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Mary Horowitz Named NC LEAP Director
The North Carolina Bar Association is pleased to announce that Mary Anson Horowitz will join the staff of the N.C. Bar Center effective Feb. 1 as the new director of the North Carolina Lawyers Entrepreneurs Assistance Program, better known as NC LEAP.
Licensed to practice law in North Carolina and Georgia, Horowitz currently serves as an associate attorney with Gabriela J. Matthews & Associates in Durham. She has been active in the NCBA as a member of the Young Lawyers Division, the Estate Planning and Fiduciary Law Section, the Tax Section, and the GP Small Firm and Solo Section.
Horowitz previously served as a staff and contract attorney with the DeKalb County (Ga.) Child Advocacy Center, where she was greatly admired for her creativity, energy and dedication to serving low-wealth individuals. While practicing in Georgia from 2006-09, she served as chair of the CLE Committee for the State Bar of Georgia’s Juvenile Law Committee.
A 2002 graduate of Indiana University, Horowitz received a bachelor’s degree in business management. She earned her law degree in 2005 from California Western School of Law in San Diego, and expects to complete her Master of Laws in taxation this year at the University of Alabama School of Law.
“The part of law practice that I enjoy the most, and that excites me the most, is the business side,” Horowitz states. “I love helping people realize their dreams and goals by helping them form a plan, and then execute the plan.”
All of which should make her a natural in the leadership position for NC LEAP, the signature project of the NCBA’s Business Law and Corporate Counsel sections. The program, which was launched in 2007 following an extensive start-up fundraising campaign, provides pro bono legal advice and assistance to low-wealth entrepreneurs.
“I strongly believe that a spirit of entrepreneurship is the primary component a small business owner needs to be successful,” Horowitz adds. “Everything else can be learned or taught.”
A public service program of the NCBA Foundation, NC LEAP has expanded its service into all 100 North Carolina counties in three short years. Its services range from basic transactional legal needs as struggling entrepreneurs strive to establish their business and create jobs to potential long term client-counselor relations as their businesses grow.
The appointment of Horowitz as the director of NC LEAP coincides perfectly with plans to elevate the program’s fundraising efforts, which were initially geared toward the underwriting of a three-year activation period that is now drawing to a close.
A broad cross-section of individual attorneys, law firms and corporate interests provided more than $300,000 that was instrumental in propelling NC LEAP to the success and recognition it has achieved thus far. Combined with some 3,000 hours of pro bono legal assistance provided by N.C. business attorneys, the program has helped more than 400 low-wealth entrepreneurs achieve a better quality of life for themselves and their employees.
Chapter two is now on the horizon, and the NCBA is pleased to announce that Mary Anson Horowitz is coming on board to help write the next pages of this outstanding success story.
NC LEAP is a pro bono project of the North Carolina Bar Association Foundation in conjunction with NCBA Business Law & Corporate Counsel Sections. The project is headquartered at the N.C. Bar Center, home of the NCBA and the NCBA Foundation, 8000 Weston Parkway, Cary, NC 27513 (PO Box 3688, Cary, NC 27519). Phone 919-677-0561 local; 800-662-7407 toll free statewide. E-mail: ncleap@ncbar.org