Current Wasserstein Fellows

Wasserstein Fellows are on campus for a couple of days to meet with HLS students one-on-one. You may sign up through our Wasserstein Fellows appointment calendar to make an appointment. 

If you'd like to contact a Fellow after their visit to HLS, email OPIA at opia@law.harvard.edu. 

Below is the complete list of our 2012-13 Wasserstein Fellows, as well as the dates they will be on campus.

Fall Term

Jeffrey Adachi: October 11 & 12
Public Defender of San Francisco, San Francisco Public Defender's Office, San Francisco, CA

Andrew Celli: October 2 & 3
Co-Founding Partner, Emery Celli Brinckerhoff & Abady LLP, New York, NY

Emlee Hilliard-Smith: October 1 & 2 Senior Counsel, U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, Enforcement Division, Chicago, IL

Randy Hummel: October 11 & 12
Chief, Major Crimes Section, U.S. Attorney's Office, Southern District of Florida, Miami, FL

Mona Khalil: September 27 & 28
Senior Legal Officer, United Nations Office of Legal Affairs, New York, NY

Elizabeth Kristen: October 18 & 19
Director of the Gender Equity & LGBT Rights Program/Senior Attorney, Legal Aid Society-Employment Law Center, San Francisco, CA

Katrin Kuhlmann '96: November 7 & 8
President, Transfarm Africa, Washington, DC

Kirby Lee: October 30 & 31
Senior Policy Advisor, Executive Office of the President, Office of the Intellectual Property Enforcement Coordinator, Washington, DC

Laurie Parise: October 15 & 16
Founder/Executive Director, Youth Represent, New York, NY

Viviana Waisman: September 27 & 28
Executive Director, Women's Link WorldWide, Madrid, Spain

Jill Witkowski: October 18 & 19
Waterkeeper, San Diego CoastKeeper, San Diego, CA

Spring Term

Alejandra Ancheita: March 6 & 7
Founder/Executive Director, Project on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights (ProDESC), Mexico City, Mexico

Emily Arnold-Fernandez: February 25 & 26
Executive Director, Asylum Access, San Francisco, CA

Amanda Broun:  January 30 & 31
Senior Vice President, Public Education Network, Washington, DC

Dorcas Gilmore:  February 27 & 28
Assistant General Counsel, NAACP Legal Department, Baltimore, MD

Eric Rassbach '99: February 7 & 8
Deputy General Counsel, The Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, Washington, DC

Marcia Rosen:  March 12 & 13
Executive Director, National Housing Law Project, San Francisco, CA

Eve Stotland:  February 12 & 13
Director of Legal Services, The Door, New York, NY

Jeffrey Adachi - Public Defender of San Francisco, San Francisco Public Defender's Office, San Francisco, CA
Jeff Adachi is the Public Defender of the City and County of San Francisco. Before being elected as Public Defender in March 2002, Mr. Adachi worked as a deputy public defender in San Francisco for 15 years and in private practice for 2 years. From 1998-2001, he served as the Chief Attorney of the office. He has tried over 150 jury trials, including numerous serious felony and homicide cases, and has handled over 3,000 criminal matters throughout his career, including some of the Bay Area’s highest profile cases. As the only elected Public Defender in the state of California, and one of few elected public defenders in the United States, Mr. Adachi oversees an office of 93 lawyers and 60 support staff. Mr. Adachi served on the American Bar Association’s Standing Committee on Legal Aid and Indigents and is a member of the National Board of Trial Advocacy. He is a past president of the Asian American Bar Association of the Greater Bay Area and the San Francisco Japanese American Citizen’s League. He has been a certified criminal law specialist since 1991. Mr. Adachi has also taught with BAR/BRI bar review for 15 years and has published five books on passing the bar exam. In 1992, Mr. Adachi received the California State Bar Association’s Hufstedler Award for public service. In 1997, Mr. Adachi received the Asian American Bar Association’s Joe Morozumi Award for exceptional legal advocacy, and in 2003, was honored by the Asian American Bar Association of the Silicon Valley. In 2000, Mr. Adachi received the Mayor’s Fiscal Advisory Committee’s Managerial Excellence Award. In 2006, Adachi received the California Public Defender Association’s Program of the Year Award, and In 2007, the American Bar Association’s national Dorsey award for excellence in public defense. In 2007, Adachi was the recipient of the prestigious California Lawyer Attorney of the Year award (CLAY) for his work in the field of prisoner reentry.  Mr. Adachi is also an award-winning filmmaker. His two films, "You Don't Know Jack Soo" and "The Slanted Screen: Asian American Men in Film and Television" aired on national PBS and won several top documentary film awards across the county. Mr. Adachi graduated from Hastings College of the Law in 1985 and attended undergraduate studies at U.C. Berkeley.

