EXECUTIVE LEADERSHIP

Donna Lieberman
Executive Director
Donna Lieberman has been executive director of the New York Civil Liberties Union since December 2001. She has also served as the associate director (1988 - 1993) and founder/director of the NYCLU Reproductive Rights Project (1990 - 2000).

Under Lieberman's leadership the NYCLU has expanded the scope and depth of its work, supplementing and strengthening the pursuit of litigation with an aggressive legislative advocacy and a field organizing program that works on behalf of civil liberties and civil rights. As a result, the organization is widely recognized as the state's leading voice for freedom, justice and equality, advocating for those whose rights and liberties have been denied, especially for those most marginalized by society. Its accomplishments have included the following:

• Reforming the Rockefeller Drug Laws through an aggressive, statewide campaign that educated the public and help persuade legislators to end more than three decades of injustice by substantially revising New York State’s notoriously harsh and ineffective mandatory minimum drug sentencing scheme; and by publishing a report, The Rockefeller Drug Laws: Unjust, Irrational, Ineffective, which synthesized the legal, social and economic arguments and research supporting the call for comprehensive reform.
• Protecting protest by publishing two major reports on police tactics at demonstrations (Arresting Protest, which documented unlawful police interference with protesters at the February 15, 2002 anti-war demonstration on the eve of the Iraq war, and Rights & Wrongs at the RNC, which covered the 2004 Republican National Convention); deploying hundreds of protest monitors out of the “Protecting Protest” storefront office near the convention center; prevailing in major post-convention litigation challenging the NYPD’s “command and control” tactics, which interfered with the right to protest, and challenging the unlawful arrest, detention and fingerprinting of demonstrators at the convention; and uncovering the NYPD’s massive and unlawful political surveillance operation.
• Fighting for families by prevailing in a landmark lawsuit in which a state appellate court unanimously ruled that New York State must recognize the marriages of gay and lesbian couples who were lawfully married in other states or countries (Martinez v. County of Monroe);
• Challenging the government’s misuse of the national security interest as a pretext for violations of individual rights, including the Bush administration’s use of torture, the detention at the U.S.-Canada border of American citizens who attend Islamic conferences (Tabbaa v. Chertoff), the FBI’s use of secret National Security Letters and corresponding gag orders (Doe v. Holder), and the federal law giving government agents virtually unchecked power to intercept Americans’ international e-mails and telephone calls (Amnesty v. McConnell).
• Protecting students’ rights in the context of aggressive military recruitment by prevailing in a lawsuit on behalf of high school students challenging illegality in the Department of Defense military recruitment data mining operations (Hanson v. Rumsfeld); by publishing a report, We Want You(th)!, documenting the New York City Department of Education’s failure to protect students’ privacy and prevent aggressive military recruiting in the public schools; and leading a nationwide campaign to help students protect their right to withhold personal contact information from military recruiters and to put an end to excessive and abusive military recruiting tactics in the schools.
• Reframing the debate on surveillance of lawful activity in New York by pursuing the decades old Handschu lawsuit, which limits political surveillance by the NYPD; publishing a major report, Who’s Watching?, that examines the scope and impact of unregulated public and private video camera surveillance on the rights of privacy, speech and association; and challenging the NYPD and U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s refusal to disclose their plans to create a massive surveillance system in lower Manhattan (NYCLU v. NYPD, NYCLU v. U.S. Dept. of Homeland Security).
• Defending pregnant and parenting women from discrimination by prevailing in a pregnancy discrimination lawsuit on behalf of six Suffolk County police officers forced to take unpaid leave after the department denied them light duty assignments (Lochren v. Suffolk County); and successfully representing women who have been discriminated against for breastfeeding in public (King v. Fossil).
• Exposing and challenging racial profiling and other misconduct by law enforcement obtaining access to the NYPD’s electronic database of more than 2 million stop-and-frisk encounters, the vast majority of which involved people of color who had committed no crime; and by publishing a report, Mission Failure: Civilian Review of Policing in New York City 1994-2006, which raised awareness among the public and lawmakers about the need to strengthen the city’s Civilian Complaint Review Board.
• Confronting aggressive policing in public schools by publishing Criminalizing the Classroom: the Over-policing of the NYC Schools, which stirred major public debate over the aggressive and counterproductive over-policing that has plagued New York City schools and cheated students out of nurturing educational environments since the NYPD took control of school safety in 1998; by publishing Safety With Dignity: Alternatives to the Over-Policing of Schools, which documenting the successes of six New York City public high schools in maintaining safe, nurturing educational environments without using metal detectors, aggressive policing and harsh disciplinary policies; and by leading a campaign to bring transparency and accountability to the unchecked police presence in New York City’s public schools.
• Fighting for due process for indigent defendants by filing a lawsuit against New York State on behalf of 20 defendants in Onondaga, Ontario, Schuyler, Suffolk and Washington counties challenging the state’s failure to provide them constitutionally adequate public defense services (Hurrell-Harring, et al. v. State of New York).

Lieberman began her public interest legal career as a criminal defense lawyer in the South Bronx office of the Legal Aid Society, and she later acted as executive director of the Association of Legal Aid Attorneys, UAW. She served on the faculty of the Urban Legal Studies Program at City College for nearly a decade.

She appears regularly in local and national news coverage and on op-ed pages throughout the state. She also speaks frequently at local and national events on reproductive rights, police practices, freedom of speech, and other civil liberties and civil rights issues.

Lieberman graduated magna cum laude from Harvard in 1970 and earned her J.D. from Rutgers University School of Law in 1973.

