For the past 20 years, Barbara Finkelstein has been the face of civil legal services for low-income residents in the northern suburbs of New York City.

She is the chief executive officer of Legal Services of the Hudson Valley (LSHV), a nonprofit law firm that launched in 1967 as Westchester Legal Services.

Finkelstein, 64, helped grow the agency from a single office with 20 employees in 1995 to a chain of eight offices with 120 employees and hundreds of part-time, pro bono attorneys serving residents in seven counties facing eviction, domestic violence, custody challenges, loss of government benefits and other civil needs.