Alejandra Ancheita - Founder/Executive Director, Project on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights (ProDESC), Mexico City, Mexico
Alejandra Ancheita is currently the Executive Director and attorney at ProDESC.   She has worked for over a decade as a human rights advocate in Mexico, and was a participant in the 2005 Human Rights Advocates Training Program at Columbia University. Upon her return, she founded ProDESC.  Before working for ProDESC, Ms. Ancheita was a litigation specialist at the Miguel Agustin Pro Juarez Human Rights Center (Centro de Derechos Humanos Miguel Agustín Pro Juarez, Centro Pro) and the Center for Labor Support and Reflection (Centro de Reflexión y Apoyo Laboral, CEREAL).  She has worked on strategic litigation and defense of human rights advocates and local communities. She has argued cases before the Inter-American Commission of Human Rights, the Inter-American Court, and several national courts. In 2009, she received a Master’s Degree in International Law and Global Justice at the Fordham University Law School, with the support of a Leitner Center Scholarship. She was also a visiting Scholar at the Louis Stein Center for Law and Ethics, developing a research initiative called “Towards a Genuine Transnational Collaboration: Constructing Transnational Justice for Migrant Workers.”

Emily Arnold-Fernandez - Executive Director, Asylum Access, San Francisco, CA
Emily Arnold-Fernandez, the founder and executive director of Asylum Access, is a social entrepreneur and human rights pioneer. A lawyer who has advocated nationally and internationally for the human rights of women, children, and other vulnerable individuals, Emily first became involved in refugee rights in 2002, when she represented refugees in United Nations proceedings in Cairo, Egypt. Her first client was a young Liberian who had fled to Egypt to avoid being abducted and forced to fight as a child soldier. Because he was initially denied legal status as a refugee, he was at constant risk of arrest, detention and deportation by Egyptian authorities unless he could get the decision reversed – and he only had one chance to do so. Emily’s legal advocacy won her client protection and safety in Egypt until his eventual resettlement in the U.S. Emily founded Asylum Access to advocate on behalf of refugees seeking to assert their rights. For her innovative approach to the global refugee crisis, Emily was honored by the Dalai Lama as one of 50 “Unsung Heroes of Compassion” from around the world (2009) and Waldzell Institute’s Architects of the Future Award (2012). She has also been recognized as Pomona College’s Inspirational Young Alumna (2006), awarded the prestigious Echoing Green fellowship (2007), and recognized as the New Leaders Council’s 40 Under 40 (2010). Emily’s ground-breaking work with Asylum Access has earned her international speaking invitations and widespread media attention, including the Rotary International Peace Symposium (2008, 2009), the UN High Commissioner for Refugees’ Annual Consultations (2008, 2009), a cover feature in the Christian Science Monitor (September 2009), and the San Francisco Examiner’s Credo column (July 2011). She holds a B.A. cum laude from Pomona College and a J.D. from Georgetown University Law Center, and serves as an adjunct professor at the University of San Francisco. Even before founding Asylum Access, Emily was an accomplished human rights advocate. She previously litigated civil rights claims in private practice and with Equal Rights Advocates, where she was part of the legal team in the landmark gender discrimination case against Wal-Mart. She has also been involved in a range of international work, including collaborating with a Nigerian women’s rights organization to draft a gender egalitarian model Shar’ia marriage and divorce code.

Amanda Broun - Senior Vice President, Public Education Network, Washington, DC
Amanda R. Broun is Senior Vice President of Public Education Network (PEN), a national network of community-based nonprofit organizations in high poverty school districts. These Local Education Funds work to increase the college and career-readiness of students, improve their public schools, and engage the public in support of public education. In 2011, the Network adopted a goal to increase by 100,000 the number of students who graduate, or are on-track to graduate, college-and career ready in LEF communities by 2013.  Ms. Broun oversees PEN’s positioning, communications, and advocacy strategies.  Ms. Broun currently serves on the executive committee and chairs the nominating committee of the Coalition for Community Schools. From 1986 to 1991, Ms. Broun served as Chief Education Counsel to the U.S. Senate Committee on Labor and Human Resources, (now the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee), where she worked on the full range of federal legislation affecting elementary and secondary education, including the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, bilingual education, special education, math and science, technology, comprehensive services, teaching quality, homelessness, drop-out prevention, and early childhood education. Previously, she was Legislative Counsel at the New York City Office of Management and Budget, and a staff attorney with the New York City Board of Education. She is a member of the bars of New York and the U.S. Supreme Court, and received her J.D. from New York University School of Law, and her B.A. from Barnard College, Columbia University.

