Mariatu Okonofua

Mariatu Okonofua is a Staff Attorney in the Family Law and Domestic Violence at Legal Aid DC. Before joining Legal Aid, Mariatu worked at Children's Law Center on their Policy Team as a Public Service Legal Policy Fellow, where she advocated for increased language access services and access to out-of-school-time programs for student with disabilities.  

Mariatu earned a dual J.D./M.Ed from Boston College Law School where she was a Public Service Scholar and Rappaport Law and Public Policy Fellow. While at Boston College Law School, Mariatu helped to establish the Racial Justice Stipends Program and created racial justice training workshops for client representation as the inaugural VP of DEI for the Public Interest Law Foundation. She also interned at the Youth Advocacy Foundation with The EdLaw Project and at the Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education. Additionally, she served as a student attorney in the BCLS Juvenile Rights and Advocacy Program clinic handling active education and social welfare cases.  

Prior to law school, Mariatu worked in Alamance County, North Carolina, as a Kenan Community Impact Fellow with Alamance Achieves, where she advocated for policy reform on kindergarten readiness standards and improved childhood literacy and served as a Community Partner for the Alamance Department of Social Services on their Child and Family Team.