Golden Heart Awards 2025 Honoree

REENA HALPRIN

Reena Halprin is a nationally recognized mitigation specialist.  For over eight years, she has worked with both violent and non-violent offenders and counsel, developing compelling reports and videos that move the needle in the most challenging cases. Working through a restorative justice paradigm, Reena takes clients on a transformative journey, peeling back the layers of their life, so that they develop the insight to understand the meaning behind their wrongdoing. The culmination of this process is a report and/or video that illuminates through a humanizing lens the myriad of factors shaping a person’s life, their expression of responsibility and remorse, and deep commitment to making amends. All of this provides a strong basis for a fair and just outcome in court and helps the individual sustain a trajectory of growth beyond the mitigation process.

Reena graduated Magna Cum Laude with a BA in Political Science and Psychology. She received the Saul Ewing award for best constitutional law brief and the Joan Hulse award for the senior with the highest GPA in political science.  Following graduation, she was honored to serve as an Americorps VISTA volunteer for Catholic Charities in the  Kensington section of Philadelphia. She continued to work as a social worker until starting at the non-profit The Aleph Institute, where she trained in mitigation under a well-known leader in the field, Cori Chertoff.   In 2020, Reena started her own mitigation practice and has continued working with clients throughout the country on pre-sentencing, post-conviction, and clemency cases. Philadelphia based criminal defense attorney, Andrew Levine, calls Reena's work, "life saving".