Andrew Celli - Co-Founding Partner, Emery Celli Brinckerhoff & Abady LLP, New York, NY
Andrew G. Celli, Jr. is a co-founding partner of Emery Celli Brinckerhoff & Abady LLP, an eighteen-lawyer located in New York City.  Mr. Celli maintains a diverse practice representing institutions and individuals in commercial, constitutional, civil rights and civil liberties cases in the state and federal courts around the country. From 2003 through 2011, Mr. Celli served as a Commissioner on the New York State Commission on Public Integrity, and Vice-Chair of the New York State Temporary Commission on Lobbying.  He is also the Board President at Grand Street Settlement, a community-based organization on the Lower East Side. From 1999 through 2003, Mr. Celli served as Chief of the Civil Rights Bureau, an 11 lawyer affirmative litigation unit in the Office of the New York State Attorney General.  In that capacity, Mr. Celli was responsible for cases and initiatives in a variety of substantive areas, including police misconduct, economic discrimination and predatory lending, voting and disability rights, and immigrants’ rights.  Mr. Celli has lectured on legal topics, among other places, at the Harvard Law School, the New York University School of Law, Albany Law School, the Association of the Bar of the City of New York, and to the National Association of Attorneys General. Mr. Celli has authored opinion pieces for such publications as The New Republic, the National Law Journal, the New York Times, the New York Law Journal and various legal academic journals, and has appeared as a civil rights expert on CourtTV and elsewhere. Mr. Celli is a former associate at Cravath Swaine & Moore and a former law clerk to United States District Court Judge Charles P. Sifton (EDNY). He is a 1990 cum laude graduate of the New York University School of Law, where he served on the Law Review and as a Libel Law Fellow, and a 1987 magna cum laude graduate of Hobart College.

Dorcas Gilmore - Assistant General Counsel, NAACP Legal Department, Baltimore, MD
Dorcas R. Gilmore is Assistant General Counsel in the NAACP Legal Department where she represents the NAACP National Office and assists its over 1200 branches and units nationwide.  In this role, she advances the NAACP’s racial justice advocacy mission on issues of economic justice and provides corporate counsel.  Also, Ms. Gilmore serves as the Director of Community Economic Development in the NAACP Economic Department where she oversees efforts to promote the creation and growth of small businesses, individual wealth building primarily through matched savings accounts, and community asset building. Ms. Gilmore has over 8 years of experience in the community economic development field.   As a Skadden Fellow and Staff Attorney at the Community Law Center, Inc., she created the Youth Entrepreneurship Initiative providing a range of business and nonprofit legal services to youth-led organizations.  Also, she directed the Small Business Legal Services Program & Youth Entrepreneurship Initiative and the Equitable Development Project.  Ms. Gilmore has represented community organizations, social ventures, and coalitions seeking to promote racial and economic equity in their local communities and looks forward to leveraging these experiences and relationships to strengthen the economic fabrics of communities of color. Ms. Gilmore earned her law degree from the University of Maryland School of Law. The 2004 Gilbert & Jaylee Mead Public Interest Scholar, Ms. Gilmore  received numerous awards recognizing her commitment to service and the public interest, including the NAACP LDF’s Earl Warren Scholarship.  Ms. Gilmore graduated magna cum laude from Rollins College with an Honors Bachelor of Arts. Ms. Gilmore is a member of the Governing Committee of the ABA Forum on Affordable Housing and Community Development Law and a founding member of its Young Lawyers Network.  She also serves on the Board of Directors of the Women’s Law Center of Maryland.  Ms. Gilmore is the author of several articles and book chapters on law and leadership, youth entrepreneurship legal services, and community lawyering.

