Cathryn Marchman (J.D. ’08) Advocates for the Homeless
Cathryn Marchman (J.D. ’08) created her path to success. Although it was a journey full of rocky roads and several barriers, the Georgia State Law graduate followed her heart and found her purpose.
Marchman realized that no matter which route she chose, her passion for advocating for individuals experiencing homelessness always took center stage.
After high school, the Sandy Springs native enrolled at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. While there, she worked for an after-school program for at-risk youth.
“My career has truly come full circle around homelessness. I always joke that I fell in love with the kids cursing me out and throwing waffles at me,” she said.
This experience strengthened her love for serving the community. Eventually, Marchman dropped out of UW–Madison after her first semester because of homesickness. She then attended Georgia State University as a pre-med major for two years, but decided to return to Wisconsin to finish what she started, graduating with a B.S. in anthropology and social welfare.
Then, she enrolled in the Hunter School of Social Work in New York and served as an intern for an alternative high school in the South Bronx.
Ultimately, her goal was to become a “champion public defender.” She interned for the New York County Public Defender’s office and worked at Rikers Island and for the Bronx Defenders in New York, which provides holistic legal services, social work support and advocacy to indigent people residing in the Bronx neighborhood.
“I worked with some really brilliant attorneys, but as good as they were at their jobs, they weren’t always good at communicating with clients. Especially our clients who were very impoverished and a part of a marginalized community,” she said.
This void gave Marchman an idea. “I thought, I’ll just go to law school because then I’ll be a ‘super public defender’ — a social worker, plus a lawyer,” she said.
Because of the high cost of law school tuition in New York, Marchman found herself back in Atlanta, this time as a part-time student at Georgia State Law.
While in law school she worked for City of Refuge, an organization that specializes in social transformation for the 30314 neighborhood located in the heart of Atlanta. In this position she took advantage of an opportunity to live as a resident manager at the shelter where she worked for nearly two years with 30 women and children in the Vine City area. She also conducted assessments and counseling for the women and children who were seeking services from the organization.
After graduation, Marchman was asked to serve as the program director for City of Refuge.
“To be honest, after graduation I was very burned out from law school. I said, ‘To hell with the bar; I’m not going to practice,’” Marchman said.
“I had become somewhat disillusioned about becoming a public defender by that time because the public defender system in Atlanta is very different from the one that I came from, which was very progressive,” she added.
Her social work career took off after law school. She began working for Mercy Care Inc., which provides health care to the homeless and marginalized communities. Two years later, Marchman took the bar and passed it.
In 2013, she became a legal, policy and compliance officer for Saint Joseph’s Health System. In this position, she managed contractual agreements and counseled the system through governance changes and health care legal issues.
In October 2015, Marchman took on a new assignment. She became the executive director for Partners for H.O.M.E. (Housing Opportunities Made for Everyone), a nonprofit organization created by the City of Atlanta. Its overall mission is to develop a coordinated crisis response system that decreases homelessness by providing leadership, planning and implementation of community strategies and resources.
“I know that homelessness is not always the most sympathetic thing — not everybody is passionate or empathic to people who sleep outside,” Marchman said. “But I have been overwhelmed with the amount of interest and compassion by the public, governmental sector, private individuals, by philanthropy, by the local corporate business community and by our providers.”
Although she’s not practicing law, Marchman uses lessons learned while at Georgia State Law, like critical thinking, contract writing, review and negotiation.
“Persuasive writing skills are essential,” she said. “Occasionally, I have to interpret and assess law and its impact on our work.”
She struggled through law school, but her story is a testimony that there is light at the end of the tunnel.
Marchman said that if she were able to commiserate with other students at the time, it may have helped the process run much smoother.
She encourages students to not be afraid to be vulnerable and transparent about their experience. “Because what I’ve come to learn from other lawyers is that everybody was feeling the same way [during law school] … but we were terrified to tell other people about it.”