John Baker is an attorney licensed in Kansas and Missouri whose career has centered on legal services for people the system too often leaves behind. At Kansas Holistic Defenders, John oversees operations, compliance, and grant development while providing substantive legal support across the office's criminal defense and eviction defense practices, from discovery review and trial preparation to legal memoranda on complex questions. He has also built custom technology for KHD, including automation tools for the organization's case management and court filing systems that free up staff time for client work.

John has been with KHD since graduating law school, serving in both legal and operational roles supporting the organization's holistic defense model. His path to public defense started with service. Before law school, he spent a year as an AmeriCorps VISTA paralegal with the Legal Aid Society of Hawaii, providing free legal services to homeless and indigent clients. During law school at Washburn University, he worked with the National Labor Relations Board and the Communications Workers of America on workers' rights issues. In the wake of the murder of George Floyd, he organized with Black Lives Matter Topeka and the Kansas chapter of the National Lawyers Guild. Those experiences deepened his commitment to community organizing and shaped how he understands the law's role in people's lives.

For years before becoming a lawyer, John worked in construction and customer service, and he remains passionate about organizing working-class people to build power in their own communities. He continues his NLG work today as the Kansas chapter's Mass Defense Coordinator. To John, public defense is part of that same organizing tradition. When people are defended as whole people, not case numbers, communities stay intact, stable, and able to fight for their own futures. He holds a J.D. from Washburn University School of Law and a B.B.A. in Management from Fort Hays State University.