Emlee Hilliard-Smith - Senior Counsel, U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, Enforcement Division, Chicago, IL
Emlee Hilliard-Smith is a Senior Counsel in the Chicago Regional Office, Enforcement Division, of the U. S. Securities and Exchange Commission.  The Division of Enforcement is charged with enforcing the federal securities laws.  Staff investigate possible violations of securities laws, recommend Commission action when appropriate, either in a federal court or before an administrative law judge, and negotiate settlements.  Emlee has been with the Commission for twenty-two years, serving first in the Boston Regional Office and now in the Chicago Regional Office.  Her career at the Commission has included:  litigation practice, trying complex fraud cases in federal district courts and administrative hearings; investigating a wide variety of securities fraud cases; negotiating settlement agreements; managing the CHRO’s local and national recruitment programs; creating national and local diversity programs; and handling special projects for the CHRO Regional Director.  She has received numerous awards while at the SEC for performance excellence and the furtherance of the Commission’s commitment to diversity through the development of creative programming.  Prior to joining the Commission, Emlee was an associate in the corporate department of Goodwin, Procter & Hoar (now Goodwin Procter LLP).  She currently serves on the board of directors of the Oak Park River Forest Community Foundation.  Emlee is a graduate of Smith College, holds a MBA from Simmons College Graduate School of Management, a M.Ed. from Virginia Commonwealth University, J.D. from Northeastern University School of Law, and is a Certified Fraud Examiner.

Randy Hummel - Chief, Major Crimes Section, U.S. Attorney's Office, Southern District of Florida, Miami, FL
Randy Hummel is Chief of the Major Crimes Section of the United States Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of Florida.  There he supervises the work of 24 new federal prosecutors, four deputies, and a dozen support staff.   The Major Crimes Section is the initial destination for all criminal Assistant United States Attorneys (AUSAs) for the district and is responsible for the investigation and prosecution of a wide range of federal crimes including counterfeiting, immigration document fraud, alien smuggling, tax return fraud, narcotics trafficking, child exploitation, identity theft, bank robbery, and a variety of other violent and white collar crimes.  He is also responsible for the training and professional development of all new district criminal AUSA hires.  In addition to his work with the Department of Justice, Mr. Hummel is a reserve Colonel in the United States Air Force JAG Corps.  In that capacity he has served in a number of different roles, including as the senior reserve instructor to the Departmental head of the Law Department at the United States Air Force Academy.  He has also served as a reserve faculty member at the Air Force Judge Advocate General’s School, where he taught active duty and reserve  judge advocates and, as part of overseas teaching missions, both military and civilian students in Africa, South America, and Asia.  He has received a Director’s Award from the Department of Justice and commendations from many other agencies.  Before his present assignment as the head of the Major Crimes Section, Mr. Hummel supervised the district’s High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area (HIDTA) task force, and also served as a supervisor in both the office’s Narcotics Section and its Fort Lauderdale Branch office.  Before joining the Department of Justice, he worked as an active duty Air Force judge advocate, finishing his active duty military service as a circuit defense counsel.  In that capacity, he served as a senior defense counsel defending Air Force service members charged with serious felony crimes under the Uniform Code of Military Justice and supervised/mentored junior defense counsel.  He is a graduate of Elizabethtown (Pa.) College and the University of Pittsburgh School of Law.

Mona Khalil - Senior Legal Officer, United Nations Office of Legal Affairs, New York, NY
Mona Ali Khalil is a Senior Legal Officer in the UN Office of the Legal Counsel which she joined in 1993.  She is a Saudi national of Palestinian origin.   She obtained a BA in Government and MA in Middle East Studies from Harvard University in 1988 and a Juris Doctorate and MS in Foreign Service from Georgetown University in 1992. Between 1993 and 2005, she provided advice on a broad range of public international law issues including to the General Assembly and Security Council as well as to international conferences such as the Durban Conference on Racism and Rome Conference on the International Criminal Court.  She assisted the SRSGs on the Lockerbie case and advised the team negotiating the transfer of the Libyan suspects to the Scottish Court in the Netherlands. She appeared before the International Court of Justice in connection with a landmark advisory opinion. She also served as legal adviser to the Special Adviser on Iraq in the lead up to and aftermath of the 2003 war. In 2005, she was seconded to the IAEA in Vienna where she provided advice on the Security Council sanctions against Iran’s nuclear programme, the IAEA resolutions on the Middle East and the international nuclear security and counter-terrorism regimes. In early 2010, she returned to UNHQ where she is serving as the lead lawyer on UN peacekeeping and Security Council sanctions, including the Ombudsperson for the Al-Qaeda sanctions regime. She provides advice on Security Council mandates for the maintenance of international peace and security, ensuring that the legal regimes supporting the UN peacekeeping operations are consistent with the UN Charter and that their rules of engagement and use of force comply with international human rights and humanitarian law. She is also currently serving as Senior Legal Adviser to the SRSG on Libya.

