speakers' bios

Keynote Speaker
J. Richard Cohen
President, Southern Poverty Law Center

photo: Tom Cogill

As President of the Southern Poverty Law Center, Richard Cohen has been involved in a wide variety of civil rights initiatives, ranging from traditional employment discrimination and voting rights cases, to campaigns to reform state juvenile justice and educational systems, to lawsuits that have put neo-Nazi groups out of business. He has appeared in numerous state and federal courts, including the United States Supreme Court.

In 1997, Richard was named by American Lawyer magazine as one of 45 “young lawyers outside the private sector whose vision and commitment are changing lives.” In 1999, he was a finalist for the Trial Lawyer of the Year Award from the Trial Lawyers for Public Justice. In 2007, he was honored by the National Juvenile Defender Center with its annual leadership award.

In addition to his legal work, Richard has been intimately involved in the Center’s efforts to monitor white supremacist activity across the nation and in its public education initiatives. He serves as the executive producer for the Center’s award-winning documentary films. Four have garnered Academy-Award nominations, two have won Oscars, and one has won an Emmy.

A Virginia native, Richard received his undergraduate degree from Columbia University in 1976 and his law degree from the University of Virginia in 1979. Prior to joining the staff of the Law Center as the Legal Director in 1986, he was a shareholder in a Washington, D.C., law firm. He became the president of the Law Center in 2003.

Friday Evening Speaker
Anne Milgram
New Jersey State Attorney General

Anne Milgram was sworn in as New Jersey’s 57th Attorney General on June 29, 2007 after she was nominated by Governor Jon S. Corzine and unanimously confirmed by the State Senate. She had been serving for the previous 17 months as the First Assistant Attorney General. As the State’s chief law enforcement officer, Milgram heads the 9,600-person Department of Law and Public Safety, one of the largest agencies in New Jersey state government.

Milgram began her career as an assistant district attorney in the Manhattan District Attorney’s office in New York in September 1997. She went on to work in the criminal section of the United States Department of Justice's civil rights division beginning in 2001, where she rose to become the lead federal prosecutor in the nation for human trafficking crimes. While at the Department of Justice, Milgram successfully prosecuted hate crimes, sex trafficking, forced labor and domestic servitude cases nation-wide. She also supervised attorneys and advised local, state, and federal prosecutors and law enforcement agents. Milgram was awarded the Department of Justice Special Commendation for Outstanding Service in December 2004 and the Director’s Award in September 2006.

Ms. Milgram will also participate in the Women in Public Interest Careers Workshop.

Women in Public Interest Careers Workshop
Nancy J. Anderson

Nancy J. Anderson, Esq., is the Pro Bono Counsel/Senior Counsel for the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, a national civil rights organization founded by President John F. Kennedy in 1963. Ms. Anderson's responsibilities include working with law firms and corporate legal departments to place all of the Lawyers' Committee's civil rights pro bono matters, including impact/class action litigation, transactional matters, "mega" projects, and public policy. She is a 1992 graduate from the University of Virginia School of Law and completed a joint degree, an MA in Sociology, in 1993 from the University of Virginia Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. She received a BA in Psychology in 1989 from the University of Oklahoma, where she was a member of Phi Beta Kappa. Before joining the Lawyers' Committee, Nancy worked for the American Bar Association where she was the Director of the Steering Committee on the Unmet Legal Needs of Children. Previously, she worked for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services on welfare legal matters. She is a member of the Virginia and District of Columbia bar.

Race and Law Panel
Shawn Armbrust

Shawn Armbrust is the Executive Director of the Mid-Atlantic Innocence Project, where she works to prevent and correct wrongful convictions in the District of Columbia, Maryland, and Virginia. She graduated magna cum laude from Georgetown University Law Center and earned her B.S. with honors in Journalism from Northwestern University, where she helped free Anthony Porter, an innocent man on Illinois' death row. Before entering law school, she was the case coordinator at the Center on Wrongful Convictions at the Northwestern University School of Law. She also has served as a law clerk to Judge Gladys Kessler of the United States District Court for the District of Columbia, is an Adjunct Professor at American University’s Washington College of Law and Georgetown University Law Center, and is a member of the National Committee on the Right to Counsel.

Careers in Poverty Law Workshop
Mary Bauer

Mary Bauer is the Director of the Southern Poverty Law Center’s Immigrant Justice Project, located in Montgomery, Alabama. The Immigrant Justice Project represents farmworkers and other low-wage immigrant workers in high-impact cases in nine states in the South.

