Wayne Mckenzie
Wayne S. McKenzie is currently General Counsel at the New York City Department of Probation where he is the primary advisor to the Commissioner and the Chief of Staff on all legal matters; ensures that the Department is operating within the law at all times and provides direction and administrative review to all Deputy, Associate and Assistant General Counsels and attorneys. Prior to working at Probation, he served as the director of the Vera Institute of Justice’s Prosecution and Racial Justice Program. Prior to joining Vera he was a prosecutor in the Kings County District Attorney’s Office where he held several supervisory positions, the last being deputy bureau chief of the Crimes Against Children Bureau.
He is a past president of the National Black Prosecutors Association and the current co-chair of the ABA Criminal Justice Section Committee on Racial & Ethnic Justice & Diversity. Additionally, he is a member of the ABA Council on Racial & Ethnic Justice. Wayne is also a trial advocacy faculty instructor at the Ernest Hollings National Advocacy Center in Columbia, South Carolina. He has also appeared as a legal analyst on Court TV and Fox TV’s cable news and has presented on criminal justice issues in the United States and the United Kingdom. Wayne graduated with a bachelor’s degree in biology from The City College of New York and was in the master’s program in microbiology. He received his JD from George Washington University School of Law in Washington, DC.