Elizabeth Kristen - Director of the Gender Equity & LGBT Rights Program/Senior Attorney, Legal Aid Society-Employment Law Center, San Francisco, CA
Elizabeth Kristen is the Director of the Gender Equity Program and a Senior Staff Attorney at the LAS–ELC. She represents workers in employment discrimination cases including cases involving discrimination on the basis of gender, pregnancy, disability, sexual orientation, national origin, and race as well as cases in which employers have violated family and medical leave laws. She also engages in community education, negotiations, litigation and policy work on behalf of female students who have not been afforded equal athletic opportunities under Title IX. Prior to beginning her work at LAS–ELC in 2002 as a Skadden Fellow, she clerked for the Honorable James R. Browning on the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco. She graduated from Berkeley Law in 2001 where she was selected for the Order of the Coif. She also served as an Editor for the California Law Review. Ms. Kristen is a member of the American Association of University Women, the National Employment Lawyers Association and the California Employment Lawyers Association and a past Board member of the Pride Law Fund. Ms. Kristen currently serves as a lecturer at Berkeley Law School.

Katrin Kuhlmann '96 - President, Transfarm Africa, Washington, DC
Katrin Kuhlmann is President of TransFarm Africa, a fellow with the Aspen Network of Development Entrepreneurs at the Aspen Institute and an Adjunct Professor at Georgetown University Law Center.  She is also the Director of the U.S.-Africa Business Center and Senior Advisor at the Corporate Council on Africa.  She is a member of the Advisory Board of the Harvard Law and International Development Society and serves on the boards of the Washington International Trade Association and the Malaika Foundation.  Ms. Kuhlmann was previously a Senior Fellow and Director at the Aspen Institute and a Transatlantic Fellow at the German Marshall Fund. She has held other senior positions in the non-profit sector, including as President of the Trade, Aid and Security Coalition and Senior Vice President of the Women’s Edge Coalition. Her work focuses on a demand-driven, market-led approach to trade, development and investment policy and on addressing policy and legal barriers faced by entrepreneurs.   Prior to joining the non-profit sector, Ms. Kuhlmann served for six years as the Director for Eastern Europe and Eurasia in the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative (USTR) where she was responsible for developing and coordinating U.S. trade policy with Russia, Eastern Europe, the Caucasus and Central Asia. She has also practiced law in New York and Washington, DC.  Ms. Kuhlmann holds degrees from Harvard Law School and Creighton University, and she was the recipient of a Fulbright grant in 1992.  She lives with her husband and three daughters in Bethesda, Maryland.

Kirby Lee - Senior Policy Advisor, Executive Office of the President, Office of the Intellectual Property Enforcement Coordinator, Washington, DC
Kirby Lee is Senior Policy Advisor to the Intellectual Property Enforcement Coordinator, Hon. Victoria Espinel, in the Executive Office of the President.  He provides policy and legal expertise in the development and implementation of the Administration's overall strategy for enforcement of intellectual property rights.  His responsibilities include such areas as counterfeit pharmaceuticals and voluntary best practices.  Lee was selected for this White House detail by the U.S. Department of Justice Intellectual Property Task Force. Previously, Lee was a trial attorney at the Justice Department where he represented the federal government in intellectual property disputes, including patent, copyright, and trademark matters.  Lee served as law clerk to the Hon. Alan D. Lourie at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit and the Hon. Marvin J. Garbis at the U.S. District Court for the District of Maryland, in both instances specializing in intellectual property law. Lee graduated first in his class at the Indiana University School of Law—Indianapolis and he served as editor-in-chief of the Indiana Law Review.  He earned a B.S. in Chemical Engineering from Purdue University and is a registered patent attorney.  Lee was formerly a member of the patent division of Eli Lilly and Company and is presently an officer of the Giles S. Rich American Inn of Court.  Since 2008, he has served as an Adjunct Professor in the Scholarly Writing Program at The George Washington University Law School.

