Deborah Barksdale, Ohio Voter Protection Advocate

In 2004, Deborah Barksdale served as the Franklin County coordinator of the Ohio Voter Protection Coalition. Barksdale, a former Communications Workers of America officer, brings extensive union leadership experience to Advancement Project as well as established working relationships with Ohio community and labor groups. An executive board member of the A. Philip Randolph Institute and treasurer of the Franklin County chapter, Barksdale is a seasoned activist who is always willing to fight for racial equality and economic justice.

 

Judith A. Browne-Dianis, Co-Director

Judith Browne-Dianis has an extensive background in civil rights litigation, which includes fighting to protect the rights of displaced Hurricane Katrina survivors. She was instrumental in securing a victory in Kirk v. City of New Orleans, which barred the city from bulldozing homes without first giving home owners opportunity to challenge the demolition. Through litigation, public speaking, and field work, Browne-Dianis staunchly advocates justice and equity for displaced New Orleans residents. She also served as co-counsel in NAACP v. Katherine Harris, et al., representing the Florida State Conference of the NAACP and black Floridians in a lawsuit to remedy voting rights violations related to the November 7, 2000 election. A graduate of Columbia University School of Law and a recipient of the distinguished Skadden Fellowship, Browne-Dianis began her civil rights career at the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc. (LDF), practicing law in the areas of housing, education, employment, and voting rights. In its 30th Anniversary issue in 2000, Essence magazine named Browne-Dianis one of “30 Women to Watch” and, in the same issue, featured her in an article defining the Black agenda for the millennium.

Browne-Dianis is admitted in New York and Washington DC.

 

Glendale Clarkson, Operations Manager

With 20 years of office management, administrative, and human resources experience, Glendale Clarkson is a vital member of the Advancement Project team. Prior to joining Advancement Project, Clarkson worked as director of operations at Renaissance West in Detroit, Mich., site director for Newton Learning, and program manager at Catholic Social Services of Oakland County. While residing in Detroit, Clarkson was an active community volunteer and member of St. Stephen A.M.E. Church. A graduate of LaSalle University with a B.S. degree in Business Administration, Clarkson's community service pursuits include collecting food and clothing for victims of domestic violence and mentoring young women by assisting them with building their job skills and teaching them how to dress for success. For a number of years, Clarkson served as trustee at her church and was a volunteer gift shop coordinator.   

 

Jim Freeman, Staff Attorney

Jim Freeman began his tenure at Advancement Project as a 2004 recipient of the prestigious Skadden Fellowship. Freeman serves Latino and African American communities in a variety of education reform efforts. He has researched and co-authored reports on school discipline, including Education on Lockdown: The Schoolhouse to Jailhouse Track (2005) and Arresting Development: Addressing the School Discipline Crisis in Florida (2006). He has also worked on voting rights, housing, and immigrants' rights matters. Freeman is a graduate of the University of Notre Dame and Harvard Law School, where he was an editor on the Harvard Law Review. Following law school, he served as judicial law clerk for the Honorable James R. Browning on the Ninth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals in San Francisco, California.

Freeman is admitted in California.

 

Edward A. Hailes, Jr., Senior Attorney

Edward Hailes, Jr. is an experienced civil rights attorney and ordained Baptist minister. A former general counsel for the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, directing both the agency's historic investigation into allegations of voting irregularities in Florida during the November 2000 presidential election and the high-profile hearing on police practices and civil rights in New York City sparked by the police shooting of Amadou Diallo. Hailes also served for ten years as a legal, then legislative, counsel for the NAACP, gaining a remarkable record of success in civil rights litigation and legislative advocacy. A graduate of Howard University School of Law, he also earned his undergraduate degree at Howard University as an honors program graduate. Reverend Hailes is the assistant to the pastor of Mt. Moriah Baptist Church in Washington, D.C.

Hailes is admitted in Washington DC.