She has a B.A. from the College of William and Mary. She graduated from the University of Virginia School of Law in 1990. Since that time, she has worked as an attorney representing low-wage immigrant workers in employment and civil rights cases. Prior to joining SPLC, she was the Legal Director of the Virginia Justice Center for Farm and Immigrant Workers and the Legal Director of the Virginia ACLU.

Native American Law Panel
Philmer Bluehouse

Philmer Bluehouse is a member of the Dineh Nation. He is of the clan Manygoats (Red House of the Tewa) and is born for the clan One who Walks Around You (an original Dineh clan). Mr. Bluehouse has has worked for DNA – Peoples Legal Services and has served as the Peacemaker Liaison/Writer for the Judicial Branch of the Navajo Nation; he is the former Coordinator of the Judicial Branch of the Navajo Nation's Peacemaker Division. He consults in the development and implementation of Peacemaking Systems and Knowledge on Tradition and Culture, and owns the "BLUEHOUSE Peacemaking Institute," a non-profit entity. He is a former director of the Navajo Division of Public Safety, and a former Federal Law Enforcement Agent and Navajo Tribal Law Enforcement Officer-Investigator. He has taught in the Navajo Police Academy, and is an Adjunct Professor at the Northern Arizona University at Flagstaff, Arizona.

Environmental Law Panel
David Bookbinder

David Bookbinder is a graduate of Princeton University and the University of Chicago Law School. After several years of corporate litigation at Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison, he began practicing public interest environmental law, first in Boston and then in Washington, D.C. He has litigated cases under most of the federal environmental statutes and is currently Sierra Club's Chief Climate Counsel.

Mr. Bookbinder, who also teaches at Georgetown University Law School and serves on the boards of several environmental groups, lives in the woods with one spouse, two children, a cat, two rabbits, some fish, two goats and a dog, and on the 2000 Census form he described his "most important work duties" as "Suing the Federal Government."

Health Law Panel
Michael F. Cannon

Michael F. Cannon is the Cato Institute's director of health policy studies. Previously, he served as a domestic policy analyst for the U.S. Senate Republican Policy Committee under Chairman Larry E. Craig, where he advised the Senate leadership on health, education, labor, welfare, and the Second Amendment. Cannon has appeared on ABC, CBS, CNN, CNBC, C-SPAN, Fox News Channel, and NPR. His articles have been featured in USA Today, the Los Angeles Times, the New York Post, the Chicago Tribune, the Chicago Sun-Times, the San Francisco Chronicle, and the Yale Journal of Health Policy, Law, and Ethics. Cannon is coauthor of Healthy Competition: What’s Holding Back Health Care and How to Free It. He holds a bachelor's degree in American government (B.A.) from the University of Virginia, and master’s degrees in economics (M.A.) and law & economics (J.M.) from George Mason University.

Careers in the Federal Government Workshop
Emmitt Carlton

Emmitt Carlton is Special Counsel in the Office of Intergovernmental Affairs, in the Consumer and Governmental Affairs Bureau of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC). He assists FCC information sharing, cooperation and coordination with state and local government officials, and attends and participates in conferences, educational seminars, and consumer and industry meetings to facilitate better understanding of FCC rules, policies, programs and plans related to telecommunications. Earlier, Mr. Carlton worked in the FCC Enforcement Bureau as Assistant Director of the Telecommunications Consumers Division, where he managed consent decree negotiations, consent compliance, complaint mediation, staff attorneys training, and investigations of common carriers that are allegedly in noncompliance with FCC laws and regulations. He also served in the FCC Enforcement Bureau’s Spectrum Enforcement Division.

Mr. Carlton is a former adjunct professor at American University, George Mason University Law School and Northern Virginia Community College. He holds a B.A. from Brown University, a J.D. from the University of Virginia Law School and is a native of Indianapolis, Indiana.

Education Law Panel
Angela Ciolfi

Angela Ciolfi is a long-time member of the JustChildren team, a program of the Legal Aid Justice Center that focuses on improving Virginia's public education, juvenile justice, and foster care systems. Her work for the program as a law student earned her the Oliver White Hill Award from the Virginia State Bar in 2003. Angela joined the staff as a Powell Fellow in 2004 after clerking for U.S. District Judge Reginald C. Lindsay. At JustChildren, Angela has been involved in advocating state-level reforms in public education and representing individual clients from Charlottesville and the surrounding counties. She also has been involved in successfully getting the state to increase funding for a program that helps at-risk preschoolers. Additionally, Angela is a Lecturer at the University of Virginia School of law where she is assisting with a course on special education and is working with the Child Advocacy Clinic. Angela is a graduate of The College of William and Mary and University of Virginia School of Law.

