2014 Hon. Mario G. Olmos Law & Cultural Diversity Memorial Lecturer
Alan Jenkins
Executive Director, The Opportunity Agenda
Alan Jenkins is Executive Director of The Opportunity Agenda, a communications, research, and policy organization dedicated to building the national will to expand opportunity for all. Before joining The Opportunity Agenda, Alan was Director of Human Rights at the Ford Foundation, managing over $50 million in grant making annually in the United States and eleven overseas regions. Previously, he served as Assistant to the Solicitor General at the U.S. Department of Justice, where he represented the United States government in constitutional and other litigation before the U.S. Supreme Court. Prior to that, he was Associate Counsel to the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc., where he defended the rights of low-income communities suffering from exploitation and discrimination.
His other positions have included Assistant Adjunct Professor of Law at Brooklyn Law School, Law Clerk to Supreme Court Justice Harry A. Blackmun, Law Clerk to U.S. District Court Judge Robert L. Carter, and Coordinator of the Access to Justice Project of the American Civil Liberties Union. Alan serves on the Board of Trustees of the Center for Community Change, the Board of Governors of the New School University, and is a Co-Chair of the American Constitution Society’s Project on the Constitution in the Twenty-First Century. He holds a J.D. from Harvard Law School, an M.A. in Media Studies from New School University, and a B.A. in Psychology and Social Relations from Harvard College.
Symposium Speakers
Dimple Abichandani
Executive Director, Thelton E. Henderson Center for Social Justice, UC Berkeley School of Law
Dimple Abichandani is the Executive Director of the Thelton E. Henderson Center for Social Justice at UC Berkeley Law School. Prior to joining Berkeley Law, Abichandani worked on racial justice and challenging post-9/11 discrimination as a program officer at the Proteus Fund for five years where she managed the Security & Rights Collaborative (SRC) a donor collaborative aimed at restoring civil rights and liberties that have been eroded in the name of national security. Abichandani’s accomplishments at the SRC include designing an innovative approach funding collaborative communications work that has been the subject of several reports and articles and a model for other social justice fields. Between 2003-2008, Abichandani worked at Legal Services NYC, first as a staff attorney and later as the Director of Program Development at Legal Services NYC, a role in which she created impact-oriented advocacy projects to address the civil legal needs of low-income communities, with a focus on immigrants’ rights. Abichandani founded the Language Access Project to ensure access to justice for limited English proficient individuals, and developed a low-wage workers rights project. She currently serves on the board of Forward Together, and Asian Americans Advancing Justice- Asian Law Caucus and served for six years as a Board Member for the Third Wave Foundation. Abichandani earned a JD at Northeastern University School of Law in 2002, and a BA in English with Honors at the University of Texas at Austin
Michelle Wilde Anderson ’04
Professor of Law, Stanford Law School
Michelle Wilde Anderson is a public law scholar and practitioner focused on state and local government, including urban policy, city planning, local democracy, and public finance. Her work combines legal analysis with the details of human experience to understand the local governance of high poverty areas, both urban and rural, and the legal causes of concentrated poverty and fiscal crisis. Her current research explores legal restructuring (such as bankruptcy, disincorporation, and receiverships) for cities and counties in distress—issues that affect not only Rust Belt capitals such as Detroit, but also post-industrial cities in California, rural areas in Oregon, and small towns across the Northeast and South. These issues are examined in her recent publications including “The New Minimal Cities,” Yale Law Journal (2014); “Detroit: What a City Owes its Residents,” Los Angeles Times (2013); “Making a Regional School District: Memphis City Schools Dissolves into its Suburbs,” Columbia Law Review Sidebar (2012); and “Dissolving Cities,” Yale Law Journal (2012).
Prior to joining Stanford Law School in 2014, Anderson was an assistant professor of law at Berkeley Law School. Additionally, she has been a research fellow at the European Commission’s Urban Policy Unit in Brussels, an environmental law fellow at Shute, Mihaly, & Weinberger, and a member of the faculty executive committee of the Thelton E. Henderson Center for Social Justice at Berkeley Law. She clerked for Judge Guido Calabresi on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit and Judge Marilyn Hall Patel of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California.