Publications

• “The Danger of Remaining Silent.” It’s a Free Country. Eds. Goldberg, Danny, Victor Goldberg and Robert Greenwald. New York: RDV Books/Akashic Books, 2002. 143-148.
• Diller, Rebekah, Donna Lieberman, Tiffany Miller. “Legal Issues in Healthcare of Adolescents.” Adolescent Sexual Development and Sexuality. Eds., Gaffney & Roye. Kingston, NJ: Civic Research Institute, 2003.
• Chu, Yueh-ru, Rebekah Diller, Jessica Feierman, Jaemin Kim, Donna Lieberman, Anna Schissel. Teenagers, Healthcare and the Law. New York: NYCLU, 2002.
• Benjamin, Elisabeth Ryden, Annie Keating, Donna Lieberman, Jana Lipman, Anna Schissel, Miriam Spiro, Cassandra Stubbs. The Rights of Pregnant and Parenting Teens. New York: NYCLU, 2002.
• “Legal Issues in the Reproductive Health Care of Adolescents.” Journal of the American Medical Women’s Association volume 54, Number 3. (Summer 1999). Written with Jessica Feierman.
• “Physician-Only and Physician Assistant Statutes: A Case of Perceived, but Unfounded Conflict.” Journal of the American Medical Women’s Association volume 49, Number 5. (September/October 1994) Written with Anita Lalwani.
• Numerous op-ed pieces and NYCLU reports.

Recent Awards

• The New York State Bar, the Association’s Civil Rights Committee, and Committee on Minorities in the Profession Haywood Burns Memorial Award., 2008.
• Honored by the New York State Senate and recipient of Senate Proclamation and Legislative Resolution, 2009.

Nanette Francia Cotter
Deputy Director
Nanette Francia Cotter became deputy director of the NYCLU in June 2005. Before joining the NYCLU, Francia Cotter was Director of Community Programs at the Food Bank for New York City where she was responsible for maintaining a strong connection between the Food Bank and its member agencies, ensuring the needs of the emergency feeding network were readily met. Prior to this, she was director of administration & personnel at the Food Bank. In this capacity, Francia Cotter provided administrative oversight on all personnel and office issues, and project management on organizational expansion and technology upgrades. She also served in a number of capacities at the Soros Foundation's Open Society Institute, including deputy director of the Central Eurasia Project, overseeing all program administration of five Soros national foundations in Central Eurasia. Francia Cotter also was a volunteer with the pioneer group of the U.S. Peace Corps in Kazakhstan (former Soviet Union).

Francia Cotter currently serves on the Board of Directors of the Common Language Project whose mission is to develop and implement innovative multimedia approaches to international and local journalism while focusing on positive, inclusive and humane reporting of stories ignored or underreported by the mainstream media. She earned a B.A. in political science from Rutgers University with a double-minor in Spanish and philosophy, and completed the core curriculum of the Masters of Public Administration Graduate Program from Columbia University's School of International and Public Affairs. Francia Cotter also is fluent in Spanish and Russian.

LEGAL DEPARTMENT

Arthur Eisenberg
Legal Director
Arthur Eisenberg is the legal director of the New York Civil Liberties Union where he has worked for more than 35 years. During that time he has been involved in more than 20 cases that were presented to the United States Supreme Court. He has litigated extensively around issues of free speech and voting rights. In recent years, Eisenberg has been increasingly involved in litigation concerning national security and civil liberties. He is currently involved in a challenge to the National Security Agency surveillance practices; the use of National Security letters by the FBI; the CIA’s destruction of videotapes relating to interrogation practices; and the video surveillance of political activity by the NYPD. Among the Supreme Court cases that he has litigated are those involving questions of whether a state violates the First Amendment and the constitutional right to vote when it denies voters the right to cast write-in ballots (Burdick v. Takushi, 1992); whether a school board violated the First Amendment in removing 10 books from its high school library (Island Trees Union Free School District v. Pico, 1982); and whether the Indiana legislature engaged in unconstitutional political gerrymandering when it drew congressional district lines (Davis v. Bandemer, 1986).

Eisenberg is the co-author, with Burt Neuborne, of the Rights of Candidates and Voters (2nd ed. 1980). He has published law review articles on a range of topics including essays on Lani Guinier (Review Essay: The Millian Thoughts of Lani Guinier, 21 New York University Review of Law and Social Change 617 (1995)); on Robert Bork (Repaid In The Coin Of A Controversialist: The Bork Nomination Process, 58 University of Cincinnati Law Review 1319 (1990)); and on campaign finance reform (Civic Discourse, Campaign Finance Reform, and the Virtues of Moderation, 12 Cardozo Studies in Law and Literature 141 (2000)). He contributed an essay on issues of faith and conscience, "Accommodation and Coherence: In Search of a General Theory for Adjudicating Claims of Faith, Conscience and Culture," to the volume Engaging Cultural Differences (Russell Sage Foundation, 2002).

He has recently lectured on academic freedom at Columbia University and on civil liberties and national security at the University of Colorado, the University of Minnesota and the Cardozo Law School.

Eisenberg has served as chair of the New York State Task Force on Voter Registration and as a member of the Association of the Bar of the City of New York's Committee on Civil Rights, its Special Committee on Election Law, and its Task Force on the New York State Constitutional Convention.

Eisenberg earned his B.A. degree from The Johns Hopkins University and his J.D. from Cornell Law School. He has taught courses in constitutional litigation, civil rights law and constitutional law at Cardozo Law School and the University of Minnesota Law School.

Christopher Dunn
Associate Legal Director
Christopher Dunn has worked as an ACLU lawyer since 1987 and has been at the New York Civil Liberties Union since 1996. He also is an adjunct professor at the NYU School of Law, where he teaches in the Civil Rights Clinic. In addition, he authors the Civil Rights and Civil Liberties column in the New York Law Journal.

At the NYCLU Dunn has litigated a long series of cases involving the First Amendment rights of protesters and public employees, including challenges to NYPD tactics at the Republican National Convention. He also has led challenges to New York State's death penalty statute, to racially discriminatory education practices, to the NYPD's subway search program, to NYPD racial profiling, to selective enforcement of the law against the homeless, and to various post-9/11 law-enforcement measures. In addition to litigation, Dunn regularly represents groups and individuals in their dealings with the NYPD and other city agencies around protests and demonstrations.