Race and Law Panel
Debi Cornwall

Debi Cornwall is a partner at Cochran, Neufeld & Scheck, LLP. She has litigated civil-rights cases at both the trial and appellate levels around the country on behalf of DNA exonerees and victims of police brutality. In 2006 and 2007, Ms. Cornwall successfully litigated and then obtained multi-million dollar verdicts from Virginia and California federal juries respectively, on behalf of Earl Washington Jr., a mentally retarded man who falsely confessed to a murder he did not commit and on behalf of Herman Atkins, a black man falsely convicted of raping a white woman. In addition to securing substantial verdicts, the litigation led to reform-oriented broader audits in both states.
Ms. Cornwall has represented civil rights plaintiffs in California, Kentucky, Louisiana, Massachusetts, New York, North Carolina, Tennessee and Virginia. She has prosecuted successful appeals in the Fourth, Sixth, Ninth Circuits and New York State Courts.

Careers in International Public Interest Workshop
John Crosby

John Crosby, a career member of the Foreign Service, currently works as a Special Assistant in the Executive Secretariat at the U.S. State Department, where he does advance work to support the foreign travel of the Secretary of State. His previous assignments have included postings to India as a consular officer, Slovenia as a political-military affairs officer, and in Washington working as Conflicts Advisor in the Office of Caucasus Affairs and Regional Conflicts.

Prior to joining the Foreign Service, John practiced corporate and securities law at the Houston firm of Mayor, Day, Caldwell & Keeton. He is a 1998 graduate of the University of Virginia Law School. He earned a B.A. in History from Swarthmore College in 1992. Before law school, John worked for a corporate communications firm in Tokyo, taught English and performed chamber music concerts in the eastern German countryside, and studied Modern History as a Fulbright scholar at the University of Munich in Germany.

Careers in the Federal Government Workshop
Patricia R. Davis

Ms. Davis is an Assistant Director of the Frauds Section of the Civil Division of the Department of Justice. Before joining the Justice Department, she was Deputy Counsel to the Inspector General for the General Services Administration. She has also worked for the Nuclear Regulatory Commission as an Assistant to one of the five Commissioners and on detail as a staff counsel for the Energy & Power Subcommittee of the House of Representatives. She is a graduate of the University of Virginia Law School, and she obtained a B.A. in History from Case Western Reserve University.

Criminal Law Panel
John S. Davis

John S. Davis is an Assistant U.S. Attorney and Chief of the Criminal Division in the Eastern District of Virginia. Between 1990 and 1997, Mr. Davis worked as an AUSA in Atlanta, where he also served as Chief of the Criminal Division. In 2002 Mr. Davis was one of three AUSA’s responsible for the John Walker Lindh prosecution. Between 2004 and 2006 Mr. Davis worked as an Associate Deputy Attorney General at the Department of Justice, where he served as Coordinator for the Iraq Regime Crimes Liaison’s Office and as the Department’s Senior Privacy Official. He was graduated from Harvard Law School in 1985 and Davidson College in 1981, and lives in Richmond with his wife and three daughters.

Criminal Law Panel
Paul Enzinna

Paul Enzinna represents individuals and corporations in civil and criminal matters—both at trial and on appeal—in courts across the country. He also conducts internal corporate investigations into allegations of procurement fraud, antitrust violations, and ethics violations.

Mr. Enzinna's civil practice includes litigation on claims of employment discrimination, securities violations, First Amendment and media issues, and trademark infringement, and other complex commercial litigation.

Mr. Enzinna has represented several death penalty defendants, and as vice president and founding board member of the Mid-Atlantic Innocence Project, he recently obtained DNA testing that cleared a Virginia man of a 1982 rape for which the man had been sentenced to more than 200 years in prison. The tests ultimately led to the first full pardon granted under Virginia's new post-conviction DNA testing statute. In 2002, he was named R. Kenneth Mundy Lawyer of the Year by the District of Columbia Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers.

International Law Panel
Elizabeth Ferris

As co-director of the Brookings-Bern Project on Internal Displacement, Beth Ferris focuses on the international community's response to humanitarian crises, with a particular emphasis on the human rights of internally displaced persons. She received her Masters and Doctorate degrees from the University of Florida, and her bachelor of arts from Duke University.

Public Interest Law in the Private Sector Workshop
Scot Fishman

Scot Fishman serves as Dewey & LeBoeuf's Director of Pro Bono. In his role, Mr. Fishman manages the all domestic and international pro bono legal services. As a litigation attorney, Mr. Fishman's experience included complex energy litigation, insurance class actions, electronic data preservation, and numerous other areas. Mr. Fishman's pro bono work has included entertainment contract negotiation, low-income housing improvement for parents with asthmatic children and general litigation.