Sameer Ashar
Clinical Professor of Law, UC Irvine School of Law
Professor Ashar focuses both his clinical practice and scholarship on how law can be used to support racially and economically subordinated communities. He has initiated litigation and advocacy campaigns in collaboration with immigrant community organizations against abusive employers and government agencies engaged in unlawful practices with the aim of forming sustainable, collective change.
Professor Ashar is invested in the development of practices in legal education that are student-centered and informed by changes in the profession and in society.
Angela P. Harris
Professor of Law, UC Davis School of Law
Professor Angela P. Harris joined the UC Davis School of Law faculty in 2011. She began her career at the UC Berkeley School of Law in 1989, and has been a visiting professor at the law schools of Stanford, Yale, and Georgetown. In 2010-11, at the State University of New York – University at Buffalo School of Law, she served as vice dean of research and faculty development. She writes widely in the field of critical legal theory, examining how law sometimes reinforces and sometimes challenges subordination on the basis of race, gender, sexuality, class, and other dimensions of power and identity. Most recently, she has begun to apply these insights to the fields of environmental and food justice. She is also interested in the role of contemplative practices, such as mindfulness meditation, in the teaching and practice of law. Her writings have been widely anthologized and have been translated into many languages, from Portuguese to Korean.
Harris received her bachelor’s degree from the University of Michigan and a master’s degree in social science (with a specialization in the sociology of culture) from the University of Chicago, where she also received her J.D. She clerked for Judge Joel M. Flaum on the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals, and then briefly practiced with the firm of Morrison & Foerster in San Francisco before making her way to Berkeley. At Berkeley Law, Harris taught a variety of courses. Along with her friend Luke Cole, she taught the first seminar on environmental justice at Berkeley Law. At the University at Buffalo, along with Professor Stephanie Phillips, she pioneered a seminar called “Mindfulness and Professional Identity: Becoming a Lawyer While Keeping Your Values Intact,” and in fall 2012 she brought this seminar to King Hall. She is the recipient of the Rutter Award for Distinction in Teaching from Berkeley Law.
Harris is the author of a number of widely reprinted and influential articles and essays in critical legal theory. She is also a prolific co-author of casebooks, including Criminal Law: Cases and Materials; Race and Races: Cases and Materials for a Diverse America; Gender and Law; and Economic Justice. Among other awards for her mentorship of students and junior faculty, she received the 2008 Clyde Ferguson Award from the Minority Section of the Association of American Law Schools. Harris is a frequent and sought-after speaker at workshops and conferences, and she is active in promoting community among critical legal scholars in legal academia and beyond. She is proud of her connection with a law school named after Dr. King.
William Kennedy
Managing Attorney, Legal Services of Northern California – Sacramento Office
William Kennedy is the Managing Attorney of LSNC’s Sacramento office, a position he has held since 1990. He began his career in legal services in 1974 with California Rural Legal Assistance in Modesto, California where he served as staff attorney and directing attorney. He left CRLA in 1985 to take a job with Channel Counties Legal Services in Oxnard, CA. Bill’s legal work has focused primarily on housing and civil rights. He helped to launch LSNC’s community economic development initiative and is the co director of the Race Equity Project. In addition to his management duties, he works with the National Legal Aid & Defenders Association and the Center for Legal Aid Education to develop a new curriculum to train young attorneys to fight racial inequity.
Luz Herrera
Assistant Dean for Clinical Education, Experiential Learning & Public Service, UCLA School of Law
Luz Herrera is the Assistant Dean for Clinical Education, Experiential Learning, and Public Service at UCLA School of Law. Assistant Dean Herrera earned her A.B. in Political Science and her J.D. from Harvard Law School. After law school, Herrera worked as an associate in the real estate department of an international corporate law firm. In 2001, Herrera started her law practice, representing low- and moderate-income clients with civil legal needs in the areas of real estate, estate planning, and family law.
Before arriving at UCLA School of Law, Herrera was a Senior Clinical Fellow with Harvard Law School’s clinical program. She was a visiting professor at Chapman Law School, where she taught courses in Corporations and Wills & Trusts, as well as a seminar on Access to Justice. In 2008, Herrera was appointed Associate Professor at Thomas Jefferson School of Law, where she taught Access to Civil Justice, Community Economic Development, Professional Responsibility, and Wills and Trusts. At Thomas Jefferson, Herrera developed a transactional clinical program called the Small Business Law Center (SBLC), and helped found The Center for Solo Practitioners, an business incubator program to help graduates understand how to establish and operate their own law firms to serve underserved populations. The SBLC was recognized in 2013 by the American Bar Association for the program’s emphasis on helping students understand themselves as potential lawyer-entrepreneurs. Herrera was also a Visiting Clinical Professor at the University of California, Irvine School of Law for 2013-14. There, Herrera supervised students in the Consumer Protection Clinic and the Community Economic Development Clinic, as well as managed special projects for the California Monitor – a program of the Office of the California Attorney General providing oversight of the National Mortgage Settlement implementation.
