CO-founder

Jonathan Rapping is a nationally renowned criminal justice innovator and the Founder and former Chief Executive Officer of Gideon’s Promise, a nonprofit public defender organization whose mission is to transform the criminal justice system by building a movement of public defenders who provide equal justice for marginalized communities.

Since its inception in 2007, Gideon’s Promise has grown from a single training program for sixteen attorneys in two public defender offices in Georgia and Louisiana to a national enterprise with over 1,000 participants in 40 offices across 27 states and the U.S. Virgin Islands. The organization’s initial three-year program for new public defenders has expanded into the only comprehensive model that supports defenders at all levels of their careers, with programming for new lawyers, supervisors, chief defenders, trainers, law students, and the clinical instructors who teach them.

From 2022 to 2024, Rapping served as the Chief Executive Officer of Gideon’s Promise. In 2024, he stepped down as CEO to join the organization’s Board of Directors, where he continues to advance its mission and vision for justice-centered public defense reform. Rapping is the Professor of Law and Director of the Criminal Justice Certificate Program at Atlanta’s John Marshall Law School (AJMLS) and visiting Professor of Law at Harvard Law School.