Prior to joining LeBoeuf Lamb, Mr. Fishman devoted much of his efforts to public interest and governmental work. Mr. Fishman served as a Teach For America corps member and taught for three years in an under-resourced elementary school in Washington, D.C. While at the University of Virginia, Mr. Fishman served as the president of the student body and served on the board of Madison House, the office of volunteerism at the university. Also during his time at UVA, Mr. Fishman interned for the White House and in both houses of Congress.

Voting Rights Law Panel
J. Gerald (Gerry) Hebert

J. Gerald Hebert (“Gerry”) is a sole practitioner in Alexandria, Virginia, who specializes in election law and redistricting. Since 2004, Gerry has been associated with the Campaign Legal Center in Washington, DC, a non-profit, non-partisan campaign finance reform organization. He is presently Executive Director and Director of Litigation of that organization.

From 1973 to 1994, Gerry served in the Department of Justice, where he served in many supervisory capacities, including Acting Chief, Deputy Chief, and Special Litigation Counsel in the Voting Section of the Civil Rights Division. At Justice, Gerry was lead attorney in numerous voting rights and redistricting lawsuits, several of which were ultimately decided by the U.S. Supreme Court.

Gerry has authored a number of law journal articles and other publications on redistricting and the Voting Rights Act, including “Redistricting in the Post-2000 Era”, in the George Mason University Law Review, and “The Realists’ Guide to Redistricting”, published by the ABA’s Section of Administrative Law and Regulatory Practice (co-authored).

Careers in Poverty Law Workshop
Wilhelm H. Joseph, Jr.

Wilhelm H. Joseph, Jr. received his Bachelor of Science from Mississippi Valley State University in 1969, his Certificate of African Studies from the University of Ghana in 1971, his Juris Doctor from the University of Mississippi School of Law in 1972, and his Master of Public Administration from Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government in 1983.

Mr. Joseph served as the national director of the Law Students Civil Rights Research Council in New York from 1972 through 1974. In 1974, he began working as a staff attorney and administrator at North Mississippi Rural Legal Services in Oxford, MS and, in 1975, was promoted to the position of Executive Director. Mr. Joseph remained with NMRLS until 1982. From October 1983 through March 1984, Mr. Joseph served as a consultant to Legal Services for New York City, the largest LSC funded legal services program in the U.S. He then joined the staff as a Special Assistant to the Executive Director and served in that capacity until 1990 when he was named Director of the Legal Support Unit. In September 1996, Mr. Joseph was recruited for the position of Executive Director of the Legal Aid Bureau in Maryland where he directs management of the statewide civil legal services program.

Mr. Joseph has served on the Board of Directors of several organizations including, but not limited to, New York Lawyers for the Public Interest, National Conference of Black Lawyers, National Alliance Against Racial and Political Repression and National Legal Aid and Defenders Association, the Center for Constitutional Rights, and the chair of the American Bar Association Section of Litigation’s Legal Services Project.

Public Interest Law in the Private Sector
Marc R. Kadish

Mr. Kadish’s responsibilities as Director of Pro Bono Activities for Mayer Brown include finding worthwhile projects for lawyers, paralegals and other support personnel that will benefit our society. Mr. Kadish’s direct representational or supervisory work has included the firm’s Seventh Circuit project, death penalty and murder case appointments, appointments in prisoner’s civil rights cases and potential asylum cases.

Election Law Panel
Anne Lewis

Anne represents Strickland Brockington Lewis clients in various public policy and legislative matters. In the 2000 redistricting cycle, Anne, along with partner Frank Strickland, represents four intervenors in the State of Georgia's Section 5 preclearance case, State of Georgia v. John Ashcroft, et al., which is currently being appealed to the United States Supreme Court; they also represented the plaintiff in the Fulton County School Board redistricting case, Markham v. Fulton County Board of Elections and Registration et al. Anne's work in redistricting dates back to 1991, when she served as one of plaintiffs' counsel in Jones v. Miller, the impasse case arising from Georgia's 1991 redistricting and as counsel to amicus curiae, Congressmen John Lewis and Newt Gingrich, in Johnson v. Miller, another case arising from Georgia's 1990s redistricting. In addition to redistricting work, Anne represents public officials and candidates before the State Ethics Commission and in election challenges. She currently serves as Chief Deputy General Counsel to the Georgia Republican Party.

After receiving her undergraduate degree from the University of Georgia, Anne earned her J.D. cum laude from Georgia State University College of Law, where she was the Managing Editor of the Georgia State University Law Review.

