Cheryl Kraus

Cheryl A. Kraus keeps a piece of advice close, given to her more than two decades ago: "If you don't like the law, change it." She's spent her career doing exactly that. An attorney in Farrell Fritz's Albany office focused on government relations, healthcare, and corporate matters, Kraus helped broker one of 2026's most consequential — and most sensitive — Albany policy achievements: bridging a long-standing divide between the hospice and palliative care community and medical aid-in-dying advocates, work that contributed to the enactment of New York's landmark Medical Aid in Dying Act, signed by Governor Hochul and now in effect statewide. She also helped negotiate the chapter amendments that preserved patient protections and health equity safeguards while reducing implementation risk.

That wasn't her only 2026 win. Kraus engineered a strategy that finally unlocked a long-delayed 5% rate increase for New York's Early Intervention providers, navigating stalled federal CMS approval to bring critical resources to services for children with developmental delays. She also advanced her third first-in-the-nation legislative initiative for the hospice community and united pharmaceutical manufacturers, the state Sheriffs' Association, and recovery advocates behind expanded medication-assisted treatment in correctional facilities.

Raised in rural upstate New York and a first-generation high school, college, and law school graduate, Kraus brings a vantage point rarely found in Albany policy circles — one that shows up, colleagues say, in her refusal to defend a system simply because it's familiar. "I chose this field because intelligent policy is one of the most powerful tools we have to advance justice," Kraus says. The University at Buffalo School of Law recently named her among its most influential graduates. "She simply does not give up the fight, even when the clock is ticking and time is running out," one peer nominator wrote of her — a description Kraus, who calls being a mother her most important role, would likely take as the highest compliment.

Persistence may be her constant, but strategy is what gives it direction. Kraus describes her own approach to the work as understanding the chessboard: seeing moves others miss, anticipating consequences before they unfold, and having the courage to challenge the rules themselves when they no longer serve the people they were meant to protect. She puts her own reputation more bluntly, by her own account: people occasionally underestimate Cheryl A. Kraus. They rarely do it twice.