NYCLU Expands Senior Leadership

NEW YORK – The New York Civil Liberties Union announced today several new hires and promotions to key positions on their senior leadership team. Lourdes Rosado will join the NYCLU as the organization’s first Program Director. Christopher Dunn has been appointed the Legal Director, with Arthur Eisenberg assuming the position of Executive Counsel. Jay Brandon will join the organization as its Field Director.  

 

“We are thrilled to welcome Lourdes and Jay and to recognize Chris and Art’s new roles,” said Donna Lieberman, executive director of the NYCLU. “During this critical time of growth and transformation, our expanded senior leadership will help us be more effective than ever in fighting for the civil rights and civil liberties of all New Yorkers.”

 

As the Program Director, Lourdes Rosado will oversee the NYCLU’s programmatic work, including the Legal, Policy, and Field departments. Rosado comes to the NYCLU from her position as Chief of the Civil Rights Bureau of the New York State Office of the Attorney General. During her tenure there, the Bureau obtained a preliminary injunction against the Trump administration’s termination of DACA and negotiated a consent decree with the New York City Board of Elections for illegally cancelling thousands of voters from the registration rolls, among other successes. Prior to her time at the AG’s office, Rosado was the Associate Director at the Juvenile Law Center, where she did pioneering juvenile justice and child welfare reform work. She and a colleague from Juvenile Law Center were named the 2009 Citizens of the Year by the Philadelphia Inquirer for their work to vindicate the rights of thousands of young people caught up in the infamous Kids for Cash scandal. 

 

Rosado has a B.A. from Swarthmore College, an M.A. from Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs, a J.D. from New York University School of Law, and an LL.M. from Georgetown University Law Center. She currently serves on the Board of Managers of Swarthmore College, and has held board positions in various non-profit, public health organizations.

 

Christopher Dunn has been promoted from Associate Legal Director to Legal Director. As the Legal Director, he supervises the litigation program and related advocacy of the NYCLU’s Legal Department and manages the department’s 20+person staff. Dunn joined the NYCLU in 1996 and served as its Associate Legal Director from 2001 until January 2019, when he became the Legal Director. He led the NYCLU’s challenges to the death penalty in the mid-1990s, led its wave of First Amendment litigation against the Giuliani administration in the late 90s, led the NYCLU’s police and stop-and-frisk work during the Bloomberg years, and most recently has led its litigation against the Trump administration’s attack on immigrants. Dunn has authored the Civil Rights and Civil Liberties column in the New York Law Journal since 2004 and has written and spoken extensively in a wide variety of other forums. Between 2001 and 2015, Dunn taught the Civil Rights Clinic at New York University Law School.

 

Prior to joining the NYCLU, Dunn was a senior staff attorney with the ACLU’s Children’s Rights Project, where he was responsible for class-action, foster-care reform cases and for federal child-welfare legislative matters. Dunn holds a J.D. from the University of Pennsylvania Law School and a B.A. from the University of Virginia. Prior to starting at the ACLU in 1987, he clerked for the Honorable John J. Gibbons of the United States Court of Appeals, Third Circuit.

 

The NYCLU’s previous Legal Director, Arthur Eisenberg, will serve as Executive Counsel where he will address issues relating to voting rights and access to education. Eisenberg has broad experience as a civil rights practitioner and scholar. Over a career at the NYCLU that has spanned more than 45 years, he has litigated extensively around issues of free speech, voting rights, race discrimination and education. He has been involved in more than 20 cases that were presented to the United States Supreme Court, representing either direct litigants or amici curiae.  The cases included those involving the constitutionality of partisan gerrymandering, of voting restrictions and of book censorship by a school board. He has published essays on school reform, freedom of speech, military tribunals and conscientious objection. He has taught for more than 30 years at the Cardozo Law School and at the University of Minnesota Law School and he has authored law review articles on a range of topics including voting rights, censorship of the arts and campaign finance reform. He will continue to bring that broad experience to the NYCLU program.

 

Jay Brandon has been hired as the NYCLU’s first Field Director. Brandon comes from BronxWorks, the largest non-profit in the Bronx, where he served as Program Coordinator. There, he directed a youth employment program for more than 700 young adults. Prior to that, Brandon was the Director of Community and Legislative Affairs at the New York State Assembly and was a Political Organizer at Planned Parenthood. He graduated from the University of Bridgeport in Connecticut.