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Circumstances, providence, or destiny—
A Case for Women was meant to be.
While we officially incorporated in 2015, the idea of A Case for Women was hatched many years prior.
In the early 2000s, founder Susan Knape, a long-time communications specialist and expert in cause-oriented marketing, was going through the school of hard knocks (AKA, traumatic divorce with devastating financial repercussions) when a prominent plaintiffs’ law firm recruited her to serve as their Chief Marketing Officer.
SHE STILL RECALLS THAT FIRST INTERVIEW AS AN, “AHA WHY DID I NOT KNOW ABOUT PLAINTIFF LAWYERS SOONER?!” MOMENT.
The light went on: This was a job she HAD to take – and not just because she had two daughters to support totally on her own. She just knew it – this was her calling. A place where her inherent passion for helping people could meld with her expertise in communications, and lead to meaningful societal change.
Background note: Susan’s life-before-law, or as she calls it, “LBL,” was focused on game-changing communications in the areas of health, environment, and financial literacy. In addition to creating meaningful messaging for big public policy clients, she taught girls and women about money and wrote a book on women’s financial literacy: The Money Rules: 50 Ways Women Can Make More, Save More & Have More (McGraw-Hill, 2003). The problem, for Susan, was that in her LBL stage, she was always at the periphery of change, never at the epicenter.
ALL THAT CHANGED WHEN SUSAN JUMPED INTO THE LEGAL FIELD. SHE HAD AT LAST FOUND HER PEOPLE – ATTORNEYS WHO THOUGHT AS BIG AS SHE DID BUT ALSO HAD THE MEANS AND WHEREWITHAL TO PUT THOSE BIG IDEAS INTO REAL ACTION.
It was a good match: for over a decade Susan served as Baron & Budd’s Chief Marketing Officer, helping the law firm expand its work from asbestos into environmental, pharmaceutical, and class action work – and develop a reputation for “Protecting What’s Right”® – a slogan that has stuck to this day.
FAST FORWARD TO 2015
Here it is in a nutshell: the disturbing truth that was the genesis of A Case for Women. Women are undeniably harmed by corporate misconduct in so many ways, yet the legal industry was failing to recognize this gender inequality, continuing to cater primarily to men when in fact it is women who are more often hurt AND women who more than not take the first step when it comes to seeking legal help for their families.
THIS TIME SUSAN DIDN’T HAVE TO GO AT IT ALONE. HER OLDEST DAUGHTER, JORDAN, WAS EAGER TO TAKE ON THE WORLD AND THE RIGHT AGE TO TAKE A CAREER RISK. SHE JUMPED WHOLEHEARTEDLY INTO A CASE FOR WOMEN AS A CO-FOUNDER.
Like her mom, Jordan is a “Big Thinker,” a published writer (Best Body, Speed Honey Press, 2014), and a die-hard for women’s causes (she was working as a creative director in NYC for women-run brands that were starting to pop up in the mid–2010s). Besides her knack for the creative, Jordan “gets” what startups need to grow and scale. She immediately saw the need to build A Case for Women’s infrastructure so that the company could grow, and grow, and grow (it has!). Piece by piece, Jordan built the system, team and processes to help ACFW keep up with the work it does every day and be ready for the growth that is still coming.
BUT THAT’S NOT ALL. THE PARTY OF TWO QUICKLY BECAME THE PARTY OF THREE, WITH THE RAPID ADDITION OF AMANDA BILLO, WHO HAD WORKED WITH SUSAN PREVIOUSLY AT BARON & BUDD, AND NOT ONLY HAS THE SAME BIRTHDAY AS JORDAN (TRUE STORY) BUT IS YET ANOTHER BIG THINKER WHO WAS DISSATISFIED WITH THE STATUS QUO AND READY TO CHANGE THE WORLD.
Way back then, she thought that her world-changing passion was going to take her to law school, but the lightbulb went off when she saw how effective communication to educate women about their rights was a missing link in the legal process – and one that she could help fill. Today, Amanda is A Case for Women’s Director of Marketing – a position in which her natural acumen for data and storytelling (she is a writer too!) fit right in with All-Things-Digital-Marketing.
Together, this nascent trio took on A Case for Women’s first advocacy campaigns. They had no idea what to expect and did all the work themselves, paying expenses on Susan’s personal credit card and hoping the phone would ring.
Thankfully, it did!
While the world seems to have changed so much since we started, we have never stopped doing what we believe in. We are women-owned and women-led, always have been. And we work on initiatives that make a meaningful impact on people’s lives.
2015
We incorporated!
2016 (Spring)
Launched our first digital campaign
focusing on Essure birth control. We waited by the phones anxiously to see if anyone would call. Thankfully, they did!
2016 (Fall)
Went to our first conference, Women en Mass, where we met the most amazing women attorneys like Lori Andrus -- a, ahem, badass attorney who fights giants like Disney and is a former American Association for Justice President. We will forever be grateful for people like Lori and Aimee Wagstaff (WEM founder) who believed in us and helped us get going.
2017
Launched our first sexual assault campaign –
this one for survivors of Catholic Church abuse. The first conversations with these survivors BLEW OUR MINDS. It didn’t take long to realize we needed to build our own, very specialized group to handle these calls.
2018
Serious work to build our own “call center” and a decision to keep it all virtual. Vowed never ever to act like a call center and to always make the survivors the center of everything.
2019
Motivated by all the women contacting us desperate for help, we started our own foundation, A Fund for Women. Launched with our own money, this non-profit continues to help women in dire straits. Big plus: all the money goes direct to women as ACFW covers the operational expenses.
2019
We started our campaign to educate women about the dangers of Uber and Lyft. And we literally can’t believe it (six years later), when we have helped over 3,000 survivors sign up for lawsuits.
2020
What about the men?!
We realized men could be impacted by bad things too and sometimes they don’t want to listen to the women LOL. So, we launched our brother, A Case for Justice, as a way to communicate about gender-neutral issues. (Think pesticides like Paraquat, and Boy Scout abuse.)
2021
Susan’s other daughter, August, joins us!
Yes, it took some begging! August was working in Washington, DC doing her part to deal with the high cost and yet abysmally poor healthcare quality in the US, and yes, that was frustrating. So she decided to move all that experience and education of hers (Masters in Public Health from Johns Hopkins) over to ACFW where she could make a tangible difference. And oh my, we are glad she did.
2022
Susan receives Innovator of The Year Award
at Mass Torts Made Perfect conference. Yes, it’s a big deal.
2024
We jump on Alexander Brothers…
helping women who have been assaulted by these creeps makes us happy.
2024
We turn our sights squarely on Roblox
for knowing it has a sexual predator problem but denying that its protective measures are insufficient in protecting our kids.
2025
It's our birthday! We're 10 years old.
We have 50 employees and over 80 in staff member including contractors. And we are neck deep now helping parents in a new and unbelievably wild and traumatic new issue: Roblox sexual assault of children. CHILDREN. Let that sink in.
And so we keep fighting. No matter what comes our way we never forget the power of saying: “Enough!” It’s the power of standing up together, using our voice to say no more – this ends with us, all standing together in force. While there are so many areas of harm in which we aim to help get the word out and lend a hand, we will always be committed to being here for survivors of sexual assault and abuse. It’s simply part of our DNA.
