Sharon Rubinstein is a lawyer and former journalist with a strong background in public interest advocacy, particularly for children. She has engaged in a wide variety of successful campaigns concerning education, juvenile justice, child welfare, health reform, and family economic security issues.

For more than eight years, Rubinstein worked at Maryland's Advocates for Children and Youth, where she served as communications director, interim child welfare policy director, and for part of her tenure, a registered lobbyist. She was a fellow at the Public Justice Center in Baltimore, on staff at the University of Baltimore Law School's Center for Families, Children and the Courts, and a consultant to the Maryland Budget & Tax Policy Institute. She is now serving as an advisor to Medicaid Matters Maryland on a communications project.

Rubinstein has a long-term commitment to juvenile justice issues. In addition to membership on the American Bar Association’s Juvenile Justice Committee, she has consulted to the ABA's Juvenile Justice Center. She remains active in the ABA, and is one of the editors of the Fourth Amendment Handbook, now in its third edition. She also acts as the liaison from the Association’s criminal justice section to the ABA Journal. Rubinstein spent nearly two years abroad as a faculty member with the University of Maryland's European Division. She also taught a law and education seminar for the George Washington Graduate School of Education, and currently served for two years on the faculty of the Advocates for Children program, part of the College Park Scholars initiative at the University of Maryland, College Park.

As a journalist, Rubinstein wrote for BusinessWeek, Newsweek International, The Baltimore Sun, Criminal Justice Magazine and many other publications. She also wrote for CNN and CBS News, and was the producer of a Baltimore radio show, "Justice for Youth." For several years, she served on the board of the Megaphone Project, a video production company that promotes social justice causes.

Rubinstein is a former law clerk to the Hon. John Feikens, previously chief judge of the Eastern District of Michigan, and is a graduate of the University of Michigan's Law School. She has a B.A. in psychology with distinction in all subjects from Cornell University.