Kristin Totten

Kristin has over 20 years of experience in representing children and their families all throughout Michigan.  She began her practice advocating at the Connecticut Legal Rights Project and New Haven Legal Assistance. She also advocated for children as a guardian ad litem at the Children's Law Center in Washington DC. At the Children’s Law Center, Kristin was able to focus solely on the child and his/her best interest in every system that he/she interfaced with: education, welfare, family, medical, psychological, and spiritual. At the heart of all of what Kristin does is the knowledge that she is working for a child with unique needs. She desires to understand the child and his/her unique struggles and gifts and to take that information into the system that the child is involved in. From 2016-2021 she was focused on the children of Flint, Michigan. The ACLU of Michigan Executive Director at the time, Kary Moss, asked her to lead a team of attorneys, investigators and advocates to address the systemic environmental racism known as the Flint Water Crisis manifest in the children of Flint as symptoms of lead poisoning.  She focused her efforts on fighting for the children of Flint, 30,000 of them, to obtain an education that is responsive to their needs after they were exposed to lead in their drinking water for over 18 months.

Realizing that she cannot stop the school to prison pipeline in her lifetime, even after a systemic class action, Kristin joined the Kalamazoo Defender office in her own community to focus on people entering the criminal justice system with the hope of engaging social workers and community advocates to obtain what the individual and family needs to function and thrive within Kalamazoo.  This hope was not realized and seeing children harmed through her advocacy efforts, she went to work for the Prosecutor in Kalamazoo County whose Child Welfare Unit, led by Chris Ann Johnson, was occupied with public servants committed to advocating for children and protecting their right to a safe and nurturing childhood. At 50, she plans to serve in this capacity supporting the Court, Caseworkers, and Kalamazoo Community. This is where she is having an impact day in and day out.