Leadership and Governance

Deborah R. Witkin, Esq.

Executive Director

Executive Director Deborah Witkin is the 2023 recipient of the Anthony M. Fitzgerald Award for Excellence in recognition of her “outstanding advocacy.”

Debi is the first female Executive Director of Connecticut Legal Services (CLS). She oversees all departments including financial, administration, human relations, strategic planning, advocacy and legislative initiatives, and communications. Debi has held a variety of other roles within the organization since she joined in 2007, including Deputy Director, Regional Director of the Eastern Local Services Team and Director of Development. As a staff attorney, Debi practiced and litigated across a wide range of the organization’s practice units.

In addition to her work at CLS, Debi served as a Visiting Professor at Quinnipiac University School of Law, where she developed and directed the Health Law Clinic. She was selected as a Legal Services Corporation Fellow to run a year-long Poverty Law Clinic at the University of Connecticut School of Law and she is active in numerous community and legal networks.

Debi is a James W. Cooper Fellow of the Connecticut Bar Foundation, a member of the Advisory Council for the Office of Victim Services and a trainer for national seminars with the Shriver Center on Poverty Law. She has held several leadership roles at a large non-profit agency that serves the greater New Haven area, including President of the Board of Directors.

Helen Harris, Esq.

Chair, Board of Directors

Partner of Day Pitney LLP

Helen Harris joined the CLS Board in 2014 and became Chair in 2024.

Helen is a litigation partner at Day Pitney LLP, where she has practiced for twenty years. She represents companies and individuals in complex commercial litigation in the federal and state courts in Connecticut and New York. She also conducts corporate internal investigations, and guides clients through regulatory inquiries. Helen is a long-term practice group leader in Day Pitney’s litigation department. She served on the Federal Grievance Committee in Connecticut for six years, and on a committee to consider the appointment of a federal magistrate judge in Connecticut.  At her firm, Helen has served on the leadership committee of Day Pitney’s Women Working Together, which facilitates and encourages women in the practice of law, for over ten years, and also on the leadership committee for the Day Pitney Alliance, which supports LGBTQ+ rights, for several years. She previously chaired Day Pitney’s firmwide Pro Bono Committee.  She is a regional director of the Yale Alumni Schools Committee.  Helen graduated from Yale College and Columbia Law School, where she was a Harlan Fiske Stone scholar. She was also a law clerk to the Honorable Reena Raggi.