Andra Ackerman ‘94 grew up in very troubled circumstances. Her mother had a substance use disorder. She never met her father. Living in poverty and neglect, she rotated among a variety of foster homes starting at the age of nine. Thanks to supportive mentors along the way, she was able to turn her life in a positive direction.
Now Judge Andra Ackerman, she turned her personal experience into a lifeline for other struggling youth. She shared her personal story with Siena pre-law students and alumni in the legal field as the keynote speaker at the annual Pre-Law Mentoring event in April.
During her first week as a city court judge in Cohoes in 2016, she noticed a pattern: young adults committing an escalating series of misdemeanors, “inching closer to committing felony level crimes and heading down a path likely to take them either to state prison or a cemetery,” she told her audience.
Most had either dropped out of school or were on the brink of quitting or being expelled. Most lived in poverty. Most had at least one parent who was not at all in the picture, and the other, if present, was typically emotionally unavailable due to substance abuse.
“Most came to court alone, and while they tried to look tough, I could see in their eyes that they were scared and on the brink of losing all hope, and headed for incarceration that would leave them even worse off. I related to these struggling youth.”
Judge Ackerman wanted to make a difference. With a colleague she created the court-based mentoring program U-CAN, which stands for United Against Crime Community Action Network. This is how it works: young defendants who seem truly committed to turning their life around but may not know how, plead guilty and are placed on a year of interim probation. Sentencing is deferred for a year of tough love—with support and structure. A team made up of the judge, district attorney, defense attorney and probation, has to agree before a defendant is accepted into the program.
Now an Albany County Court judge, Ackerman said she realized that at critical junctures in her life, there was someone there: a mentor who believed in her.
“They saw more in me than I saw in myself, and cared about my future,” she said. “These mentors saved my life. Without them, there is zero chance I’d be a college graduate, an attorney, a judge.”
Leonard Cutler, Ph.D., professor of political science and pre-law advisor at Siena, was impressed by the credit Ackerman gave to her mentors, who inspired her to create U-CAN to help others with childhoods similar to hers. It was the first program of its kind in New York and has since spread throughout the state.
“What truly impressed me was the fact that at a critical time in her life when she could have so easily gone off the rails, there was a mentor there who believed in her, who cared, and saved her life,” said Cutler.
Sarah Falgiatano ’24 said Ackerman was the perfect keynote speaker for pre-law Saints.
“Judge Ackerman did a fantastic job telling her story which tied together the legal field and her own reliance on a mentor to be successful,” she said.
