Growing up in Massachusetts, Jeremy Rosen was afforded all the opportunities in life — a stable family, a good home, and the ability to have his basic needs met.

But having those advantages ultimately drove Rosen, the new executive director for American Civil Liberties Union of Iowa, toward a career in law. Throughout his career, Rosen primarily has worked for nonprofits and organizations that seek to protect the rights of others and ensure they are afforded the same opportunities in life he was.

Rosen started his role at the ACLU of Iowa in February. The organization is the nation’s fifth-oldest state affiliate of the national American Civil Liberties Union. The ACLU of Iowa mission is to promote and defend the values reflected in the Bill of Rights through public advocacy and outreach, lobbying, and litigation.

Tell us about yourself.
I’m an attorney who has practiced law for about 17 years, all of which were in the nonprofit sector. I was a LegalAid attorney in Miami for several years before working in a variety of positions in Washington, D.C., mainly in public policy and litigation focusing on affordable housing and homelessness issues. Over the course of time, I had the opportunity to work with the ACLU at the national level, as well as a number of different ACLU offices across the country. During that time, I became impressed with the ACLU and its work.

What’s kept you doing this kind of work?
We’re clearly not where we need to be yet on a number of issues, and there’s a lot of work to be done on these issues, here in Iowa and across the country. Protecting the First Amendment rights of citizens, focusing on issues like quality of life for the LGBT community, protecting reproductive freedom, reforming the criminal justice system, ensuring the rights of immigrants are protected — that’s what we work on here, and it’s important for those of us who have the ability to continue to focus on that. 

Why did you decide Iowa was a good fit for you?
I had been to Iowa before, but not spent a lot of time here. However, I decided to come here for a couple reasons. First, it was for the ACLU itself. I was looking for new opportunities and applied for this job, so I was tremendously excited to join this organization. And while we work very hard and do a lot of good things here, the quality and pace of life here is better than in Washington, D.C. After a number of years in the big city, I’m excited to keep doing great work but now have a five minute commute to work and the ability to afford housing. 

Any challenges this office faces? How do you plan to address these challenges?
As with any nonprofit, we have tremendous opportunities and tremendous challenges. What are the challenges? Well, if the things we seek to accomplish were easy to accomplish, they would already be done. Here at the ACLU we work on issues where we usually have a ways to go before we solve each one. We start from a faraway point and have to move the ball far down the field to actually get there, and since we’re a nonprofit, we’re limited in our capacity. But we have a great staff and supporters and we have a lot of passion for what we do in advancing the issues I mentioned earlier, which gives us a lot of advantages that work in our favor. 

Any other goals you’ve set for yourself or the organization?
A short-term goal I have is to continue building our capacity. We have a wonderful staff of five here, including me, and we’re fortunate enough to have the resources in place to hire three more staff members. That will get us up to eight employees. This will give us more opportunities to do the work we need to do. My long-term goal is to continue focusing on our core mission.

What do you enjoy doing outside work?
For about 15 years, I was a volunteer Little League baseball coach. Once I get settled in here, I expect to start doing that again. I think people often volunteer in an area similar to their jobs. While my job often meshes into politics, volunteering in that area doesn’t seem like a separation. So, I’m a huge baseball fan, and I enjoy being able to teach the game to kids and working with them to teach life lessons through youth sports. It’s a great way to take your mind off what you do during the day. When you have a challenging day at the office, and you get to spend two hours ending your day on the baseball field, you’re not thinking of anything else outside that.