Degna Levister currently serves as Associate Dean for Enrollment Management & Access Initiatives as well as Executive Director of the City University of New York School of Law’s Pipeline to Justice program. The Pipeline to Justice, one of the City University of New York’s Black Male Initiative programs, is an innovative 10-month long pre-law program that advances CUNY Law’s commitment to diversifying the legal profession by preparing underrepresented students to earn a Juris Doctorate degree.Professor Levister began her career as a Registered Professional Nurse. She holds a Master’s Degree in Philosophy and Education from Columbia University Teacher’s College and a Juris Doctorate from Brooklyn Law School, where she was awarded the Edward V. Sparer Public Interest Law Fellowship.

Her teaching at CUNY Law began in 2001. Professor Levister taught in CUNY’s Economic Justice Project, in the Health Law and Elder Law Clinics as well as in the school’s Professional Lawyering Program. Since 2015, when she began leading the school’s admissions team as the Assistant Dean for Admissions, she has boosted the law school’s enrollment, while also seating the most capable and diverse classes in the history of the law school.

Before joining the CUNY Law faculty, she directed the Urban Justice Center’s Homelessness Outreach and Prevention Project, which provides direct civil legal representation to the poor via soup kitchen/food pantry outreach clinics. Her work at The Legal Aid Society “LAS,” included civil and criminal law client advocacy at LAS’s Criminal Appeals Bureau, the Brooklyn Office For the Aging, and the Bronx and Brooklyn Neighborhood offices focusing her civil client advocacy on Health Law, Elder Law, Public Benefits, and Housing.