Dunn has written and spoken extensively in a wide variety of forums and has appeared on CNN, Fox National News and Court TV. His op-ed pieces have appeared frequently in the Daily News, Newsday and The New York Times.

Prior to joining the NYCLU in 1996, Dunn served as senior staff attorney with the national office of the American Civil Liberties Union. During his tenure at the ACLU he was responsible for all phases of litigation in class-action, foster-care reform cases and for federal legislative matters related to child welfare. Dunn graduated Phi Beta Kappa from the University of Virginia with a B.A. degree in 1979 and from the University of Pennsylvania Law School in 1985. Following law school, he clerked for the Honorable John J. Gibbons of the United States Court of Appeals, Third Circuit.

Beth Haroules
Senior Staff Attorney
Beth Haroules has extensive experience as a civil rights litigator, having tried cases involving numerous First Amendment issues, including the right of dissident groups to engage in anonymous political speech. Haroules also has extensive experience in the areas of age and gender discrimination; mandatory drug testing of workfare/welfare recipients; disability rights – specifically, as related to the Willowbrook class action litigation – and mental health law, including "Kendra's Law," involuntary admission and retention of the mentally ill in psychiatric wards; and the involuntary administration of psychotropic medication.

Post- 9/11, Haroules' work has included review and analysis of the USA PATRIOT Act, Homeland Security Act, the Enhanced Border Security and Visa Entry Reform Act (Border Security Act) of 2002, the Attorney General's revised Guidelines on General Crimes, Racketeering and Terrorism, the SEVIS, CHIMERA and Operation TIPS programs as well as DARPA's IAO programs, including Genoa I and II, Total Information Awareness programs, the Model State Emergency Health Powers Act, the federal Smallpox Vaccination Plan, and other similar New York State and New York City legislative initiatives.

Haroules has been involved in the preparation and dissemination of information packages to New York State institutions of higher education and ACLU affiliates concerning foreign student information collection issues, and to New York elementary and secondary school districts and ACLU affiliates concerning the military recruitment provisions of the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001. Her public speaking has taken her to Inns of Court, bar association panels, universities and colleges. She earned her B.A. from Harvard University in 1980 and her J.D. from Boston University School of Law in 1986.

Corey Stoughton
Senior Staff Attorney and Upstate Litigation Coordinator
Corey Stoughton is senior staff attorney and upstate litigation coordinator at the New York Civil Liberties Union, where she focuses on statewide civil rights and civil liberties impact litigation. She has litigated cases involving racial and economic justice, national security and civil liberties, student’s rights and religious freedom. She is currently lead counsel in Hurrell-Harring v. State of New York, a statewide indigent criminal defense reform case. Stoughton is also an adjunct clinical professor at NYU School of Law, where she teaches a civil rights clinic.

Prior to joining the NYCLU, she was the Karpatkin Fellow at the American Civil Liberties Union, where she litigated a major racial profiling case against the Maryland State Police and worked on various matters related to race discrimination, education reform and national security. She also served as the Civil Rights Fellow at Relman & Associates, in Washington, D.C., where she litigated race, gender and disability discrimination cases in employment, lending and the provision of public accommodations. Stoughton recently completed a Fulbright research grant where she studied indigent criminal defense reform measures in Turkey.

Stoughton graduated with high honors from the University of Michigan in 1998 and magna cum laude from Harvard Law School in 2002. After law school, she clerked for the Honorable Cornelia Kennedy on the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit.

Matthew Faiella
Staff Attorney
Matt Faiella joined the NYCLU as a staff attorney in 2007. He focuses his work on lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) issues, as well as police surveillance and other civil liberties and constitutional issues. Prior to joining the NYCLU's staff, Faiella worked for two years as a staff attorney at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit in Atlanta.

During law school, Faiella led a student group devoted to advocating for the rights of LGBT people, and received the Freeman Award for Civil-Human Rights. He also studied law for a semester in Barcelona, and is fluent in Spanish.

Faiella grew up in Mamaroneck, New York, and earned a B.A. from Boston University in 2002 and a J.D. from Cornell Law School in 2005.

Adriana Piñón
Staff Attorney
Adriana Piñón focuses her work on the education system and various constitutional issues. She joined the NYCLU in 2008, bringing experience with international human rights law and litigation.

Prior to working at the NYCLU, Piñón served as a law clerk at the Inter-American Court of Human Rights in San José, Costa Rica and assisted the Center for Constitutional Rights in New York City with its Alien Tort Statute litigation. She also worked on institutional reform issues with the Centro por Estudios Legales y Sociales in Buenos Aires, Argentina while studying abroad at the Universidad de Buenos Aires during law school.

Piñón graduated magna cum laude from Harvard University in 1998 with an A.B. in history and science, and she received her J.D. from Columbia Law School in 2007 with special recognition for her work in international law.

Lisa Laplace
Contract Attorney
Lisa Laplace came to the New York Civil Liberties Union in 2004 with a broad-based litigation background in complex civil litigations. As a lawyer at Sullivan & Cromwell and Paul, Hastings, Janofsky & Walker, she litigated several securities and intellectual property law cases. Her work at the NYCLU focuses on disability rights and mental health law -- specifically, as related to the Willowbrook class action litigation.

In addition to litigation, Laplace successfully advocated with New York's Taxi and Limousine Commission to open its courts to the public and regularly advocates on behalf of taxi drivers to protect their constitutional rights.

Laplace is a graduate of Duke University (B.A. 1987) and Brooklyn Law School (J.D. 1990), where she was an articles editor of the Brooklyn Law Review. Laplace is the author of "The Legality of Integration Maintenance Quotas: Fair Housing or Forced Housing?," 55 Brooklyn Law Review 197 (1989), which addresses the constitutionality of racial quotas in housing.

