washington, DC; and regularly volunteers with Capital Caring, the Washington Area Lawyers for the Arts and the Maryland Volunteer Lawyer Service.  Esther works to use her talents to inform and encourage others to discover their own power and voice.

Keesha Turner Roberts, At Large Board Member; Chair, Nominating Committee

Originally from Lynchburg, Virginia, Keeshea Turner Roberts graduated in 1996 from Hollins University (formerly Hollins College), a women’s college located in Roanoke, Virginia.  Prior to law school. Keeshea worked as a family/child caseworker and court advocate at the YWCA-Domestic Violence Prevention Program (formerly YWCA-Domestic Violence Prevention Center) (DVPP) in Lynchburg, Virginia. DVPP’s mission is to provide support for domestic violence victims and work towards the reduction and elimination of family violence.  It was this experience that compelled Keeshea to go to law school. She attended Catholic University of America, Columbus School of Law (CUA-CLS) graduating in 2002 with a Juris Doctor and a certificate in Public Policy.  During law school, Keeshea interned in a variety of legal settings including the American Civil Liberties Union for the National Capital Area,  United States Department of Justice, Legal Services for Northern Virginia, and the Public Defender’s Office for the City of Alexandria.  In addition to interning, Keeshea was very active in  the CUA-CLS community.  She was a member of the Honor Court and the Thurgood Marshall American Inn of Court.  Keeshea received several awards while attending CUA-CLS including the First Lap and Extra Mile Awards.

Following law school, Keeshea worked in various legal setting including clerking for four magistrate judges on the DC Superior Court, and litigating family and public benefit cases on behalf of indigent DC residents at Neighborhood Legal Services Program (NLSP). While at NLSP, Keeshea rose through the ranks from temporary staff attorney to managing attorney for a neighborhood office. She was a sought-afte family law and practice expert and was a frequent instructor and guest lecturer at area law schools and other DC Bar related programs.  In 2017, Keeshea successfully graduated  from the DC Bar’s John Payton Leadership Academy. This academy provides DC Bar members with an intensive training program to develop and sharpen the necessary skills to be successful leaders of the Bar and throughout their careers.

In 2017, Keeshea also ventured into academia. She began the journey by working at Rising for Justice (formerly DC Law Students in Court) as a supervising attorney in the Criminal and later the Housing Advocacy and Litigation Clinics. Since 1969, Rising for Justice’s (RFJ) mission ahs been to leverage the collective forces of students from American University’s Washington College of Law, Georgetown University Law Center, George Washington School of Law, CUA-CLS, and UDC’s David A. Clark School of Law and experienced advocates to achieve justice for DC residents. At RFJ, Keeshea taught students housing and criminal law practice areas as well as supervised the litigation of cases at DC Superior Court.  In addition to her duties as a supervising attorney, Keeshea also was the co-director of the Civil Protection Order Project (CPOP).  CPOP was the brainchild of Moses Cook, the former Executive Director of RFJ and Keeshea. CPOP is the first of program of its kind that provides litigation and mediation services for respondents (also called “defendants” in most jurisdictions) in domestic violence cases.

Currently, Keeshea is an adjunct clinical law professor and supervising attorney at Howard University School of Law’s Fair Housing Clinic (FHC). FHC is a year-long clinic that exposes second and third-year law students to housing topics such as discrimination and eviction defense.  Students take the attorney roles of counseling, negotiating and in some cases litigating on behalf of their clients. Keeshea’s legal scholarship centers on the access to justice, clinical pedagogy, implicit bias and client advocacy