Herrera’s public service work has been recognized over the course of her career with several awards, including: 100 Top Attorneys in California Recognition by the Daily Journal (September 2009); Cruz Reynoso Community Service Award from the Mexican American Bar Association (February 2011); LA Opinion Mujeres Destacadas Award (March 2011); and Emerging Scholars Award from Diverse Issues in Higher Education (January 2013). Her publications include: “Training Lawyer-Entrepreneurs,” 89 Denver University Law Review 887 (2012) and “Encouraging the Development of Low Bono Law Practices,” 14 U.Md.L.J. Race, Religion, Gender & Class 1 (2014).
Janelle Orsi ’07
Executive Director & Co-Founder, Sustainable Economies Law Center
Outside of her work with the Sustainable Economies Law Center, Janelle Orsi is an attorney and mediator focused on helping individuals and organizations share resources and create more sustainable communities. Through the Law Office of Janelle Orsi, she works with cooperatives, community gardens, cohousing communities, ecovillages, and others doing innovative work to change the world. She attended UC Berkeley’s Boalt Hall School of Law. In 2010, Janelle was profiled by the American Bar Association as a Legal Rebel, an attorney who is “remaking the legal profession through the power of innovation.” In 2012, Janelle was one of 100 people listed on The (En)Rich List, which names individuals “whose contributions enrich paths to sustainable futures.” Janelle is author of the book Practicing Law in the Sharing Economy (ABA Books 2012), and co-author of The Sharing Solution: How to Save Money, Simplify Your Life & Build Community (Nolo 2009), a practical and legal guide to cooperating and sharing resources of all kinds.
Jeffrey Selbin
Clinical Professor of Law, UC Berkeley School of Law
Jeffrey Selbin was appointed clinical professor of law in 2006 and faculty director of the East Bay Community Law Center (EBCLC), Berkeley Law’s community-based clinic. He founded EBCLC’s HIV/AIDS Law Project in 1990 as a Skadden Fellow, and served as EBCLC’s Executive Director from 2002 through 2006. During the 2010-11 academic year, Selbin was a visiting clinical professor at Yale Law School. He currently directs EBCLC’s Policy Advocacy Clinic.
Selbin is active in local and national clinical legal education and anti-poverty efforts. In recent years, he chaired the Poverty Law Section of the Association of American Law Schools (AALS) and co-chaired the Lawyering in the Public Interest (Bellow Scholar) Committee of the AALS Section on Clinical Legal Education. He served two terms as an elected member of the board of directors of the Clinical Legal Education Association. From 2004-2006, Selbin served on the California State Bar Committee on the Delivery of Legal Services, dedicated to improving and increasing access to justice for low-income Californians.
Selbin’s research interests include clinical education and community lawyering, with an emphasis on evidence-based approaches. He is co-author of Poverty Law, Policy, and Practice (2014, with Juliet Brodie, Clare Pastore and Ezra Rosser). Other recent publications include The Clinic Lab Office in the Wisconsin Law Review (2013 with Jeanne Charn); Service Delivery, Resource Allocation and Access to Justice in the Yale Law Journal Online (2012 with Jeanne Charn, Anthony Alfieri and Stephen Wizner); Access to Evidence in The Center for American Progress (2011 with Josh Rosenthal and Jeanne Charn); The Clinic Effect in the Clinical Law Review (2009 with Rebecca Sandefur); and From “The Art of War” to “Being Peace”: Mindfulness and Community Lawyering in a Neoliberal Age in the California Law Review (2007 with Angela Harris and Margaretta Lin).
In 2003, Selbin was recognized with Mary Louise Frampton as a Bellow Scholar by the AALS Section on Clinical Legal Education for his anti-poverty and access-to-justice efforts. In 2004, he was named a Wasserstein Fellow, honoring outstanding public interest lawyers, by Harvard Law School.
