Ellen Heller

Ellen Heller General Information

Biography

Ms. Ellen Heller served as Board Member & Chairwoman at Harry and Jeanette Weinberg Foundation. She is a retired Judge of the Circuit Court for Baltimore City, where she was appointed the Judge in Charge of the Civil Docket and ultimately the Circuit Administrative Judge overseeing the entire court-the first woman in Maryland to hold that position. Judge Heller is the former President and Chair of the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, an international relief organization operating in over 70 countries that has provided rescue, relief, and renewal activities for communities in need since 1914. Also, she is a board member of the Board of Visitors of the University Of Maryland School of Law, the Independent Lay Review Board of the Archdiocese of Baltimore, the Baltimore Community Foundation, the Institute of Christian and Jewish Studies, and the Taub Center for Social Policy Studies in Israel. She sits as a trial judge on a part-time basis. In 2009 Judge Heller was inducted into the Baltimore Jewish Hall of Fame and in 2008 named to the Maryland Women's Hall of Fame. She has also received the University of Maryland School of Law's Distinguished Graduate Award, the Maryland State Bar's Civility Award, the Bar Association of Baltimore City's Margaret Brent-Juanita Jackson Mitchell Award, the Girl Scouts of Central Maryland Distinguished Women's Award, the American Jewish Committee's Blaustein Award, and the Maryland Chapter of Hadassah's Women of Distinction Award. In 2001 she was a recipient of the Circle of Excellence Achievement Award having been named one of Maryland's top 100 Women for three consecutive years. She and her husband, Shale D. Stiller, were the recipients of the Woodrow Wilson Award for Public Service in 2011. Judge Heller, who was graduated with honors from both The Johns Hopkins University and the University of Maryland School of Law, is a member of the American Law Institute.