Hejmanowski to lead Ohio State Bar Foundation

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Delaware County Probate/Juvenile Court Judge David Hejmanowski was elected president of the Ohio State Bar Foundation at the November meeting of its Board of Trustees. He will serve as president-elect during calendar year 2022 and begin his term as president on Jan. 1, 2023. Hejmanowski has been a member of the Board of Trustees of the OSBF since 2017, serving as chair of the grants committee for the past two years.

The Ohio State Bar Foundation is a nonprofit organization committed to increasing public understanding of the law, access to justice, and the quality of Ohio’s legal system. With an endowment in excess of $56 million, the OSBF is the largest bar foundation in the United States, and during calendar year 2021 awarded more than $1.2 million in grants. The OSBF has more than 1,500 attorney “Fellows” who pledge to support the organization financially, and who participate in projects to better their communities and the practice of law. The foundation also presents a series of awards each year, with Hejmanowski receiving the District 5 award for community service by an attorney under age 40 in 2010. The Legal Services Clinic at Andrews House, for which Hejmanowski serves on the steering committee, receiving the OSBF’s Outstanding Program award in 2004.

Hejmanowski will be the first sitting judge to serve as the organization’s president since Judge Thomas Zachman of the Brown County Municipal Court in 2006, and the first Delaware County lawyer ever to lead the organization. (Delaware County native Steve Tilson led the OSBF in 2014, representing Crawford County, where his Galion law practice is located.)

“My time with the Bar Foundation’s Grants Committee has been some of the most rewarding nonprofit work I’ve ever done,” said Hejmanowski, who noted that in the eight years he’s been a member of the grants committee, the OSBF has awarded nearly $7 million in grants. “We’ve been able to provide funding for everything from adult civics education to youth mock trials, from drug and alcohol programs to advocates for abused youth, and programs to aid domestic violence victims, veterans in crisis, the YMCA’s Youth in Government program, and on and on. It’s really just incredibly rewarding work.”

In addition to his volunteerism with the OSBF, Hejmanowski is currently a member of the Board of Directors of the National Council of Juvenile and Family Court Judges, the Federal Advisory Committee on Juvenile Justice, the Ohio Supreme Court’s Commission on the Rules of Superintendence, the Ohio Supreme Court’s Advisory Committee on Language Services, the Ohio Judicial College, the Governor’s Council on Juvenile Justice, the Advisory Committee for the National Center for Juvenile Justice, and serves as an officer for the Ohio Judicial Conference. Locally, he serves on the boards of the Central Ohio Symphony, the Arena Fair Theater Company, the OWjL Camp, the Strand Cultural Arts Society, and is president of the Delaware County Historical Society.

Hejmanowski
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