National Legal Aid & Defender Association 2021 Annual Conference

David Miller

Desmond Meade

Devshi Mehrotra

Geoffrey Burkhart

Georges Naufal

Hazel Remesch

Ishmael Jaffree

Jacquelynne Bowman

Jaffee Pickett

Executive Director at Florida Legal Services

Jaffe S. Pickett, Esquire is the Executive Director of Florida Legal Services and is a longtime advocate for issues surrounding the criminalization of poverty and criminal justice restructuring. Pickett has offered testimony to the Department of Justice as well as the Alabama Advisory Committee to the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights and has spoken regionally and nationally on topics surrounding the importance of free civil legal aid. Pickett published “A Guide for Community Redevelopment & Economic Improvement Projects: A Replication Guidebook for Legal Aid & Community Organizations” in 2019 and continues her lifelong passion of advocating for free civil legal aid to impoverished individuals and communities at FRLS.

Jared Smith

Jaundalynn Taylor

Jayme Cassidy

Jennifer Bentley

Jennifer Blunt

Jo-Ann Wallace

John Pollock

Coordinator at National Coalition for a Civil Right to Counsel

John Pollock is the Coordinator of the National Coalition for a Civil Right to Counsel and is an attorney at the Public Justice Center. He was the recipient of NLADA's 2018 Innovations in Civil Justice Award. Previously, he was employed as the Enforcement Director at the Central Alabama Fair Housing Center, and before that was a fellow at the Southern Poverty Law Center. He graduated from Northeastern University School of Law and from Wesleyan University. In his spare time, he is the founder and coordinator of the Heirs' Property Retention Coalition, which is devoted to protecting the ancestral property of low-income landowners.

Jon Laramore

Jonodev Osceola Chaudhuri

Julianne Tarver

Julie Reiskin

Executive Director at Colorado Cross-Disability Coalition

Julie Reiskin is the executive director of the Colorado Cross-Disability Coalition (CCDC). In that role, Julie assists other organizations with assuring real and meaningful participation by “clients” at all levels. Through CCDC and the disability community, Julie has gained expertise on nonprofit accountability and best practices, publicly funded long-term community-based services, disability rights law, public benefits, and the intersectionality of systemic and individual advocacy. Julie has proposed and helped to implement many solutions to create a sustainable and client-friendly Medicaid program, such as the consumer direction as a delivery model, acted as a respected advocate for individuals, and has trained many others in health advocacy and health policy. Prior to becoming the executive director for CCDC in 1996, Julie served as the organization’s policy analyst.

Justine Olderman

Kate Parker

Director of Policy-Government and Community Affairs at Defender Association of Philadelphia

Kate Parker, Esq., currently serves as the Director of Policy-Government and Community Affairs at the Defender Association of Philadelphia, where she engages community partners and lawmakers to bring about systemic change. Before joining the Defender Association of Philadelphia, Ms. Parker served as the policy director for the Delaware Center for Justice, a nonprofit criminal justice advocacy and direct service organization. There she championed legislation to reduce racial disparities in the criminal legal system by targeted measures to improve pretrial decision-making and conditions of youth confinement, limit the circumstances for which youth could be tried as adults, eliminate inequities in drug sentencing structures, and combat the criminalization of non-payment of court fines and fees. Kate previously served as an assistant deputy public defender in New Jersey, where she was assigned to the adult trial team and as an evaluation associate at the University of Delaware’s Center for Community Research and Service, where she used qualitative and quantitative data analysis to make recommendations to improve cultural competence in the statewide children’s mental health delivery system. She graduated from Rutgers’ Camden law school, holds her Masters’ in Urban Affairs and Public Policy from the University of Delaware, and is licensed to practice law in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Delaware.

Kavita Goyal

Lillian Moy

Lisa Pearlstein

Director at City Bar Justice Center’s Legal Clinic for the Homeless

Lisa Pearlstein is the director of the City Bar Justice Center’s Legal Clinic for the Homeless. In that capacity, she spearheaded the #WiFi4Homeless campaign, which compelled NYC to install Wi-Fi in more than 260 shelters in New York City in 2021. Ms. Pearlstein trains and mentors volunteer attorneys who represent homeless families on issues such as accessing and challenging denials of public benefits and shelter. Ms. Pearlstein also advocates for system-wide public benefit policy and practice changes that positively affect homeless families. Before her employment at the City Bar Justice Center, Ms. Pearlstein worked for Brooklyn Legal Services Corp as the senior coordinating attorney of the Government Benefits Unit and as a staff attorney in the Group Housing Representation Unit. Ms. Pearlstein is the recipient of the New York City Bar Association’s 2002 Equal Access to Justice Award and Project Fair’s 2007 Equal Access to Justice Award. She is a graduate of Cornell University and Brooklyn Law School.

Lisa Smith

Liz Keith

Maha Jweied

Margaret Hagen

Margaret Shinn

Maria Duvuvuei

Martesha Johnson

Mary DeFusco

Melanie Shakarian

Merf Ehman

Molly Dull

Nikole Nelson

Ron Flagg

Sara Mayeux

Selena Hunn

Shubi Deoras

Spring Miller

Stephen Rispoli

Stuart Axenfeld

Tanya Douglas

Tanya Gassenheimer

Teresa Enriquez

Ugochi Anaebere-Nicholson

Victoria Esposito

Wes Caines

Yvonne Mariajimenez