Purvi Shah ’06
Director, Bertha Justice Institute, Center for Constitutional Rights
Purvi Shah is the Director of the Bertha Justice Institute at the Center for Constitutional Rights, a new training institute committed to building a diverse generation of movement lawyers to serve social movements in the US and across the world. Purvi has over a decade of experience as an activist, organizer, attorney and law professor. In 2006, she received a New Voices Fellowship to launch the Community Justice Project at Florida Legal Services. While there, Purvi worked collaboratively with community and worker organizations to represent tenant unions, public housing residents, immigrants’ rights groups, and taxi drivers. From 2007-2011, Purvi served as a professor at the University of Miami, School of Law, where she co-founded and co-directed the Community Lawyering Clinic. Over the years, Purvi has become a regularly featured panelist and trainer on the connection between law and organizing, conducting numerous state and national trainings for law students and young lawyers. Prior to becoming an attorney, Purvi worked as a community organizer with youth in Miami, students in India and families of incarcerated youth in California. Purvi has received many awards for her work including the Rodney Thaxton Award for Racial Justice from the ACLU of Florida and the Miami Fellowship for rising civic leaders from the Miami Foundation. Purvi is a graduate of UC Berkeley School of Law at the University of California and of Northwestern University.
Anat Shenker-Osorio (invited)
Principal, ASO Communicaitons
Anat Shenker-Osorio is a communications expert, researcher and political pundit whose one-of-a-kind work is challenging the way dozens of organizations and political figures talk about the most pressing issues of our time. She’s the author of the acclaimed book “Don’t Buy It: The Trouble with Talking Nonsense About the Economy.”
As a strategic communications consultant, she has conducted multiple studies on how people reason about clean energy, sex education, economic justice, immigrants and women’s rights. Past and present clients that have relied on her research to diagnose what’s not working in their messaging and to provide fresh new approaches include: the Ford Foundation, America’s Voice, Opportunity Agenda, Ms Foundation, We Belong Together, the Roosevelt Institute, Congressional Progressive Caucus, Caring Across Generations and CoreAlign, to name a few.
Never short on humor and always packing some snark, Anat communicates her insights with the kind of practical communications savvy rarely available in academic circles. Everyone from broadcast bookers to conference audiences marvel at her unexpected insights and reframing of tired policy debates. Shenker-Osorio’s writing and research has appeared in The Atlantic, Huffington Post, Salon, the Christian Science Monitor, among other publications.
Tirien Steinbach ’99
Executive Director, East Bay Community Law Center (EBCLC)
In March 2007, Tirien Steinbach became the third executive director of EBCLC. Tirien joined EBCLC in 2001 in the Income practice where she incubated Clean Slate practice, which she directed. In 2006 Tirien served as EBCLC’s Director of Clinical & Program. Tirien is currently a Lecturer at Boalt Hall School of Law (UC Berkeley), and co-teaches “Community Law Practice at EBCLC,” the companion seminar for Boalt students enrolled in EBCLC’s clinical program.
In law school, Tirien was active in the public interest and student of color communities, where she served as co-president of the Berkeley Law Foundation Student Steering Committee and Vice President of Recruitment for Law Students of African Descent. Upon graduating from Boalt, Tirien is the recipient of numerous fellowships and awards, including an Equal Justice Works fellowship sponsored by the California Appellate Project, a Berkeley Law Foundation grant for her work at EBCLC, and the inaugural Thelton E. Henderson Social Justice Prize.
Chioma Ume
Challenge Manager, IDEO.org Amplify Program
As Amplify Challenge Manager, Chioma is responsible for executing Amplify’s innovation challenges on the OpenIDEO platform. Her work includes online and offline community engagement, guiding the collaborative design process, research and developing written content for Amplify challenges.
Chioma is passionate about empowering people to improve their lives. Prior to joining IDEO.org, Chioma managed international development projects in China and East Africa focused on legal aid, access to justice and rule of law for the Canadian Bar Association’s International Initiatives Department. She has worked and lived in Vientiane, Singapore and Dar es Salaam. In another life, she was a legal aid criminal defence attorney in Toronto, Canada.
Chioma holds a law degree from the University of Western Ontario and an Honours Bachelor of Arts and Science from McMaster University, both in Canada.