Lydia Watts

Lydia C. Watts, Esq.
Executive Director, The Rebuild, Overcome, and Rise (ROAR) Center, University of Maryland, Baltimore

Lydia has spent the past 30 years working with survivors of intimate partner and sexual violence. While in her third year of law school, Lydia — along with three fellow clinical students — founded Women Empowered Against Violence (WEAVE), where she served as Executive Director from 1995-2005. WEAVE was a multi-disciplinary agency that provided teen and adult victims of domestic violence in Washington, D.C., including an innovative range of services including legal, counseling, clinical case management, economic literacy and empowerment, outreach and education. Lydia is also the founding board chair of the Network for Victim Recovery (NVRDC) in D.C., which serves survivors of all types of crime with a strong emphasis on serving survivors of rape and sexual assault. Lydia served on the board of NVRDC from March 2012 to August 2015. Other leadership positions she has held include: CEO of the Service Women’s Action Network (SWAN); Deputy Director of the DC Access to Justice Commission; Director of Quality and Program Enhancement of the Civil Programs of the National Legal Aid and Defender Association (NLADA); Executive Director of the Massachusetts Alliance on Teen Pregnancy and the Victim Rights Law Center, both based in Boston. Lydia earned her J.D. summa cum laude from American University, Washington College of Law, and her BA in English from Boston University.