Thursday, August 6, 2026
6:00 – 7:30 pm
The Ivy Bookshop, Back Patio
5928 Falls Road
Baltimore, MD 21209
Elizabeth Vartkessian works with criminal defense teams as a mitigation specialist or “mercy worker.” Her job is not to prove defendants’ innocence, for they are often guilty, but rather to collect information that might make sense of their behavior. She spends hundreds of hours situating their crimes in context by investigating their histories and communities, talking to their parents, siblings, teachers, and neighbors.
She’ll discuss her new book, The Deserving, on the Ivy Patio with Dr. Khalilah M. Harris, Executive Director of the Public Justice Center, where we’ll consider the argument for true rehabilitation replacing retribution.
Founded in 1985, the Public Justice Center is a nonprofit civil rights law firm that uses legal tools to challenge poverty and racial inequity in Maryland and beyond. Read more at www.publicjustice.org.
Book purchases at this event raise funds for the Public Justice Center as part of CLLCTIVGive, an annual 24 hour period of community-powered giving in support of Black-led organizations across Greater Baltimore. More than a fundraising campaign, CLLCTIVGive is a movement to move resources, amplify the work, and celebrate the organizations building what our communities need to thrive.
RSVP and order books on the Ivy Bookshop’s website.
Mitigation specialist Elizabeth Vartkessian has been investigating the life histories of those facing the most severe penalties possible in the United States since 2004. She is the author of The Deserving: What the Lives of the Condemned Reveal About American Justice published by Bloomsbury in January 2026.
Elizabeth holds a PhD in law and an MS in comparative social policy from the University of Oxford, and BAs in philosophy and political science from the George Washington University. She is the founder and director of Advancing Real Change Inc., a national nonprofit dedicated to conducting life history investigations in criminal cases. She lives in Baltimore.
Dr. Khalilah M. Harris is Public Justice Center’s Executive Director and has over two decades of leadership in policy and justice. She most recently served as Executive Vice President of Program Strategy at the Center for Policing Equity and as a campaign advisor for a mayoral campaign in New York City. Dr. Harris brings a unique perspective to her work from an extensive career fighting to expand access to opportunity through a racial equity lens. Over the course of her career, she has organized and been an advocate on a range of issues including access to quality K-12 public education, economic development, policing reform, women’s rights, Black maternal health and building an inclusive workforce. Native to Brooklyn, New York and nurtured by Baltimore, Maryland, Khalilah is also a proud mother to three amazing children and daughter to Costa Rican and Jamaican immigrants – all of which grounds her work and shapes her global perspective.
