Shelly Weizman

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Shelly Weizman, JD is a human rights lawyer whose areas of interest include advancing public policy related to addiction, mental health, and disabilities. She is the associate director of the Center on Addiction and Public Policy at the O’Neill Institute at Georgetown Law, where she works on a project portfolio focused on the overdose epidemic and how the law can promote access to treatment and support recovery. She is an adjunct professor at Georgetown Law and in Georgetown’s Master of Science in Addiction Policy and Practice, where she introduced and teaches a course on addiction and mental health law and policy. Shelly facilitates the Recovery Policy Collaborative, a network of experts in health, human rights, and policy who have lived experience with addiction and recovery.

Before coming to Georgetown, she served as the Assistant Secretary for Mental Hygiene in the Office of the Governor of New York, where she oversaw policy and operations related to addiction, mental health, and disabilities. Shelly also served as Policy Director for Managed Care at the New York State Office of Mental Health, where she focused on developing and implementing systemic reforms within New York’s public mental health system. She began her legal career as a civil rights attorney at MFY Legal Services, a not-for-profit legal services organization in New York City. Shelly is the recipient of the 2022 Boston Congress for Public Health’s 40 Under 40 Public Health Catalyst Award, the 2021 Mary L. Fleming Memorial Mentor of the Year Award from the Stop the Addiction Fatality Epidemic (SAFE) Project, and the 2019 Distinguished Public Service Award from the New York Alliance for Inclusion and Innovation.

Shelly received her JD with a concentration in Health Law and Policy from Seton Hall University School of Law and her BA from the University of Houston. Before law school, she worked with adolescents in recovery and their families in Alternative Peer Groups and a therapeutic community in her hometown of Houston Texas. Shelly is a person living and thriving in long-term recovery for more than 27 years.