Laplace is admitted to the New York Bar and is admitted to practice law before the U.S. District Courts for the Southern and Eastern Districts of New York. She is a member of the Association of the Bar of the City of New York and served on the Bar Association's Committee on Copyright and Intellectual Property for several years.

Naomi Shatz
Skadden Fellow and Staff Attorney
Naomi Shatz joined the NYCLU in 2009 as a Skadden Fellow and Staff Attorney in the Reproductive Rights and Advocacy departments. Her work focuses on youth and students' rights.

Shatz graduated from Yale Law School where she was the chair of Law Students for Reproductive Justice and helped found the school’s domestic violence legal services clinic. Shatz has worked in a variety of public interest organizations including the Center for Gender and Refugee Studies, the ACLU Immigrants’ Rights Project, the Centre for Gender, Health and Justice at the University of Cape Town, and Legal Momentum. She graduated from Barnard College in 2004 with a B.A. in Anthropology and Human Rights Studies.

Andrew L. Kalloch
Irving R. Kaufman Public Interest Fellow
Andrew L. Kalloch hails from the small, equestrian town of Hamilton, Mass. After graduating Phi Beta Kappa from Harvard College with a B.A. in history in 2006, Andrew remained in Cambridge, receiving his J.D. from Harvard Law School in 2009.

At HLS, Kalloch was a member of the Harvard Legal Aid Bureau and the editor-in-chief of the Harvard Law Record. His professional interests include terrorism and national security, the religion clauses of the First Amendment, and New York politics. Kalloch’s personal interests include sports, history, transportation infrastructure, and the City of New York.

Kalloch’s parents, James and Susan, grew up in Western Massachusetts and were high school teachers in Swampscott, Mass. for more than 30 years. Kalloch’s sister, Sarah, works on the ground in East Africa as the outreach and constituency organizing director at Physicians for Human Rights. His brother-in-law, Doug Maxfield, works as a commercial fisherman out of Gloucester, Mass.

Kathy Hunt Muse
Arthur Liman Public Interest Fellow
Kathy Hunt Muse joined the NYCLU in 2009. During her fellowship, she will focus on the discipline of students in New York City and students with special needs.

Muse holds a J.D. from Yale Law School, where she was a Coker Fellow and editor-in-chief of the Yale Journal of Health Policy, Law & Ethics. At Yale, Muse was also a director of the Immigration Legal Services clinic and a member of several other public interest clinics. Before attending law school, Muse was a New York City Urban Fellow in the Department of Health and Mental Hygiene and conducted a study of the HIV testing program in the city’s jails. Muse earned her B.A. summa cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa from the University of Pennsylvania in 2005, where her political science honors thesis on same-sex marriage received the Philo S. Bennett prize.

Alia Al-Khatib
Paralegal
Alia Al-Khatib graduated from Vassar College, where she majored in psychology and Hispanic studies. She completed her senior thesis on Latin American testimonial narratives and their ability to promote reconciliation and to inspire social action. While at Vassar, Al-Khatib worked at a domestic violence shelter and a domestic violence agency in Poughkeepsie that provided advocacy and counseling. She also spent a summer interning at MADRE, an international women’s human rights organization, where she researched issues ranging from women’s reproductive health to Indigenous Peoples’ rights.

Prior to joining the NYCLU, Al-Khatib worked for Safe Horizon for a year in Brooklyn criminal court, where she provided information regarding the criminal justice process and advocacy to victims in domestic violence cases.

Carmen D. Santiago
Legal Assistant/Secretary
Carmen D. Santiago has been the legal assistant/secretary of the New York Civil Liberties Union since July 1988. Her responsibilities at the NYCLU are extensive, including reviewing requests for legal assistance and performing all Spanish-language legal intakes. Prior to coming to the NYCLU, she worked as the assistant supervisor at the Legal Aid Society, Criminal Appeals Bureau and prior to that she lived overseas for numerous years while serving in the United States Navy. While in the Navy, she served as the security manager for various commanding officers and as the Legal Yeoman at various commands. A highly decorated sailor, Santiago retired from the U.S. Navy as a First Class Officer in June 2004. She now serves as the shop steward, a union under the umbrella of UAW, Technical Office Professionals, Local 2110.

LEGISLATIVE DEPARTMENT

Robert Perry
Legislative Director
Robert Perry has worked with the NYCLU as legislative director and is the NYCLU's principal lobbyist. In this capacity he advocates on behalf of proposed legislation implicating civil rights and civil liberties; and he has testified on these issues frequently at hearings conducted by state and city legislative committees.

Perry has been either in a staff position or a consulting attorney with the NYCLU since 1991. In that year, Perry earned a Revson Foundation grant to undertake a national study for the NYCLU that analyzed civilian agencies charged with oversight of policing. He was involved in the NYCLU's efforts to create an independent Civilian Complaint Review Board (CCRB) by amendment to the New York City Charter, and he has written extensively on the CCRB's performance since the all-civilian agency came into existence in 1993.

As a litigation associate with Michael Shen & Associates in the years 2000-2003, Perry practiced in the areas of police misconduct and employment discrimination. Before joining Shen & Associates, Perry was public policy counsel with the Alliance for Consumer Rights, a project of the New York State Trial Lawyers Association, where he drafted and advocated on behalf of legislative proposals to ensure access to the civil justice system. Prior to becoming a lawyer, he was a free-lance writer and editor, whose assignments included reproductive rights, juvenile justice and child poverty.

Perry was the Stanford University Law School's Mills Fellow in 2000. The fellowship program invites lawyers to mentor students interested in public interest legal careers. He is a graduate of the City University of New York Law School and the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. He also attended the graduate program at New York University's Tisch School of the Arts.

Rahul Saksena
Legislative Counsel
Rahul Saksena staffs the NYCLU's Legislative Office in Albany where he monitors, performs analysis, and advocates on legislation before members of the New York State Senate and Assembly.