 

Penda D. Hair, Co-Director

An aggressive racial justice advocate with 20 years of civil rights experience, Penda Hair has a stellar record of victories both in and out of court. A leader in the national struggle to protect affirmative action, Hair developed crucial Fair Housing Act amendments, argued major civil rights cases before the U.S. Supreme Court, and won the most extensive redistricting remedy ever imposed in a litigated voting rights suit. She is the author of the Rockefeller Foundation's report on innovative civil rights strategies, Louder Than Words: Lawyers, Communities, and the Struggle for Justice (2001) and former Washington, DC office director of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc. A 1978 Harvard Law School graduate, Hair also served as a clerk for U.S. Court of Appeals Judge Wilfred Feinberg and former Supreme Court Justice Harry A. Blackmun. In 1998, The American Lawyer named Hair one of the top public interest attorneys under age 45.

Hair is admitted in Washington DC.

 

Bradley E. Heard, Senior Attorney

Bradley Heard is an experienced civil rights litigator who comes to Advancement Project out of the private practice arena, after having established his own law practice and also having served as an associate in the Atlanta offices of Hunton & Williams LLP and Sutherland, Asbill & Brennan LLP. Heard served as lead counsel in two precedent-setting voting rights cases in Georgia (Charles H. Wesley Education Foundation v. Cox and ACORN v. Cox), which challenged state agency restrictions on private/third-party voter registration groups. In both cases, federal courts enjoined the regulations on the grounds that they violated the National Voter Registration Act of 1993 (NVRA) and/or the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.  Heard also has extensive experience litigating in the areas of employment discrimination and education law. Heard graduated magna cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa from Morehouse College in Atlanta, Georgia, with a B.A. in political science and then received his J.D. from the Yale Law School in New Haven, Connecticut, where he served as managing editor of the Yale Law & Policy Review. Following law school graduation, Heard clerked for the Honorable James R. Spencer of the U.S. District Court in the Eastern District of Virginia, Richmond Division.

Heard is admitted to practice in the District of Columbia and Georgia.

 

Donita Judge, Staff Attorney

Donita Judge, a member of the Advancement Project Power and Democracy team, advocates for minority voters in Ohio and New Jersey. Prior to joining Advancement Project, Judge was a clerk for the Honorable Michelle Hollar-Gregory in New Jersey Superior Court-Newark. Selected as an Earl Warren Scholar by the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc. where she interned during law school, she was editor of Rutgers Race and the Law Review. A graduate of Rutgers School of Law-Newark and a Kinoy/Stavis Public Interest fellow, Judge graduated with highest honors and distinction from Rutgers University-Newark and was elected to Phi Beta Kappa.

Judge is admitted in New Jersey.

 

Denise Lieberman, Missouri Voter Protection Advocate

Denise Lieberman, a civil rights lawyer, brings a wealth of voting rights advocacy experience to Advancement Project. As the legal director of the ACLU of Eastern Missouri from 1997-2005, she litigated several significant voting rights cases and supervised voter protection outreach and advocacy efforts. An organizer of the 2004 Missouri Voter Protection Coalition, Lieberman also served as coordinator of the 2004 Missouri Voter Protection Legal Command Center. Denise currently teaches courses on constitutional law and civil rights at Washington University in St. Louis, serves as co-chair of the Individual Rights and Responsibilities Committee of the Bar Association of Metropolitan St. Louis, and is a founding member of the new Stetin Center for Law and Social Change.

Lieberman is admitted in Missouri.

 

Jennifer Maranzano, Staff Attorney

Jennifer Maranzano completed a Skadden fellowship at Bread for the City in Washington, D.C., where she provided indigent Anacostia residents with direct representation in housing matters. During law school, Maranzano worked on fair housing issues with the Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights under Law. She was also a legislative assistant for Congressman Dale Kildee, a field organizer for the Friends of Senator Carl Levin, and membership services worker at EMILY's List, a political network for pro-choice Democratic women. A graduate of the University of Virginia School of Law, Maranzano was named the 2003 recipient of the Robert F. Kennedy Award for Public Service and served on the editorial board of the Journal of Law and Politics. She received her Bachelor of Arts with honors from Haverford College

Maranzano is admitted in Washington DC.