Careers in Poverty Law
Evan Lewis

Evan Lewis lives in Greenville, North Carolina, and is the Senior Managing Attorney for Legal Aid of North Carolina’s New Bern and Greenville offices. He is also LANC’s CED Practice Group Manager and a member of its Housing Practice Group, where he specializes in fair housing, federally-subsidized and rural housing issues and maintains a consumer practice focused on foreclosure defense.

Mr. Lewis received a BA in Economics in 1977 from the College of William and Mary in Virginia, and JD from the University of Virginia School of Law in 1981. In addition to his more than twenty years as a legal aid attorney in Virginia and North Carolina, Evan has worked as an attorney for the federal government, had a successful consumer and small business law practice in Northern Virginia, and was an Assistant Virginia Attorney General for Antitrust and Consumer Enforcement. He is an active member of both the Virginia and North Carolina State Bars, and an inactive member of the District of Columbia Bar. Evan serves on the Professionalism and Public Service Advisory Committees on the North Carolina Bar Association.

Environmental Law Panel
Roger R. Martella, Jr.

Roger R. Martella, Jr. is the Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) General Counsel. Roger began acting as General Counsel on August 1, 2006 and was unanimously confirmed by the United States Senate on March 30, 2007. The Office of General Counsel (OGC) is the chief legal advisor to EPA, providing support for Agency rules and policies, case-by-case decisions (such as permits and response actions), and legislation.

Prior to joining EPA in the fall of 2005, Mr. Martella worked for the Justice Department, where he most recently served as the principal counsel for complex litigation in the Natural Resources Section. Also at Justice, Mr. Martella acted as one of the Environment and Natural Resource Division’s principal proponents of environmental conflict resolution. While with the Justice Department, Mr. Martella received the John Marshall Award and Assistant Attorney General Award for Excellence.

Prior to joining the Justice Department in 1998, Mr. Martella worked for two years in the environment group at Sidley & Austin in Washington, D.C., where he practiced environmental litigation as an associate. Mr. Martella joined Sidley & Austin after clerking for the Honorable David M. Ebel on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit in Denver, Colorado.

Women in Public Interest Careers Workshop
Ashley McDonald

Ashley McDonald is an associate in Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman’s litigation group. Ms. McDonald represents clients in a variety of civil and criminal litigation, including commercial contract disputes, employment discrimination claims, constitutional challenges to state laws, health care cases, and government contract litigation.
Ms. McDonald also serves as pro bono counsel in an actual innocence death penalty appeal for a client in Ohio; co-counsel with D.C. Prisoners’ Legal Services Project to represent two female inmates who were sexually assaulted by guards; and has served as counsel in a public school funding case and multiple race discrimination cases.
Ms. McDonald is a 2003 graduate of Yale Law School and a 2000 graduate of the University of Virginia.

Voting Rights Law Panel
Michael P. McDonald

Dr. Michael P. McDonald is Associate Professor of Government and Politics in the Department of Public and International Affairs at George Mason University and a Non-Resident Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution. He received a Ph.D. in Political Science from University of California, San Diego and a B.S. in Economics from California Institute of Technology. He held a one-year post-doc fellowship at Harvard University and has previously taught at Vanderbilt University and University of Illinois, Springfield. His research interests include voting behavior, redistricting, Congress, American political development, and political methodology. Dr. McDonald has worked for the national exit poll organization, consulted to the U.S. Election Assistance Commission, consulted to the Pew Center for the States, served on campaign staff for state legislative campaigns in California and Virginia, has worked for national polling firms, and has worked as a redistricting consultant in Alaska, Arizona, California, Michigan, and New York.

Education Law Panel
Doug Mesecar

Secretary Margaret Spellings named Doug Mesecar acting assistant secretary for planning, evaluation and policy development in March 2007. As assistant secretary, he oversees the Department of Education's (ED) planning, evaluation, policy development and budget activities. The Office of Planning, Evaluation and Policy Development (OPEPD) coordinates these activities with ED principal offices as well as with the Office of Management and Budget, the House and Senate education committees and state education associations. OPEPD is home to ED's Budget Service, Performance Information Management Service, Policy and Program Studies Service and the Office of Educational Technology.

Born and raised in Grand Rapids, Mich., Mesecar earned his bachelor's degree in political science Phi Beta Kappa from Hope College in nearby Holland, Mich., where he also played four years on the college's Division III basketball team.

