Eva DeFranco has been a driving force in the growth and advancement of mediation and collaborative divorce in Connecticut. An accomplished attorney, mediator, collaborative practitioner, teacher, and leader, Eva spent her career not only helping families resolve divorce outside the courtroom, but working to ensure that the professionals serving those families were trained to the highest standards of competence, ethics, and integrity.

A partner at Collins Hannafin, P.C., Eva earned an AV Preeminent rating from Martindale-Hubbell for legal ability and ethical standards and was named a James W. Cooper Fellow of the Connecticut Bar Foundation. She served as President of the Danbury Bar Association and was a founder of the Collaborative Divorce Group of Western Connecticut. But some of her most enduring contributions came through her leadership of the Connecticut Council for Non-Adversarial Divorce.

Eva joined the CCND Board and later served as President at a pivotal time in the organization’s development. As what had begun as a mediation organization expanded to embrace collaborative divorce, Eva helped lead its evolution into CCND. She envisioned a stronger organizational structure, moving CCND from a small working board whose members handled virtually every function to a committee-driven organization supported by an Executive Council. She also helped establish the Collaborative Summit, bringing Connecticut’s collaborative practice groups together to exchange ideas, establish standards, and strengthen collaborative practice throughout the state.

Perhaps nowhere is Eva’s commitment to excellence more evident than in her work as an educator and standard-setter. Recognizing the need for rigorous, high-quality training for family mediators, with Louise Zito, Eva co-founded the Connecticut Family Mediation Training Group in 2013 and developed its 40-Hour Basic Family Mediation Training. The program became one of only a small number in the country to achieve verification by the Academy of Professional Family Mediators.

Her influence extended well beyond that program. Eva taught generations of professionals through CCND trainings, with particular expertise in ethics and the unauthorized practice of law. She led revisions to CCND’s mediation and unauthorized-practice standards and was instrumental in developing standards for review and drafting counsel. Through this work, Eva did more than teach professionals how to mediate or collaborate; she helped define what excellent, ethical non-adversarial practice should look like.

Throughout her career, Eva has embodied the ideals this award celebrates: advancing peaceful resolution, strengthening professional standards, educating and mentoring others, and helping build a community committed to serving families with skill and integrity.

And retirement from law has hardly meant retirement from creativity. For years, Eva’s creative life found expression at the potter’s wheel. She now brings the same energy, discipline, and curiosity to ceramics that she brought to the practice of law, earning a prestigious mentorship with renowned potter Martha Grover through the Cohorts Art Mentorship Program and continuing to teach and create pottery. She also serves on the Board of the Sherman Artists Association.

Eva’s legacy is woven into the fabric of non-adversarial divorce practice in Connecticut. The organizations she strengthened, the standards she helped establish, the professionals she trained, and the practices she championed will continue to influence mediation and collaborative divorce for many years to come.