Laurie Parise - Founder/Executive Director, Youth Represent, New York, NY
Laurie Parise is the Executive Director and Founder of Youth Represent. In 2006, she was awarded an Echoing Green Fellowship to start the organization. Previously, as an Equal Justice Works Fellow, Ms. Parise created and implemented a youth reentry project at the Legal Action Center’s National H.I.R.E. Network. Ms. Parise’s youth reentry project expanded on the work of H.I.R.E. and addressed the unique employment issues that youth who have been involved in the juvenile or criminal justice system face when they reenter society. Ms. Parise’s commitment to work with disenfranchised populations began in 1990 at the Rainforest Foundation, where she supported indigenous peoples in their efforts to protect their rights. After eleven years with the organization, the last five as its Executive Director, Ms. Parise decided to go to law school to develop new skills in order to promote social justice in other segments of society. Ms. Parise is a graduate of Columbia University and Brooklyn Law School where she earned an Edward V. Sparer Public Interest Fellowship Award. In August 2005, she was awarded the first Lexis/Nexis Martindale Hubbell Legal Fellowship for her work in the field. In 2008, she received a Union Square Award in recognition of her grass roots activism to support at-risk youth in NYC.

Eric Rassbach '99 - Deputy General Counsel, The Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, Washington, DC
Eric Rassbach is Deputy General Counsel at the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, a non-profit law firm based in Washington, DC that represents people of all religious traditions. Eric has been a lawyer at the Becket Fund since 2004. In his practice he has represented people and institutions from many different faith backgrounds, including Buddhists, Christians, Hindus, Jains, Jews, Muslims, Santeros, and Sikhs, as well as on occasion governmental entities. He led the Becket Fund litigation team that represented the Petitioner in Hosanna-Tabor Evangelical Lutheran Church and School v. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. In that case, the United States Supreme Court ruled 9-0 in favor of his client and recognized the ministerial exception doctrine for the first time. Eric has also appeared in most of the federal Courts of Appeal, several state supreme courts, and the European Court of Human Rights. Other notable representations include an embattled mosque in Murfreesboro, Tennessee, a Santero priest in Euless, Texas, and Jewish inmates in the Texas and Florida prison systems. Eric is a well-known commentator on church-state issues and has been quoted in the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Times of India, the Wall Street Journal, and many other publications. Before joining the Becket Fund, Eric worked at Baker Botts LLP in Houston, where he practiced international project finance law, including the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline project and windfarm development. He served as law clerk to Judge Lee Rosenthal in the Southern District of Texas. Eric graduated from Haverford College with a degree in Comparative Literature, is a member of Fitzwilliam College, Cambridge University, and is a graduate of Harvard Law School.

Marcia Rosen - Executive Director, National Housing Law Project, San Francisco, CA
Marcia Rosen is the Executive Director of the National Housing Law Project (NHLP), a legal services and advocacy organization established in 1968 to advance housing justice for low income families. She has an extensive background in public interest law and housing and community development, including service in local government and as an attorney and Deputy Director of the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights of the San Francisco Bay Area (LCCR). Prior to joining NHLP, she served for six years as Executive Director of the San Francisco Redevelopment Agency, a local government agency dedicated to promoting community, economic, and physical development of San Francisco’s distressed neighborhoods and the development and preservation of affordable housing, and for five years as Director of the San Francisco Mayor’s Office of Housing, where she was responsible for representing the mayor before local, state and federal agencies and legislative bodies and for administering the City’s local and federal housing funds. Before her stint in public service, she was the long-time Deputy Director of LCCR, where she represented low-income people and community organizations in a broad array of civil rights cases and issues, focused primarily on housing, land use, economic and community development, and children and youth issues. Ms. Rosen is a graduate of University of California, Hastings College of the Law and a member of the California, U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, and U.S. Supreme Court bars. During the 1999-2000 academic year, she was a Loeb Fellow at Harvard University’s Graduate School of Design where she was engaged in interdisciplinary studies at the GSD, Kennedy School of Government, and Harvard Law School and wrote a case study on San Francisco development politics that was published by the Kennedy School.