Careers in International Public Interest Workshop
John Norton Moore

John Norton Moore, who joined the UVA Law faculty in 1966, is an authority on international law, national security law, and the law of the sea. Moore taught the first course in the country on national security law and conceived and co-authored the first casebook on the subject. From 1991-93, during the Gulf War and its aftermath, Moore was the principal legal adviser to the Ambassador of Kuwait to the United States and to the Kuwait delegation to the United Nations Iraq-Kuwait Boundary Demarcation Commission.

From 1985 to 1991, he chaired of the board of directors of the U.S. Institute of Peace, one of six presidential appointments he has held. He has been a frequent witness before congressional committees on maritime policy, legal aspects of foreign policy, national security, war and treaty powers, and democracy and human rights. He has been a fellow of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars at the Smithsonian Institution.

Race and Law Panel
Chris Mumma

Chris Mumma is the Executive Director of the North Carolina Chief Justice’s Criminal Justice Study Commission, Executive Director of the NC Center on Actual Innocence, and an adjunct professor at UNC’s School of Law, where she teaches Wrongful Convictions. In 2002, Chris worked with Chief Justice I. Beverly Lake to establish the country's first Innocence Commission. The North Carolina Commission has been instrumental in bringing about change in ID procedures, post-conviction review of innocence claims, and evidence preservation in North Carolina. Chris's work in the wrongful conviction arena has earned her the North Carolina Pro Bono Attorney of the Year Award and UNC School of Law's Outstanding Graduate Award. Chris also serves on the boards of UNC Law School, The Fair Trial Initiative, and the American Judicature Society, for which she also serves as the Chair of the AJS Institute on Forensic Science and Public Policy’s Advisory Committee.

Education Law Panel
Paul T. O'Neill

Paul T. O'Neill is an education attorney, professor, school founder, national lecturer and author with extensive experience guiding education organizations through challenges and growth. He is the author of the No Child Left Behind Compliance Manual (LRP Publications, now in its 2nd Edition, 2007), and the Charter School Law Deskbook (Lexis Nexis Publications, 2007) as well as numerous scholarly and professional articles. For the last six years he has served on the adjunct faculty of Columbia University's Teachers College, where he teaches education law and policy courses, including those relating to the No Child Left Behind Act, special education, and school choice Mr. O'Neill is currently Senior Vice President & Chief Regulatory Officer for Edison Schools, the national school management and services organization. He also recently served as Chair of the Education & the Law Committee of the New York City Bar Association.

Previously, he was General Counsel of the Charter Schools Institute of SUNY, one of the nation's leading charter school authorizing offices. He was a co-founder of a charter school in the South Bronx and is chair of another on Manhattan's Lower East Side. He is a former Associate Director of the Newgrange School and Educational Outreach Center in New Jersey and a former litigator with the New York offices of both Dewey Ballantine LLP and Willkie Farr & Gallagher. Mr. O'Neill received an M.Ed. in Educational Administration from Teachers College, Columbia University, a J.D. from the University of Virginia School of Law, and a B.A. from Oberlin College.

Careers in the Federal Government Workshop
William V. O'Reilly

William V. O'Reilly, Chief Counsel/Staff Director of the House Committee on Standards of Official Conduct. Until beginning this position in January of 2006, O'Reilly was an attorney in the litigation practice at Jones Day since 1986, and a partner since 1996. He is a graduate of both the University of Virginia (1980) and the University Of Virginia School Of Law (1986), where he was a member of the law review.

Health Law Panel
Lena O'Rourke

Lena O'Rourke is Co-Director for Government Affairs for Families USA, a nonprofit organization that is dedicated to the achievement of high quality affordable health care for all Americans. Her work focuses primarily on federal legislative strategy on protecting and strengthening Medicaid and SCHIP.

Ms. O'Rourke has been with Families USA since 2001, where she started as an intern in the health policy department. She holds a Master's degree in Public Policy from Georgetown University and a Bachelor's degree in Political Science from Kalamazoo College, MI.

Careers in Prosecution and Defense Workshop
Bruce A. Pagel

In 1998, Mr. Pagel was sworn in as an Assistant United States Attorney for the Western District of Virginia. He currently prosecutes drug task force cases and is part of the Narcotics and Illegal Firearms Unit of the Criminal Division. He began his career in private practice until 1982 when he joined the Dunn County District Attorney's Office in Wisconsin. From 1983-1987, Mr. Pagel was Senior Assistant District Attorney for Wisconsin's St. Croix County District Attorney's Office. Then from 1987-1994 he was a Trial Attorney, an Associate Chief for Litigation, and Deputy Chief for Litigation. In 1994 Mr. Pagel became Special Litigation Counsel for the Narcotics and Dangerous Drug Section in the U.S. Department of Justice.

