Join us at Meredith College for Timely Topics on Oct. 16 at 5:30 pm. Registration is required.
Our guest panelists include N.C. Court of Appeals Judge Donna Stroud, former N.C. Court of Appeals Judge Lucy Inman, and Melissa Price Kromm. The discussion will be moderated by Meredith Associate Professor of Political Science Dr. Whitney Ross Manzo and Meredith student (and LWV-Wake member) Lily Barnett.
This event will feature a panel discussion about the importance of a fair and impartial judiciary and how judicial candidates navigate the elections process in North Carolina.
NOTE: For those who cannot attennd in person, this event will also be live streamed on LWVNC's YouTube.
Guest Panelists:
Judge Donna Stroud is the senior judge of the 15 judges on the North Court of Appeals, having served since 2007. From 2021 to 2023, she served as Chief Judge of the Court of Appeals. She was born and raised in Kinston and attended Campbell University School of Law, graduating first in her class in 1988. Judge Stroud then was an attorney in private practice from 1988 to 2004. She represented individuals, businesses, and municipalities in a wide variety of cases and tried cases in many counties across the state.
While in private practice, Judge Stroud was also a certified Superior Court mediator and a District Court arbitrator. In 2004, she was elected as a District Court Judge in Wake County, where she served until her election to the Court of Appeals in 2006. While on the District Court, Judge Stroud served as a Family Court Judge. Judge Stroud has been an adjunct professor at Campbell Law School since 2008 and currently teaches Judicial Process. In 2014, Judge Stroud graduated from Duke University’s School of Law L.L.M. program in Judicial Studies.
During 18-plus years of service on the N.C. Court of Appeals, Judge Stroud has written over 1,300 judicial opinions and has served on a three-judge panel in over 3,900 cases. Judge Stroud is a past vice president of the North Carolina Bar Association and currently serves on the Appellate Rules Committee and Women in the Profession Committee.
Judge Stroud served as the first Chair of the Chief Justice’s Rules Advisory Commission, which was established by former Chief Justice Mark Martin. She has also served on the Chief Justice’s Commission on Professionalism, the Family Court Advisory Commission, and the North Carolina Court’s Commission. She served as an ex officio member of the Dispute Resolution Committee and Mediation Coordinator for the Court of Appeals. She also served on the Governor’s Task Force on Mental Health and Substance Use, established by Governor Pat McCrory in 2015.
She and her husband J. Wilson Stroud have been married since 1986 and have two adult sons, Aaron and Isaac. They also have two cats, Yancey and Olive.
Lucy Inman served North Carolina for more than a dozen years as a trial and appellate judge. From 2010 through 2014, she served as a special Superior Court judge after being appointed by Governor Beverly Perdue. From 2015 through 2022, after winning a statewide non-partisan judicial election, she served on the North Carolina Court of Appeals. Judge Inman left the bench and returned to practicing law after losing a statewide partisan judicial election in 2022.
Before joining the bench, Judge Inman practiced complex civil litigation for 18 years, first in California and then in North Carolina. She now focuses her practice on appeals. Judge Inman serves on the Judicial Independence Committee of the National Association of Women Judges and is a member of the Professionalism Committee of the Section of Litigation and the Council of Appellate Lawyers within the American Bar Association’s Judicial Division.
Melissa Price Kromm is the Executive Director of North Carolina For the People and N.C. For the People Action, where she has served as the leader of the statewide pro-democracy coalition for the past 14 years. The coalition coordinates advocacy in structural democracy, voting rights, campaign finance reform, government ethics, and transparency, redistricting reform, judicial independence, the right to protest, and election crisis prevention.
Price Kromm led efforts to pass campaign finance disclosure reform, voting rights reform, and stop attacks on judicial independence. Recently, Price Kromm led the coalition to stop bills promoting campaign finance secrecy, attacking the freedom to vote, limiting the right to protest, and spearheaded pioneering legislation to prevent election subversion.
Before joining, Kromm was part of a successful effort to pass same-day voter registration at early voting sites in North Carolina and pre-registration of 16- and 17-year-olds.
Moderator
Dr. Whitney Ross Manzo is an Associate Professor of Political Science at Meredith College. She also serves as the Pre-Law Advisor, Director of Undergraduate Research, and Assistant Director of the Meredith Poll.
Dr. Manzo holds a Ph.D. from the University of Texas at Dallas in Political Science and Methodology. Her general field is American politics, and her primary expertise is in the areas of public opinion, constitutional and electoral law, elections, and gender issues in politics.
Dr. Manzo’s research agenda focuses on imbalances of power and issues of representation. She has recently published on Unaffiliated voters in North Carolina politics and is currently working on a couple of projects on women in North Carolina politics. She has served as President of the North Carolina Political Science Association and on the Executive Council of the Southern Political Science Association, and she has served on the Town of Knightdale's Board of Adjustment since 2023.
