Since 1989, the Pennsylvania Bar Foundation, the charitable affiliate of the Pennsylvania Bar Association, has recognized and rewarded outstanding pro bono service with the annual presentation of the Louis J. Goffman Award. This year, the Foundation honors the Honorable Annette Rizzo of the Philadelphia Court of Common Pleas and the Philadelphia residential Mortgage Foreclosure Diversion Pilot Program, the city’s innovative response to the national mortgage foreclosure crisis that gives low income homeowners a real chance to save their homes from foreclosure.

Judge Rizzo, a cum laude graduate of the University of Pennsylvania, received her jurist doctorate from Temple University School of Law. She practiced in private, government and corporate settings before being commissioned to the bench of the First Judicial District in January 1999, by then Governor Thomas Ridge. Later elected to the bench in November 1999, Judge Rizzo is presently assigned to the Civil Major Jury Program and presides over the residential Mortgage Foreclosure Diversion Pilot Program where she has been described as the program’s “heart, soul, mover and shaker.”

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