Mr. Pagel graduated with a B.A. in 1976 from American Institutions, University of Wisconsin, and received his J.D. in 1979 from the University of Wisconsin Law School.

Education Law Panel
Andy Rotherham

Andrew Rotherham is co-founder and co-director of Education Sector, an independent national education policy think tank. Mr. Rotherham is also a member of the Virginia State Board of Education, author of the blog Eduwonk.com, and a senior fellow at the Progressive Policy Institute. He is a regular commentator on education in print and on radio and television, and has testified before committees of the U.S. House of Representatives and the U.S. Senate. In 1998, Mr. Rotherham launched the 21st Century Schools Project at the Progressive Policy Institute, which he directed until 2005. Mr. Rotherham previously served as Special Assistant to the President for Domestic Policy and led the White House Domestic Policy Council education team. Mr. Rotherham taught briefly and worked as a consultant before becoming a policy analyst for the American Association of School Administrators. He earned a bachelor's degree from Virginia Tech and a master's in education from the University of Virginia. He is currently completing a doctorate in political science at U.Va.

International Law Panel
Kelly Ryan

Kelly Ryan joined the Department of State in April 2002 as a deputy assistant secretary of state in the Bureau of Population, Refugees, and Migration. She directs the bureau’s refugee admissions, migration, and population offices. She aides the assistant secretary in prioritizing and making appropriate foreign assistance funding decisions of nearly $800 million annually. She also works with the assistant secretary in development of U.S. government policies on refugee admissions, migration, and population issues. She led U.S. negotiations with the government of Canada on a “safe third country” agreement relating to allocation of asylum claims, and testified on the agreement before the Subcommittee on Immigration and Claims of the U.S. House of Representatives Committee of the Judiciary.

Prior to joining the Department of State, Ms. Ryan practiced law for ten years. From 1998–2002, she served as the chief of the Refugee and Asylum Division of the Immigration and Naturalization Services Office of the General Counsel. There, she directed the division responsible for advising the agency and the Department of Justice on issues involving immigration law and international protection under the U.S. legal system.

Health Law Panel
Andy Schneider

Andy Schneider is Chief Health Counsel to the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, chaired by Representative Henry A. Waxman (D-CA), where he manages a group of investigators focusing on a broad range of health issues ranging from the FDA’s role in the evaluation of drug safety post-market to the federal government’s failure to address uranium contamination in the Navajo Nation. Previously, he was the founding principal of a consulting firm, Medicaid Policy LLC, based in Washington, DC; Health Counsel and Senior Advisor to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a public interest policy organization in Washington, DC; Counsel to the Subcommittee on Health and Environment of the House Energy and Commerce Committee; and Staff Attorney at the National Health Law Program, a legal services support center in Los Angeles, CA.
Schneider is a graduate of Princeton University (B.A.) and the University of Pennsylvania Law School (J.D.).

Public Law in the Private Sector Workshop
Julia Sexton

Julia Sexton’s litigation practice focuses on domestic violence and family law, and the management of the domestic violence side of the Hunton & Williams/University of Virginia School of Law Pro Bono Partnership. Ms. Sexton has provided representation to victims of domestic violence on protective orders and family law matters, including custody and divorce, under a Department of Justice Violence Against Women Act grant.

International Public Interest Law Workshop
Thomas R. Snider

Thomas R. Snider is an associate in the Washington, DC office of Dewey & LeBoeuf. Mr. Snider’s practice includes a wide range of matters involving international law and dispute resolution, including international arbitration, representation of foreign governments and government-owned entities in US courts, and representation of private companies in cross-border investments and international commercial disputes. He has been involved in projects throughout the world and was formerly a resident attorney in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, where he worked on client matters in the region.

Native American Law Panel
Tracy Toulou

Tracy Toulou is the Director of the Office of Tribal Justice (OTJ) at the Department of Justice. OTJ is the primary point of contact for the Department of Justice's government to government relationship with Indian tribes. The Office also serves as a source of Indian law expertise for the Department. Prior to his current position, Mr. Toulou served as an Assistant U.S. Attorney for the District of Montana, where his duties included tribal outreach and the prosecution of violent crime in Indian country. He began his career with the Department as an attorney in the Criminal Division.

Mr. Toulou attended law school at the University of New Mexico, during which time he had the opportunity to clerk for DNA Legal Services on the Navajo Nation and for the Laguna Pueblo Tribal Court. Before attending law school Mr. Toulou worked for the U.S. Agency for International Development and the U.S. Peace Corps in Africa, Central America and the Caribbean. He is a descendant of the Colville Confederated Tribes, located in Washington State.