Prior to joining the NYCLU, Saksena worked on immigrant rights issues as a student attorney in his law school's International Human Rights Law Clinic, and taught a Constitutional Law class at Eastern Senior High School in Washington, DC. Saksena has also worked as an Ella Baker legal intern at the Center for Constitutional Rights, where he assisted in several international human rights cases including one filed on behalf of a Guantanamo Bay detainee; at EarthRights International, where he assisted in human rights and environmental litigation against multi-national oil companies; and at the South Asian Human Rights Documentation Centre in New Delhi, where he researched and wrote about India's preventive detention laws for a civil rights primer distributed to lawyers and activists.

Saksena has a B.A. from the University of Michigan, and a J.D. from the Washington College of Law at American University.

Socheatta Meng
Legislative Counsel
Socheatta Meng joined the NYCLU in 2008 as legislative counsel. As legislative counsel, Meng analyzes legislative bills, researches NYCLU policy, and drafts legislative memoranda.

Prior to joining the NYCLU, Meng worked at South Brooklyn Legal Services on family law and drug treatment issues; the Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund on education equity issues, particularly to support the voluntary racial integration of schools and to challenge the expulsion of students from schools without due process; and the Women’s Rights Project at the American Civil Liberties Union on the disparate treatment of teenage mothers within schools, the incarceration of juveniles in solitary confinement, and violence committed against Iraqi and American women by the U.S. military.

Meng has a B.A. from the University of Chicago, an M.A. from King’s College London, and a J.D. from Brooklyn Law School.

REPRODUCTIVE RIGHTS PROJECT

Galen Sherwin
Director, Reproductive Rights Project
Galen Sherwin joined the NYCLU's Reproductive Rights Project as staff attorney in April 2006. She became acting director in January 2007, and director in June 2007.

Sherwin is a 2003 graduate of Columbia Law School, where she received the Rosenman Prize for academic excellence in public law, and a 1994 graduate of Yale University, where she received the Steere Prize in Women’s Studies. Sherwin began her career as a legislative aide to then-State Senator Catherine Abate. In 1998, she became president of the New York City Chapter of the National Organization for Women, which she led for three years, also serving on the NOW national board of directors. During law school, she worked at Sanctuary for Families/Center for Battered Women’s Legal Services, and at the Center for Reproductive Rights. She then clerked for the Honorable Gerard E. Lynch in the Southern District of New York.

Sherwin then served as the Blackmun Fellow in the Domestic Legal Program of the Center for Reproductive Rights, where she helped initiate challenges to recently-enacted laws mandating parental notification for minors seeking abortion in Oklahoma and Florida, and worked on the “kiss and tell” case, Aid for Women v. Foulston, challenging the Kansas attorney general’s opinion requiring health care providers to report cases of consensual sexual activity involving minors to state child abuse authorities.

Since joining the NYCLU, Sherwin has worked on numerous cases and advocacy campaigns to protect and expand reproductive freedom. She initiated the case In re Heller, a disciplinary complaint against pharmacists who refused women access to emergency contraception, and worked on McCusker v. St. Rose of Lima, challenging a Catholic school’s firing of a pregnant kindergarten teacher because she became pregnant, and Lochren v. County of Suffolk, challenging the Suffolk County Police Department’s policy of refusing light duty assignments to pregnant police officers, forcing them to choose between walking the beat without adequate protective equipment or taking an unpaid leave. She also played a principal role in drafting model legislation to reform the laws governing abortion and contraception, which served as the basis for the Reproductive Health and Privacy Protection Act, and supervised and co-authored the NYCLU’s report Financing Ignorance, documenting the use of federal abstinence-only-until-marriage funds in New York State.

Corinne Carey
Public Policy Counsel
Prior to joining the NYCLU, Corinne Carey was a researcher with the U.S. Program at Human Rights Watch, where she produced reports and engaged in advocacy on domestic human rights issues including the rights of people with criminal records, sex offender registration and community notification laws, and the evacuation of correctional facilities during Hurricane Katrina.

Carey graduated summa cum laude from the State University of New York at Buffalo School of Law. She began her legal career with a fellowship from the Open Society Institute as the founder and director of the Harm Reduction Law Project, based in the Lower East Side Harm Reduction Program in New York City. She provided direct legal services to drug users in harm reduction programs throughout the city.

A longtime drug law reform and harm reduction advocate, Carey was a founding member of Prevention Point Philadelphia, that city's first needle exchange program. She serves on the board of directors of National Advocates for Pregnant Women, and has spoken about the rights of drug users to local, national and international audiences. She has also taught courses in law and urban problems and civil rights and civil liberties at New York University and Brooklyn College.

Karyn Brownson
Director, Teen Health Initiative
Karyn Brownson joined the NYCLU’s Reproductive Rights Project as Teen Health Initiative director in January 2008. She first became involved in organizing around issues of women’s health and reproductive justice as a campus activist at Oberlin College, from which she graduated with honors with a B.A. in psychology and women’s studies in 1997. After working as an advocate and organizer with homeless and LGBT youth on the west coast, she attended the Hunter College School of Social Work, where she received an M.S.W. with a concentration in community organization and planning in 2002. Brownson has presented on youth organizing and gender-based programming in a variety of venues and was a participant in the 2004-05 Robert Bowne Foundation Fellowship.

Immediately prior to this position, she worked with the Queens Community House, where she spent four years directing a borough-wide leadership program for immigrant and low-income adolescent girls and providing counseling services for youth and their families.

ADVOCACY DEPARTMENT

Udi Ofer
Advocacy Director
Udi Ofer is the advocacy director at the New York Civil Liberties Union. Ofer is responsible for overseeing the NYCLU’s work to influence public policy in the areas of education, immigration and national security. He supervises the NYCLU’s work to ensure that school safety practices uphold the constitutional rights of students. He drafted the Student Safety Act, which would provide for oversight and accountability of police practices in New York City schools. He also oversees campaigns to repeal the Real ID Act, pass comprehensive immigration reform, and ensure adequate oversight of military recruitment practices in public schools. Ofer supervises six program staff and oversees seven regional chapter directors.

