Prior to her election in 1996, Administrative Judge Dana Preisse was in private practice for over eleven years with an emphasis in litigation and family law. She was an active member of the Columbus Bar Association’s (CBA) Family Law Committee and volunteered in the CBA Lawyers for Justice program which provided free legal services to low income families. Preisse served for fourteen years on the Board for a United Way Agency, Traynor House, a half-way house for women. She received the “Forty Under Forty” Award in 1998, and served as the court’s Lead Juvenile Judge from 2002-2009.
She is a Trustee for the Ohio Association of Juvenile Court Judges, on the Executive Committee of the Ohio Association of Domestic Relations Judges, a member of the Columbus and Ohio State Bar Associations, a member of the Juvenile Judges Department of Youth Services (DYS) Task Force, and the Coalition Against Family Violence Legal Task Force, and the Integrated System of Care policy council.
She has been asked to serve on numerous Ohio Supreme Court Advisory Committees including the Guardian ad Litem Task Force and the Continuity of Operations Committee (Disaster Planning).
In November 2000, Preisse initiated the Bring Out Our Kids’ Smiles (BOOKS) program at Juvenile Court. The BOOKS program gives the juvenile offender the option, as part of a community service requirement, to purchase books or school supplies for underprivileged children.
In 2002 Preisse spearheaded the first Drug Court in Franklin County – the Family Drug Court whose goal is to expedite the reunification of children with their parents in abuse, neglect, and dependency cases, by eliminating the drug and/or alcohol use, or to expedite a permanent placement for children whose parents are incapable of maintaining sobriety. She chairs an interdisciplinary team, Beyond the Numbers, designed to improve local practice in abuse, neglect, dependency cases. The Committee has been successful in addressing delays in abuse, neglect, and dependency cases.
Judge Preisse collaborated with the Franklin Park Conservatory to establish a Juvenile Court Community Garden, in a near east side neighborhood. The garden serves as a green oasis in a blighted neighborhood. Neighbors are invited to gather and pick the vegetables that the teenage offenders plant. The St. Stephen’s Food Bank also reaps the benefit of the donated harvest.