Careers in Prosecution and Defense Workshop
Kenneth P. Troccoli

Mr. Troccoli is an Assistant Federal Public Defender in the Eastern District of Virginia. He joined that office in January 2002 and for the next four and half years worked full-time on the defense of the alleged “20th Hijacker,” Zacarias Moussaoui.
Mr. Troccoli received his B.A. in 1981 from Boston College, his J.D. in 1984 from the George Washington University Law Center, and his LL.M. in 2001 from the Georgetown University Law Center (concentration in Constitutional Law). From mid-1992 until early 1999, Mr. Troccoli was first an Assistant Public Defender and then a Senior Assistant Public Defender in the Office of the Public Defender for the City of Alexandria, Virginia. For approximately six and half years prior to that, Mr. Troccoli practiced primarily white-collar criminal defense at Cadwalader Wickersham & Taft, Arent Fox Kintner Plotkin & Kahn, and Krooth & Altman, all located in Washington, D.C.
Prior to those positions, Mr. Troccoli served as law clerk to Chief Judge H. Carl Moultrie, I in the Superior Court of the District of Columbia. Mr. Troccoli also has served as an Adjunct Professor in legal writing at the George Washington University Law School and at the American University Washington College of Law.

Stefan R. Underhill

Judge Underhill was appointed United States District Judge for the District of Connecticut on July 7, 1999 and was sworn in on September 1, 1999.

Judge Underhill graduated from the University of Virginia in 1978 with a Bachelor of Arts in Interdisciplinary Studies. In 1981, he received a second Bachelor of Arts in Philosophy, Politics and Economics from Oxford University, which he attended on a Rhodes Scholarship. In 1984, he received his law degree from Yale Law School. At Yale, Judge Underhill served as Articles and Book Reviews Editor of the Yale Law Journal. Following his graduation from law school, Judge Underhill clerked for Judge Jon O. Newman of the Second Circuit Court of Appeals. Thereafter, he joined Day, Berry & Howard LLP as an associate, resident in the firm's Stamford, Connecticut office. In 1991, Judge Underhill became a partner of that firm, where he spent the remainder of his career as a lawyer. In private practice, Judge Underhill handled a wide variety of Commercial Litigation, concentrating in Insurance Coverage, Intellectual Property, and Appellate Practice.

Judge Underhill has long been active in the Federal Bar Council and the Federal Practice Section of the Connecticut Bar Association. He served for several years on the Board of Directors of Connecticut Legal Services.

Environmental Law Panel
John D. Walke

John D. Walke is a senior attorney and Director of Clean Air Programs with the Natural Resources Defense Council, where he has worked in NRDC's Washington, D.C. office since 2000. Prior to joining NRDC, John worked for the United States Environmental Protection Agency, in the air and radiation law office of the Office of General Counsel. Before working at EPA, John was an associate in the Washington, D.C. office of Beveridge & Diamond, P.C. John has a bachelor's degree in English from Duke University and a law degree from Harvard Law School.

International Law Panel
Larry Yungk

Larry Yungk is the Senior Resettlement Officer for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees’ Regional Office for the United States and the Caribbean. He began working with refugees in 1980, with the International Rescue Committee in Washington, D.C.. He later worked with Catholic Charities of Washington, and Georgetown University, prior to joining UNHCR in 1987.

As the Senior Resettlement Officer in Washington, he helps to co-ordinate UNHCR’s global resettlement policies and programs with those of the US resettlement program. He works closely with the Departments of State, Homeland Security, and Health and Human Services on a wide variety of resettlement matters. He has served as a trainer on resettlement for UNHCR staff in Africa, Asia, Europe, Latin America, and the Middle East. He is a frequent presenter on resettlement topics at state, national and, international refugee conferences.

He received his B.A. in History and Political Science from Baldwin-Wallace College in Berea, Ohio, and his M.A. in Government from the University of Maryland, in College Park, Maryland.

Careers in Prosecution and Defense Workshop
Aaron Zebley

Since May 2005, Aaron Zebley (UVA Law '96) has been Assistant United States Attorney in the Alexandria, VANational Security and Terrorism Unit, where he works on a variety of terrorism prevention programs, terrorism cases, and espionage matters.

From January 1998 to April 2005, he was a Special Agent with the FBI in their New York City Field Office, assigned to counterterrosim matters (Al Qaeda in particular). He was one of the lead investigators assigned to August 7, 1998 , bombing of United States Embassy in Dar Es Salaam, Tanzania, and then the attacks of September 11, 2001. He was designated "case agent" in United States v. Zacarias Moussaoui.

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