Ofer is also currently co-litigating Grinage v. Board of Education, a challenge against the Department of Education for violating state education law by making zoning changes without the approval of local parent councils. Ofer also co-litigated Tabbaa v. Chertoff, a First and Fourth Amendment challenge to the Department of Homeland Security’s practice of detaining, fingerprinting, and photographing Muslim Americans at the border.

Ofer first joined the staff of the NYCLU in 2003 as the founding director of the Bill of Rights Defense Campaign, which focused on responding to the government’s infringements on civil liberties in the name of national security. In 2004, the New York City Council honored the campaign for its outstanding service to the city, state, and nation.

Ofer is a frequent commentator on civil liberties issues on local and national media. His media appearances have included ABC News, Associated Press, C-Span, Daily News, The Nation, NPR, Newsday, The New York Times, NY1, and Village Voice. He recently authored the civil rights chapter in the book, NYC Schools under Bloomberg and Klein: What Parents, Teachers, and Policymakers Need to Know.

Prior to joining the NYCLU, Ofer was a Skadden Fellow at My Sisters’ Place, a domestic violence organization in Westchester County, where he initiated the organization’s immigration practice. Ofer’s past public interest experience includes working at the Association for Civil Rights in Israel, a human rights organization in Jerusalem.

Ofer is a graduate of Fordham University School of Law, where he was a Stein Scholar in Public Interest Law and Ethics, and a Crowley Advocate in International Human Rights. In 2007, he received the “Distinguished Graduate Award” from Fordham Law School’s Stein Scholars Program.

Ari Rosmarin
Senior Advocacy Coordinator
Prior to working at the NYCLU full time, Ari Rosmarin served as the NYCLU campus chapter coordinator beginning in January 2004. During this time, the number of NYCLU campus chapters doubled statewide. He served as a NYCLU field organizer from 2006 to 2007 and now serves as the senior advocacy coordinator. He also coordinated the NYCLU's Project on Military Recruitment and Students' Rights.

Rosmarin's work focuses on national security and civil liberties, immigrants' rights, military recruitment, Real ID and First Amendment issues. As senior advocacy coordinator, he is responsible for implementing the NYCLU's statewide advocacy initiative and assists in the management of statewide advocacy campaigns. He works to support and train regional staff and volunteers in advocacy techniques, organizing strategies, program issues and NYCLU legislative priorities.

Rosmarin graduated from Columbia University in 2006 with a B.A. in history, specializing in late 19th and 20th century United States history. He also spent the 2004-2005 academic year studying history and government at the London School of Economics and Political Science in the UK. While in school, Rosmarin served as an intern to Los Angeles Congresswoman Maxine Waters.

Erica Braudy
Lead Organizer
Erica Braudy joined the NYCLU in 2007 as a field organizer. She currently serves as the lead organizer in the Advocacy Department and coordinates NYCLU’s work in Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender (LGBT) issues, military recruitment and students’ rights and bias-harassment in schools, among others. Braudy oversees the Youth Working Group and annual Creative Expression Contest.

Braudy earned a degree in political science from SUNY, New Paltz in 2006. While there she organized a student advocacy group, taking on local and national issues, including the Iraq War and LGBT rights. Braudy also played an integral role in establishing a community center – The New Paltz Cultural Collective – which became the hub of arts and activism in the community. Prior to joining the NYCLU, Braudy was employed at Doing Art Together, a non-profit, educational visual arts organization. She ran hands-on art workshops and assisted the executive director.

Angela Jones
School to Prison Pipeline Coordinator
Angela Jones is the coordinator of the School to Prison Pipeline for the New York Civil Liberties Union. Her work focuses on improving school safety policies and putting an end to the path that leads students away from schools and toward the criminal justice system. She has worked extensively with Brooklyn and Manhattan youth in the past and designed lesson plans which encourage young people to make connections between their experiences and international human rights initiatives.

Johanna Miller
Policy Counsel
Johanna Miller graduated with honors from New York Law School in 2008. Prior to joining the NYCLU she interned at the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, the New York Law School Racial Justice Project and Amnesty International USA. She is a former research assistant to Nadine Strossen, former president of the ACLU national board. Recently, she was awarded the Alexander Forger Award for Distinguished Service to the Legal Profession.

As policy counsel, Miller focuses on education reform, immigrants’ rights, and voting rights issues.

Originally from Florida, Miller is an alumnus of the University of Florida where she earned a B.S. in public relations with a minor in English and film studies. She also spent a summer at La Sorbonne in Paris. This spring, she traveled to New Orleans with the Student Hurricane Network to provide volunteer legal services to residents recovering from Hurricane Katrina.

COMMUNICATIONS DEPARTMENT

Jennifer Carnig
Director of Communications
Jennifer Carnig joined the NYCLU as communications director in 2007.

She began her career as a religion reporter for The Oakland Tribune and a chain of other Bay Area papers, and has directed communications and media relations at Teach For America and the University of Chicago. She earned her B.A. in journalism from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and her master's degree in religious studies from the University of Chicago, where she researched and wrote about the role of the religious backgrounds of top Bush administration officials.

From courtrooms to kitchen tables, school houses to church pews, Carnig has spent her career chronicling the struggles and joys of the social justice movement. She is originally from Pittsburgh.

Michael Cummings
Communications Associate
Mike Cummings joined the NYCLU as communications associate in August 2007. Previously, he spent five years reporting and editing at newspapers in Mississippi and Connecticut.

He earned an undergraduate degree from the University of Notre Dame and a master's degree in journalism from Northwestern University. After college, Cummings spent a year teaching fourth grade at the Dominican Convent School, a small parochial school in Johannesburg, South Africa.