 

Erica McKnight, Development Associate

Erica McKnight joins Advancement Project after serving as a Project Manager for the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation's Early College High School Initiative with Jobs for the Future, a Boston-based non-profit organization. Her experience includes research and policy analysis with national non-profit organizations focused on improving college access and completion rates for minority and low-income students. Ms. McKnight received her BA in Sociology from Spelman College and her Master's in Public Policy from Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government where she served as Managing Editor for the Harvard Journal of African-American Public Policy and co-chair of the inaugural KSG Black Policy Conference. Ms. McKnight has been an active mentor to high school students in Atlanta, Boston, and Washington, DC.

 

Alexi Nunn, Staff Attorney

Alexi Nunn eagerly joined Advancement Project in 2007 after interning with the organization during law school. Ms. Nunn is a graduate of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill where she earned a B.A. in Journalism and Cultural Studies. Most recently, she graduated from Harvard Law School where she worked with the Wilmer Hale Legal Services Center and the Center for Law and Education, and interned at the American Civil Liberties Union of the National Capital Area and the employment discrimination firm of Sprenger Lang. Prior to law school, she interned with the New York Office for Civil Rights of the US Department of Education, and was a civil rights fellow with the Civil Rights Project.

Nunn is admitted in New York.

 

Ana Reyes, Development Director

Ana Reyes has over fifteen years of experience in the nonprofit sector in western and eastern regions of the United States, particularly in health care, education and advocacy. She began her career focusing on universal health care and voting right issues, driven by a belief in empowering communities to self-advocate. Her experience in development and fundraising includes work on membership programs, annual campaigns, foundation and corporate grantmanship and nonprofit management. Ms. Reyes has successfully acquired resources to improve delivery of social services to disenfranchised families in low-income, medically underserved areas, and to promote economic opportunities and self-sufficiency for communities in California, Connecticut and the D.C. Metro area. As Membership Director for Neighbor to Neighbor in San Francisco, she was responsible for managing a national base of over 30,000 members. She also worked as Development Director for the Norwalk Community Health Center where she was instrumental in the planning, implementation and funding for culturally specific health programs for the community of South Norwalk, Connecticut. Prior to Advancement Project, Ms. Reyes was Development Director for the Hispanic Committee of Virginia, which serves the immigrant community of the Washington, D.C. Metro area. Reyes earned her B.A. in Political Science from Columbia University.

 

Anita Sinha, Staff Attorney

Anita Sinha started her legal career as a Skadden fellow representing unaccompanied minors and victims of human trafficking at the Northwest Immigrant Rights Project. She was also very involved in post-9/11 advocacy on behalf of immigrant rights and played a significant role in the passage of the first city ordinance limiting local enforcement of immigration laws after 9/11. In this context, she transitioned from immigrant rights practice to civil rights work. Sinha went on to work at the National Immigration Law Center, where she worked intensively with labor unions on issues concerning immigrant workers. Before joining Advancement Project, she directed a deportation defense clinic at the International Institute of the East Bay. Sinha earned her undergraduate degree from Barnard College, Columbia University, and received her law degree in 2001 from New York University School of Law, where she served as an articles editor for the New York University Law Review.

Sinha is admitted in California and New York.

 

NaKeisha S. Sylver, Senior Attorney

NaKeisha S. Sylver brings deep passion to her work with Advancement Project’s Power and Democracy initiative. She began her career with Crowell & Moring, LLP, representing Fortune 500 companies as an Associate in the firm’s litigation and government contracts groups. As Counsel with Driscoll & Seltzer, PLLC, she continued to litigate on behalf of some of the nation’s top companies and nonprofits. During the 2004 election cycle, Sylver served as Special Projects Director with Project Vote. It was there that she developed an abiding commitment to fighting against any attempts to erode the rights of voters and other disenfranchised persons. Sylver received her B.A. in English/news media from Elizabeth City State University, her J.D. from Howard University School of Law where she was a member of the Howard Law Review, and an M.Div. from Wesley Theological Seminary.

Sylver is admitted in Virginia and the District of Columbia.

