Ivonne Roman

Ivonne Roman has over 20 years of experience in law enforcement, having served in every rank from patrol officer to Chief of Police of Newark, NJ. Her management experience includes precinct commander, internal affairs investigator, gangs & narcotics commander and project manager for two police directors. Her projects included multi-agency crime reduction initiatives, two public-private partnerships, and negotiating the Newark Police Department’s consent decree.

Ivonne Roman earned a Master of Public Administration with Distinction from Rutgers University in May of 2017 and was awarded the Department of Public Policy and Administration’s Student Achievement Award for her research on police perceptions of legitimacy and procedural justice. She is currently a Ph.D. Student at Rutgers, in the Public Affairs and Community Development program. Her research interests include recruitment and retention of women in law enforcement, community co-policing, and organizational legitimacy and procedural justice.

In 2017, she co-founded the Women’s Leadership Academy in partnership with the Newark Police Superior Officers’ Association, to address high female attrition rates in New Jersey police academies. Ivonne is a National Institute of Justice LEADS Scholar (Law Enforcement Advancing Data and Science), a program that supports police managers integrating evidence-based practices into policing. She serves on the board of directors of the American Society for Evidence-Based Policing and is an executive fellow of the National Police Foundation, a 2018 Marshall Project journalism fellow, and a 2019 TED Talks fellow.