Hawaiʻi Appleseed Center for Law & Economic Justice is announcing the retirement of Victor Geminiani, its founder and longtime co-executive director, after a 50-year public interest law and advocacy career.

Geminiani will be succeeded by Gavin Thornton as Hawaiʻi Appleseed executive director at the end of August 2019.

In 1969, Geminiani graduated from Villanova Law School, became a National Service VISTA volunteer lawyer and joined three other young lawyers in an office of the Atlanta Legal Aid Society. In his first week, he helped organize a rent strike against a private landlord in a 200-unit housing complex to protest the substandard conditions in the complex. This launched a legal career—indeed a life—devoted to securing the rights of the poor and the vulnerable, including as executive director of the Legal Aid Society of Hawaiʻi from 1994 until 2005, and of Hawaiʻi Appleseed from 2007 to present.

“Victor has never hesitated simply because something has not been tried before,” said Thornton. “His courage and convictions have propelled him to wage worthy battles for equity and justice in Hawaiʻi and throughout the nation, and to find creative solutions to complex poverty issues.”