Fellows Alumni

Erin Osterman Ballos

The Education and Professional Development Vice President presents the Award of Merit for Applied Research to the ICM Fellows Program graduate who completes the most outstanding court improvement project in each class. Erin Osterman Ballos, Court Program Manager for the Yuma County Superior Court, is the 53^rd Class recipient. Alicia Davis, Principal Court Management Consultant, National Center for State Courts, guided Ms. Ballos as her project advisor.

Ms. Ballos’ paper, “Breaking Point: Navigating High-Conflict Divorces in Yuma County Superior Court”, explored the complexities of high-conflict parenting; the causes and consequences of these conflicts; and provided strategies to help mitigate the adverse effects on children, parents, and the court. She discovered her court had an unusually high number of high-conflict cases, and the current interventions and services available were not effective for these cases.

Ms. Ballos’ recommendations from her research are the establishment of a family triage system to identify high-conflict cases that require immediate attention; training for judges, GALs, and mediators regarding high-conflict case effects; creation and implementation of a high-conflict parent education program; additional funding to support high-conflict parties; and regular monitoring using Arizona State University’s resources on the effectiveness of the recommendations.

Erin Osterman Ballos has served Yuma County Superior Court in many capacities over two decades as a former probation officer, substance abuse counselor, drug court coordinator, and family court mediator.  Erin currently works as the court program manager, overseeing the veterans’ treatment court, mental health court, and conciliation court. Erin graduated summa cum laude from Northern Arizona University with a bachelor's degree in criminal justice and a master's degree in counseling.  She has presented statewide on best practices in treatment courts and conciliation court services.  Erin is also an executive committee member for the Arizona Association of Family and Conciliation Courts, where she serves as treasurer.

Sarah A. Mathews

The Class Spokesperson is chosen by their classmates to represent them at graduation. The 53rd class chose Sarah A. Mathews, Circuit/Probate/Family Court Administrator and Friend of the Court Director for the Cass County Friend of the Court. The text of her speech follows.

Good morning. To the members of the 53rd ICM Fellows Class, congratulations on reaching the significant milestone in your career of officially becoming an ICM Fellow. I am humbled and honored more than words can convey that you selected me to serve as class spokesperson. I thank you for this honor. To the special guests here with us today – and those who could not be here in person but who are here in spirit – thank you for the support you have provided to your graduate during their journey through the ICM courses and ultimately through the Fellows program. I know that my classmates would agree that we could not have gotten to this point in our journeys without your support. We each are forever grateful for the role you have played in not only our individual journeys but also in our collective journey as a class as well.

It is our journey as the 53rd Fellows Class to this point in time today – graduation at the United States Supreme Court – that I want to take a few brief moments to talk about as it is this journey and the purpose behind it that defines us as a class. At approximately the same time that we each began our journey through the ICM Court Certified Manager and Executive Courses, my mother-in-law, Thelda Mathews, completed her goal of publishing her children’s book, “The Squoze” at the age of 91. This children’s book, as I touched on last night at the awards ceremony, tells the journey of a creature known as a “Squoze” as he sought a purpose that would allow him and other Squoze to be useful for their community because as noted in the book, “A Squoze wants to be helpful to all that he can, that makes a Squoze happy, the same as for man.”

Just like the Squoze in the story, the members of the 53rd Fellows Class have been on a journey to fulfill a purpose – to also be helpful in a specific way. While we represent different states, communities, and courts, we are all dedicated to pursuing the purpose of being helpful by serving our communities and courts. It is our commitment to this shared purpose that took our individual journeys in the collective direction of completing the initial CCM and CCE courses while not only continuing to work full-time but also helping our courts and communities navigate through a pandemic as well as life after the pandemic. We helped our courts and court users navigate remote proceedings while at the same time, we were learning the ins and outs of Zoom classes instead of in-person classes and hearing that now well-known phrase, “you’re muted.” It is also our dedication to the shared purpose of serving our communities and courts that kept us going beyond just the CCM and CCE courses to apply for the Fellows Program. Because of this dedication and purpose, we have now spent the last approximately 16 months researching critical topics that will make an impact not only on our communities and courts but also on courts and communities across the nation.

Our journey to completing the Fellows program has been a long one fueled by a common purpose of service and supported by many who have believed in our projects and our visions for what our courts should and can be. So after this long journey of online classes, research, writing, and re-writing, we stop today to celebrate and mark the accomplishment of becoming ICM Fellows.

But as those who have supported us to this point have probably already guessed, our journey is not done and our collective purpose as a class is bigger than just service or completing the Fellows program. As a class our papers covered a vast range of topics from Expanding Access to Self Help Centers and Resources, using AI in the courts, and training employees, to name just a few. These topics and the dedication to pursue them and publish papers that will help court administrators and leaders show our class is tied together on a journey for an even bigger purpose - the purpose of ensuring that access to the scales of justice is never impeded and that justice is always equally accessible to all. The visions for our courts embodied in our papers show that we understand that access to justice must never be taken for granted or assumed – and that we are committed to using our skills gained as ICM Fellows to continuously guard, expand, and improve access to justice for all whom we serve.

So we stop for a moment to celebrate today, but our collective journey as ICM Fellows really has just begun as we take our completed projects and visions back to our courts and communities to serve in a manner that promotes and supports equal access to justice for all. We are able to continue on this broader journey as Fellows due to the final group of individuals we have as a class to thank this morning before I close - to the leadership, faculty, and staff of the National Center for State Courts and ICM Program who have supported us on the first part of our journey and taught us the skills needed for the next part of our journey that is to come, we thank you for ensuring that just like the characters in “The Squoze” and the ICM Fellows who have made this same journey before ours even began, we can now be helpful all that we can.