Karen Buck has served as the Executive Director of SeniorLAW Center (founded as Senior Citizen Judicare Project) since April 1997. She serves as the Center’s CEO responsible for the organization’s achievement of its mission, its financial stability, and overall supervision of the Center’s staff of attorneys, legal advocates, volunteers and support staff.  SeniorLAW Center serves over 5,000 older adults each year, addressing elder abuse and exploitation, homelessness prevention, family violence, and other critical legal issues affecting elders and their families, providing representation, education and advocacy. Undergoing a major transformation and expansion over the past two decades, the Center currently has five offices, with headquarters in Philadelphia. SeniorLAW Center is the only nonprofit in Pennsylvania wholly dedicated to serving the legal needs of older people, and one of few in the nation.  

During her tenure, Ms. Buck has led the launch of innovative new programs for senior veterans and immigrants, victims of domestic violence, abuse and exploitation, kinship caregivers, older homeowners and tenants, many court-based access to justice projects, the statewide SeniorLAW HelpLine serving all 67 Pennsylvania counties, and other statewide and national projects to strengthen the legal services system and pro bono partnerships.  Under her leadership, the organization has grown from a budget of less than $400,000 to one of over $4,000,000 and crafted an important role not only as a legal services leader but also a strong voice in systemic advocacy in voting rights, housing rights, victim rights and grandparent rights.  Karen helped lead a coalition of children, aging and family advocates to confirm the rights of grandparents under the Pennsylvania Constitution and led advocacy, pro bono, education, amicus and partnership training initiatives to protect voting rights of older and low-income individuals against onerous Voter ID laws and during the COVID pandemic. 

Ms. Buck has over 25 years of nonprofit leadership and advocacy experience, as an Executive Director, board member, volunteer attorney, child advocate, mentor, and teacher of English as a Second Language and GED to adult immigrants and refugees. Prior to joining SeniorLAW Center in 1997, Ms. Buck was in private legal practice, focusing on complex commercial litigation and representing children, individuals and families as a pro bono attorney and coordinator. She accepted this position as Executive Director the same month she was offered partnership at her then law firm.

Ms. Buck is passionate about equal access to justice for the poor and vulnerable communities. She has proudly served in many leadership positions promoting access to justice, including as an appointed member of the American Bar Association’s  Commission on Law and Aging, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court’s Advisory Council on Elder Justice in the Courts and its predecessor, the Court’s Elder Law Task Force, co-chair for 7 years of the Delivery of Legal Services Committee of the Philadelphia Bar Association, and chair of the National Association of Senior Legal Hotlines and Helplines, promoting senior legal services across the United States.  She serves on the Pennsylvania Commission on Crime and Delinquency’s Access to Services Committee, analyzing the needs of victims of crime of all ages across the Commonwealth to improve services and collaboration, the Mayor’s Commission on Aging, and the Elder Justice Committee of the First Judicial District, which launched Pennsylvania’s first Elder Justice Resource Center.  She writes, testifies and speaks often about elder abuse, poverty, and access to justice. In 2018, she testified before the U.S. Senate on guardianship abuse, reform and access to justice.

She serves on many local, statewide and national boards and coalitions addressing poverty, justice, aging, voting and civil rights. She is recipient of several honors including the 2014 Andrew Hamilton Public Interest Leadership Award from the Philadelphia Bar Association, the Alumni Association Award for Public Service from Villanova Law School, a Distinguished Child Advocate Award from the Support Center for Child Advocates, the Spirit of CARIE award from the Center for Advocacy for the Rights and Interests of the Elderly, and the Philadelphia Bar Foundation Award for public interest lawyering. She was awarded an Independence Foundation Senior Attorney Fellowship Sabbatical and traveled to Iceland, Japan, Australia and New Zealand in 2016 to learn and share about elder justice, poverty and access to justice issues with leaders in law, government and aging.

Passionate about well-being at both ends of the life cycle, Ms. Buck served as a Child Advocate volunteer attorney for abused and neglected children for two decades, as a Big Sister, and, resulting in the greatest joy of her life, as a foster and adoptive parent.