Alberto Morales
Communications Assistant
Alberto Morales is a native Brooklynite who attended Brown University where he earned a B.A. in "Literatures in English." While there, he completed a senior paper entitled: Manipulating Language; a veritable coup d'etat / Lessons: for the downtroddened; From: the Modernistas.

After graduation, he enjoyed a freelance writing career while working as a contract paralegal. He later became the national events coordinator at Lambda Legal Defense & Education Fund. After Lambda Legal, he joined The Nation magazine as the inaugural Spira-Lopez fellow.

Morales joined the NYCLU as communications assistant in 2007.

DEVELOPMENT DEPARTMENT

Mary Hedahl
Director of Development
Mary Hedahl comes to the NYCLU from its uptown partner Symphony Space, where she worked as the interim director of development and the associate director of development for individual giving. Before joining Symphony Space, she was the director of development for the Women's Project, an off-Broadway theater, and the senior development associate for Theatre Development Fund. In addition to her work in the non-profit sector, Hedahl does volunteer work at the East Harlem Block Schools and the Coalition for the Homeless. Her work for these organizations speaks to her commitment to human rights, community organizing and political responsibility.

Keith Kole
Database Manager
Keith Kole hails from Chicago where he managed the Raiser's Edge database for Council for Jewish Elderly and the prestigious Newberry Library. Previous to that, he owned and operated a network game-playing and DVD rental/sales retail store (the first in the northern Chicago area). He studied at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and RADA in London. Kole is an Oxfordian and would be happy to explain to anyone who is interested exactly what an Oxfordian is.

Molly Galvin
Director of Major Gifts
Molly Galvin joined the NYCLU development team in the spring of 2007. Galvin works with the NYCLU Foundation's most loyal and generous donors to build a strong and vibrant civil liberties union now and for the future. Galvin's professional background is in the areas of fundraising and community organizing. She has worked at the United Way, Florence Immigrant and Refugee Rights Project, and Democracy South. She served as an Americorps* VISTA at Del Pueblo, Inc., developing sustainable organizational systems and fundraising practices for a newly incorporated nonprofit. Galvin comes to us from Planned Parenthood in Ohio, most recently working as a regional advocacy director with the state office's political field program – where she was responsible for recruiting and managing hundreds of volunteers in western Ohio’s 33 counties during the 2004 and 2006 elections. Galvin earned her B.A. in social and global studies from Antioch College.

Louisa Treskon
Grant Writer
Louisa Treskon joined the NYCLU in summer 2009. Previously, she was the development manager for the International Center in New York, where she secured funds for the organization’s English-language and volunteer programs. Treskon has extensive experience working at nonprofit organizations and institutions of higher education in both fund-raising and research capacities. She received undergraduate degrees in international affairs and German area studies from the University of Washington and holds a master’s degree in international affairs from the George Washington University.

ADMINISTRATIVE DEPARTMENT

Andrew Adams
Executive Assistant to Donna Lieberman
Andrew Adams works as Donna Lieberman's executive assistant ensuring the smooth operation of the organization and the executive director's office. He began his work with the NYCLU as an intern. During the summer of 2004, Adams researched privacy and technology concerns and conducted surveillance camera documentation trainings leading to the NYCLU's report, Who's Watching? Video Camera Surveillance in New York City and the Need for Public Oversight.

Returning to the NYCLU in January 2006, Adams worked on the Reproductive Rights Project's pregnancy discrimination lawsuit against Suffolk County Police Department and on a major civil rights lawsuit brought on behalf of falsely arrested people during the 2004 Republican National Convention. Until he became executive assistant, Adams was responsible for overseeing the legal intake process.

Adams focuses on women's and gender studies at Hunter College and is an avid cyclist and cook.

CHAPTERS AND REGIONAL OFFICES

Linda S. Berns
Lower Hudson Valley Chapter Director (Serving Dutchess, Orange, Putnam, Rockland, Sullivan, Ulster and Westchester counties)
Linda S. Berns has been executive director of the Lower Hudson Valley chapter since 1996. Berns is vice president and judicial chair of the League of Women Voters of Rockland County and chair of the Fair Housing Board. She also serves as a board member of the Human Rights Commission, the Coalition of Democracy and Freedom and the Rockland Housing Action Coalition. Berns also is a mediator/arbitrator in Town and Village Courts and in the Center for Alternative Dispute Resolution.

She earned a B.A. in chemistry from Columbia University and a master's degree in public administration from Long Island University. Past careers include chemist, chemistry teacher (college), and docent at the Center for Holocaust Studies in Rockland County.

Andrea Callan
Suffolk County Chapter Director
Andrea Callan is an attorney and director of the Suffolk County Chapter of the New York Civil Liberties Union.

Callan graduated cum laude from Purdue University in 2003, earning her B.A. in law & society, with minors in political science, philosophy, history and English. After graduation, Callan went on to work for the law firm of Boylan, Brown, Code, Vigdor & Wilson, LLP in Rochester where she worked in the firm’s real estate division. In 2007, Callan earned her J.D. from Touro Law School. Following law school, she went to work for a private firm specializing in plaintiff-side federal civil rights litigation focusing on discrimination in the workplace, then joined the NYCLU in June 2008.

Callan is the recipient of several awards, including “Best Honors Dissertation” for her research and paper entitled “The Faces of the Races: A Study of the Changing Images of African-Americans surrounding the Civil Rights Movement;” the Touro Law School “Service to the Bar Award” for her work promoting American Bar Association programs in law schools throughout New York State; and the Touro Law School award for “Exceptional Service to the Public & Community” for her service as an executive board member and legal volunteer for the Suffolk County Chapter of the NYCLU, and as president of the Touro NYCLU student group.

Currently, in her work with the NYCLU, Callan focuses on immigration, students’ rights, privacy and security, LGBT rights, racial justice, reproductive rights, and police conduct. She is a proud ninth generation descendant of George Washington, our first president.

