EMPATHY AND EQUITY GUIDE LAW TEAM DIRECTED BY GREG KNOLL
Compassion for those in need shaped leader of Legal Aid Society of S.D.
Greg Knoll is one of the most authentic human beings you could ever hope to meet, and it comes through in many aspects of his storied legal career. The executive director of the Legal Aid Society of San Diego has a giant reputation in the community that is well earned.
To understand Knoll is, first and foremost, to understand the warmth of his mother and the support of his father. He grew up a star basketball player in New Jersey whose father never missed a game, and he saw early in the tears of his mother the night Adlai Stevenson lost his first presidential bid the way that a deep compassion for the difficulties of others shaped her worldview.
That’s the Greg Knoll who raised hell protesting the treatment in Attica State Prison and racism in the streets of New York in 1967 and the same Greg Knoll who later chose a Rutgers Law School known for its diversity and fighting against racism and sex discrimination. It was at Rutgers, as a student of then-professor Ruth Bader Ginsberg, that the seeds of Knoll’s public and unwavering commitment to those who need a voice hardened.
Like many before him, a better climate for a new child brought Knoll to San Diego in 1973. Within a year, Knoll found himself in a final interview with another venerable San Diegan who was the board chair, the Honorable Lynn Shenk. During deliberation about the position, a Black woman named Gladys Myers reportedly went to bat for Knoll, and in June of 1974 he
became the executive director of the Legal Aid Society.
The pride Knoll has in hiring and empowering his 160 attorneys is palpable.
They fight for social safety net benefits, eviction prevention, and other protections for those in need because, as Knoll puts it, “treating people fairly and trying your best to help those people who are less fortunate than you is what a person ought to be about.”
Despite a history of being willing to fight, Knoll praised the director of the County Eligibility Operations office that is often on the opposing side of his health and social service benefit claims.
He called out Director Rick Wanne’s skill, fairness and compassion, also highlighting the way a wellplaced telephone call to work something out can be better than a lawsuit for driving true policy change.
As Knoll ref lected on the
future, he sounded hopeful that our community would heed a strict adherence to Gov. Gavin Newsom’s push for greater equity in our efforts. “Equity is not the same as equality,” he told me, “Equity is doing more for those we [treated poorly] to catch them up. Then we get equity.”
Knoll tells his attorneys that if they are going to be good at their jobs, they need to really listen. They need to understand the trauma that being poor causes and the intersections between race and poverty. And, true to his own spirit, they need to do it in an authentic and traumainformed way.
These are the core messages that animate his work.
The night Knoll saw his mother in tears at Adlai Stevenson’s loss, she said to him, “Sometimes great people are not recognized for their greatness until later.” Thankfully for thousands of San Diegans over nearly five decades, Greg Knoll is an authentic leader whose greatness we can witness and appreciate right now.