Eve Stotland - Director of Legal Services, The Door, New York, NY (Until recently, Ms. Stotland was Director of the Mental Health Project at the Urban Justice Center)
Eve Stotland is the Director of Legal Services at the Door, a youth development agency in New York City. Each year The Door serves more than 11,000 young people from all over New York City with a wide range of services including reproductive health care and education, mental health counseling, legal assistance, GED and ESOL classes, tutoring, college preparation services, career development, job training and placement, supportive housing, sports and recreational activities, arts, and nutritious meals - all for free, completely confidentially, and under one roof. Until recently, she had been the Director of the Mental Health Project (MHP) at the Urban Justice Center.  The Mental Health Project is team of attorneys, social workers and advocates dedicated to enforcing the rights of low-income New Yorkers with mental illness. Eve began her career as a Skadden Fellow at Bay Area Legal Aid and at National Center for Youth Law in California.  She then went on to work at The Door’s Legal Services Center in NYC, where she represented people ages 12-21 in issues including immigration law, family law, and public benefits.  She also spent three years as the Associate Director of the Public Interest Law Center at NYU School of Law.  Eve graduated cum laude from Brown University and received her J.D. from Yale Law School.

Viviana Waisman - Executive Director, Women's Link WorldWide, Madrid, Spain
Viviana Waisman is executive director and co-founder of Women's Link Worldwide. Viviana is an expert in women’s rights and international human rights law. She founded Women’s Link in 2001 in response to her perception that there existed a need to create and disseminate mechanisms to apply human rights standards to advance women’s rights using the courts.  She is responsible for the management and fundraising of this organization with offices in two countries, Spain and Colombia. Furthermore, she leads and participates in investigations, litigation and trainings in numerous fields such as: migrant women’s rights, trafficking, international gender crimes, intersectional discrimination and reproductive rights, among others. Viviana is now a member of the European Commission Third Group of Experts on Trafficking in Human Beings. Her publications include “Human Trafficking: State Obligations to Protect Victims Rights. The Current Framework and a New Due Diligence Standard”, (Hastings International and Comparative Law Review, 2010), “Bridging the Divide: Women's Access to Justice” (editor, Women's Link Worldwide, 2002), “Reproductive Rights 2000: Moving Forward” (editor), “Women of the World Anglophone Africa: Laws and Policies Affecting their Reproductive Lives” (Center for Reproductive Rights, 1997).  Prior to founding Women’s Link, Viviana worked as a consultant for the United Nations Population Fund, as a fellowship attorney at the Center for Reproductive Rights in New York, and an associate at the law firm Gray, Cary, Ware and Friendenrich in San Diego. Viviana holds a Master of Studies in International Human Rights Law from Oxford University, a Juris Doctorate from the University of California Hastings College Of Law in San Francisco and a Bachelor of Arts in Political Science from the University of California, Berkeley. Viviana's family is originally from Argentina. She lives in Madrid.

Jill Witkowski - Waterkeeper, San Diego CoastKeeper, San Diego, CA
Jill Witkowski is the Waterkeeper for San Diego Coastkeeper, a watchdog organization dedicated to protecting and restoring fishable, swimmable, drinkable San Diego waters. As Waterkeeper, Jill leads Coastkeeper’s policy, legal and programs work and ensures that Coastkeeper achieves its mission.  Jill also supervises Coastkeeper's student attorneys--volunteer law students who get real-world job training while carrying the bulk of Coastkeeper's litigation workload. During her time at Coastkeeper, Jill has been heavily involved in a variety of water related issues, including water supply policy, sewage spill litigation, stormwater permit adoption and enforcement, marine debris policy, and a clean-up order for San Diego Bay.  Coastkeeper’s new initiatives include marine protected areas enforcement, cigarette butt litter policy and advocacy, and cross-border Tijuana River pollution issues. Prior to joining San Diego Coastkeeper, Jill served as Deputy Director of the Tulane Environmental Law Clinic and was a Professor of Practice at Tulane Law School. She arrived in New Orleans two weeks before Hurricane Katrina and spent her first semester working remotely from the University of Texas Law School in Austin.  At Tulane, Jill represented individuals and community groups in environmental citizen suits under the Clean Water Act, the Clean Air Act, the National Environmental Policy Act, the Endangered Species Act, and Louisiana state law. In Fall 2008, Jill served as Acting Director of the Tulane Environmental Law Clinic, teaching a class of 26 students and supervising a staff of three attorneys, a community outreach coordinator, and an administrative assistant. Jill began her legal career as an associate in the Executive Compensation and Employee Benefits group at Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom in New York City.  She also clerked for the Honorable Virginia Hernandez Covington, U.S. District Court Judge for the Middle District of Florida. Jill graduated magna cum laude from the University of Notre Dame and received her J.D. from Washington University in St. Louis and was inducted in the Order of the Coif.