Ciara Bradley

I've been in the legal field for about 17 years now, and with the state of New Jersey for about 10 and a half years. Since I was a child, I wanted to be an attorney, which led me to the legal field starting around age 18, working in law firms. I started law school in Arizona but ended up not going through with it because I had two small children and my mother wasn't able to take care of them, so I went back to New Jersey. When I got back, I started working for the state of New Jersey, and the League of Municipalities picked me up. I started working as a paralegal and legislative administrator for their office, which is what led me to the legislative field where I now work a lot with the governor, the legislature, and all 565 mayors of New Jersey. I have not gone back to law school yet, but I do plan to go back within the next year, possibly at Georgetown University. Daily, I do a lot of communication with members - our mayors and clerks of many municipalities. A lot of the work I do is reading documents, policy analysis, and research. My job just actually promoted me to be a research associate on top of everything else I do, so I'm doing a lot of research for the office now for the affordable housing crisis, salary surveys for all the municipalities, liquor licenses, and everything under the sun for research for municipalities. I do some amicus curiae work for our attorney, so I do a lot of brief reading and redlining for briefs for courthouse or legal hearings. I also do a lot of letter writing for our legislature because we have to, at times, act as lobbyists for our members who disagree or agree with any proposed legislation. I'm also transitioning to president of the NFBPA, the National Forum on Black Public Administrators, which is an organization for African Americans who work on executive levels and mostly work in local government and state government. I was and have been the Emerging Leader Chair, which means I bring on a lot of young professionals and help them emerge into careers like myself. As president of the New Jersey chapter, I will be running the organization, hosting programs, running our budget, getting grants, and going to conferences and emerging events. Additionally, I'm a landlord and an entrepreneur - I rent housing to low-income families because I'm big about the affordable housing crisis going on in New Jersey. My way of giving back is by renting to low-income families, maybe also because I'm a product of a single mother, a single-family household, and I'm a mother of four boys myself. I used to be a single mother but I'm now remarried, and there was a point where I did struggle as a single mom and I didn't have a lot, but I am where I am now by the grace of God and the strength I was given.