 

Jill Tauber, Fellowship Attorney

Jill Tauber came to Advancement Project in 2006 as a Skadden Fellow. Prior to that, she clerked for the Honorable Richard A. Paez on the Ninth Circuit United States Court of Appeals in Pasadena, California. Ms. Tauber is a graduate of Cornell University and Harvard Law School, where she was the Outreach Director of the Harvard Legal Aid Bureau. During law school, she also worked as a teaching fellow for Professor Lani Guinier and research assistance for Professor Christine Desan, and interned at the New York Legal Assistance Group and the Washington Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights & Urban Affairs

Tauber is admitted in New York and Washington DC.

 

M. Aurora Vásquez, Senior Attorney

Aurora Vásquez launched the Pennsylvania Farmworker Project (PFP) of Philadelphia Legal Assistance in 1997. Her efforts focused on helping farm workers throughout the state of Pennsylvania address housing conditions on labor camps and violations of federal and state employment laws. She also provided assistance with matters involving the Social Security Administration, the Immigration and Naturalization Service, and the Internal Revenue Service. Vásquez helped design and implement the PFP low-income tax payer clinic, which provides free services to taxpayers for whom English is a second language. She also conducted outreach to farm workers on labor camps throughout the state on a regular basis, providing information regarding their rights as agricultural employees. Vásquez is a graduate of Temple University Beasley School of Law and the University of California at Los Angeles.

Vasquez is admitted in Pennsylvania.

 

Gustavo Vieira, Media Relations Manager

Gustavo Vieira has over nine years of public/media relations and communications experience. Prior to joining Advancement Project, Vieira worked as the media relations/marketing specialist for IDB TV, the Broadcast Group of the Inter-American Development Bank. In this role, he led all media relations and marketing efforts in 18 countries in Latin America as well as in the US-Hispanic market. While at the IDB, he was responsible for creating strategic programming alliances with CNN en Español and CNN International, among other major broadcast television networks in Latin America. He also worked for Discovery Communications, Inc., initially at Discovery Networks International in Silver Spring, MD, and later at Discovery Networks Latin America/Iberia in Miami, Florida, where he worked as a Publicist for the Communications department. Vieira earned his B.A. English: Media Studies from High Point University in North Carolina and also spent one year in Seville, Spain, taking intensive Spanish language and history courses at the Center for Cross-Cultural Studies.

 

Elizabeth Westfall, Senior Attorney

An experienced civil rights lawyer, Ms. Westfall is a Senior Attorney and the Deputy Director of Advancement Project’s Voter Protection Program. She litigates voting rights cases on behalf of voter registration organizations and individual voters, including Diaz v. Browning (challenging Florida’s voter registration practices) and League of Women Voters v. Browning (challenging Florida’s restrictions on non-partisan voter registration organizations).  She also engages in advocacy with election officials on various voter registration and other election administration issues.  Ms. Westfall joined Advancement Project after serving as a civil rights litigator in private practice and with the Washington Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights and Urban Affairs, where she represented individuals and organizations in housing, employment, and public accommodation discrimination cases.  Prior to joining the Lawyers’ Committee, Ms. Westfall was an associate with the law firm previously known as Wilmer, Cutler & Pickering in Washington, DC.  She received her law degree from Harvard Law School and her undergraduate degree from Carleton College.

Westfall is admitted in Washington DC and New York.

 

Sabrina Williams, Communications Director

Sabrina Williams has fifteen years of public/media relations and communications experience. Prior to joining the Advancement Project, Williams worked as a senior account executive for Fenton Communications where she supervised many of Fenton's environmental and healthcare accounts. She also worked for The Wilderness Society, a national environmental organization dedicated to protecting America's wilderness through the potent combination of science, advocacy, and education. While at The Wilderness Society she led the communications outreach on core programs such as: protecting the last great American wilderness area, the Arctic Wildlife Refuge, from oil and gas drilling and curbing the land abuse by off–road vehicle users. She has also worked for the National Campaign for Tobacco–Free Kids, National Governors' Association, and for Metro-Dade County, (Miami, Florida) in the communications department. Williams earned her B.A. degree from Howard University and M.A. degree from American University.