John A. Curr III
Western Regional Office Director (Serving Allegany, Cattaraugus, Chatauqua, Erie, Niagara, Genesee, Orleans and Wyoming counties)
John A. Curr III was named the director in April 2006 for the NYCLU in the Western New York area, after joining the NYCLU as assistant director of the Western Regional Office in December 2000. Active in social justice causes for many years, Curr is a former member of the steering committee for the Erie County Green Party, served as a local coordinator and media liaison for Ralph Nader's "Democracy Rising" and "Stop the War" tours and was a recent organizer with "Peace Has No Borders."

Curr is the host and creator of the NYCLU's "Radio Civil Liberties" program, a weekly broadcast that the WRO began in 2003. Featuring news, interviews and music, Radio Civil Liberties provides insight and information in a creative format that attracts listeners from all over the world.

A charter member of Western New York's Veterans for Peace chapter, Curr is a disabled combat veteran of the first Gulf War, with more than 14 years service in the U.S. Army, Army National Guard and Air Force Reserves. A graduate of the Community College of the Air Force, Curr has also completed undergraduate work at the United States Academy of Health Sciences (Fort Sam Houston, Texas), the University of Maryland, Hawaii Pacific College and Chaminade University (Hawaii).

Samantha Fredrickson
Nassau County Chapter Director
Samantha Fredrickson is an attorney and director of the Nassau County Chapter of the New York Civil Liberties Union.

Fredrickson’s background is in both law and journalism. She hales from Nevada and graduated with distinction from the University of Nevada, Reno in 2003 with a B.A. in journalism. She went on to work as a newspaper reporter at the Bucks County Courier Times in Bucks County, Penn., where she spent two years uncovering government scandals and reporting about vital issues affecting the community.

Fredrickson graduated cum laude from New York Law School in 2008 and spent one year as a legal fellow at the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press in the Washington, D.C. metro area. At the Reporters Committee, Fredrickson filed several amicus briefs in First Amendment cases nationwide, including a brief on behalf of the ACLU’s lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of the FISA Amendments Act.

During law school, Fredrickson worked as a research assistant for former ACLU president Nadine Strossen and co-founded New York Law School’s NYCLU chapter.

Barrie Gewanter
Central New York Chapter Director (Serving Cayuga, Cortland, Madison, Oneida, Onondauga, Oswego and Seneca counties)
Barrie Gewanter has been actively involved with the NYCLU for 10 years. She first served as the director of the CNY Chapter from 1996 to 1999, and then joined the Chapter Board. After three years as the executive director of the Central NY Council for Occupational Safety and Health, she returned to the position of NYCLU chapter director in December 2002. She has also served as a NY State Delegate to three ACLU biennial conferences.

In addition to her work with the NYCLU, Gewanter has been an activist and advocate for women's rights, gay and lesbian rights, workplace health and safety, solidarity with workers and unions, and economic justice. She played key roles in the passage of a Living Wage Law in the City of Syracuse as well as the implementation of domestic partner benefits at Syracuse University. She has served on the board of the Central NY Labor-Religion Coalition, the National COSH Council, a New York State AFL-CIO Health & Safety Committee, and the Syracuse Mayor's Commission on the Living Wage. In 2003 and 2004, Gewanter was honored for her civil liberties and social justice work with awards from the Human Rights Commission of Syracuse and Onondaga County and Peace Action of Central New York.

Gewanter holds a B.F.A. in theatrical stage management from Webster University in St. Louis, Mo. and has worked professionally as a stage manager, carpenter and electrician. She also earned a master's degree in sociology from Washington University in St. Louis and spent several years teaching college level courses in sociology and women's studies in both St. Louis and Syracuse.

Gary Pudup
Genesee Valley Chapter Director (Serving Genesee, Livingston, Monroe, Ontario, Orleans, Steuben, Wayne, Wyoming and Yates counties)
Gary Pudup graduated from the Rochester Institute of Technology with a B.S. in criminal justice. He began his law enforcement career a criminal investigator with the New York State Attorney General's Special Prosecutor's Office for Medicaid Fraud.

He then worked for a local law enforcement agency and spent the last 20 years of a 29 year career with the Monroe County Sheriff's Office. There he had diverse assignments as supervisor of the Airport Security Unit, Parks and Marine Unit, and the Driving While Intoxicated Unit. He rose to the rank of lieutenant and served as a watch commander and ended his career as command officer in charge of the Internal Affairs Unit. While at the sheriff's office, he conducted in-service training for all Monroe County law enforcement agencies in the tactics of domestic subversive groups, specifically white supremacist and militia organizations. Pudup was also an instructor at the Monroe County Community College Training Facility teaching police, fire and emergency medical service personnel Public Safety Critical Incident Management and Command Post Operations.

During his spare time, he earned a commercial pilot's license. He became an FAA certified flight instructor and for a time after his retirement from the sheriff's office, he worked as a charter pilot on a twin-turbine aircraft. He has taken taking graduate level courses in non-profit management at St. John Fisher College and volunteered his time at a Rochester inner city school as a tutor. He served as a board member of the Genesee Valley Chapter for the year prior to taking the position of the Genesee Valley Chapter director.

Melanie Trimble
Capital Region Chapter Director (Serving Albany, Rensselaer, Schenectady, Saratoga, Warren, Columbia and Washington counties)
Melanie Trimble joined the New York Civil Liberties Union in March 2003. Previously she served as president and vice president of Action of the League of Women Voters of Albany County.

Trimble moved to the Albany area from Chicago in 1990 and has been actively involved in community life in the Capital District since that time. She has participated in changing the charter of Albany County to a county executive form of government, led an internship for Russian and Ukrainian women learning about participation in government, represented the Albany County League at state and national conventions and monitored county government activities.

Trimble taught mathematics for 11 years before leaving to pursue a career in public service. She has an undergraduate degree in psychology and philosophy from Simmons College in Boston, and a master's degree in teaching from Montclair State University in Upper Montclair, NJ.