Youth Advocacy & Policy Lab (Y-Lab)

Harvard Law School

Below are the biographies for CAP’s Art of Social Change: Child Welfare, Education, and Juvenile Justice Spring 2015 speakers.

Elizabeth Bartholet

elizabeth-bartholetElizabeth Bartholet is the Morris Wasserstein Public Interest Professor of Law and Faculty Director of the Child Advocacy Program (CAP) at Harvard Law School, where she teaches civil rights and family law, specializing in child welfare, adoption and reproductive technology. Before joining the Harvard Faculty, she was engaged in civil rights and public interest work, first with the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, and later as founder and director of the Legal Action Center, a non-profit organization in New York City focused on criminal justice and substance abuse issues.

Cheryl Bratt

cherylbratts15Cheryl Bratt is the Assistant Director of Harvard Law School’s Child Advocacy Program (CAP). Before joining CAP, she was a fellow at the University of Michigan Law School’s Pediatric Advocacy Clinic where she supervised students litigating family and special education cases, and worked as a litigation senior associate at WilmerHale LLP in Boston, Massachusetts where she represented parties at the trial, appellate, and U.S. Supreme Court level. She clerked on the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit.

Ira J. Chasnoff, M.D

irachasnoffs15Ira J. Chasnoff, M.D., an award-winning author, researcher and lecturer, is president of NTI Upstream and a Professor of Clinical Pediatrics at the University of Illinois College of Medicine in Chicago. He is one of the nation’s leading researchers in the field of child development and the effects of maternal alcohol and drug use on the newborn infant and child. His research projects include a study of the long-term cognitive, behavioral and educational developmental effects of prenatal exposure to alcohol, cocaine, and other drugs; strategies for screening pregnant women for substance use; the effects on birth outcome of prenatal treatment and counseling for pregnant drug abusers; the effectiveness of both outpatient and residential treatment programs for pregnant drug abusers; and innovative treatment approaches for children affected by prenatal exposure to alcohol or illicit drugs.

Dr. Chasnoff is part of the national effort to define the neurodevelopmental profile of children across the fetal alcohol spectrum, working with various federal and state governmental agencies, task forces, and committees. Dr. Chasnoff’s most recent work focuses on community approaches to the integration of behavioral health services into primary health care for women and children and the occurrence of co-occurring mental health disorders in children who have been exposed to alcohol, methamphetamine, cocaine, and other drugs. As an extension of these efforts, Dr. Chasnoff is working with communities and states to develop integrated systems of prevention and care for children and families in the child welfare system affected by substance abuse.

Dr. Chasnoff received his medical degree from the University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio, which in 1991 awarded him its first Distinguished Alumnus Award. He is the author of numerous books and articles on the effects of alcohol and other drug use on pregnancy and on the long-term cognitive, behavioral, and learning outcomes of prenatally exposed children. He is a regular contributor to Psychology Today and for several years has been selected by a poll of physicians across the nation for listing in America’s Best Doctors. Dr. Chasnoff has been active in establishing comprehensive family intervention programs for children in Australia, Denmark, Portugal, Vietnam, the former Soviet Union, and across the United States and has lectured on this topic around the world.

Morgan Fawcett

morganfawcetts15Morgan Fawcett is the Founder and Spokesperson of One Heart Creations, a not-for-profit meant to increase awareness for Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorders (FASD). Morgan and his grandparents began to raise awareness for FASD when he was 14 years of age and they’ve travelled extensively over the years for these efforts. Morgan incorporates his Native American flute playing into his programs to provide support for his message. He released three CDs (Ancestral Memories, Tears of Our Fathers, and Legacy). Morgan was inducted into the NOFAS Tom and Linda Daschle FASD Hall of Fame. He was selected as a Champion of Change for President Obama’s Winning the Future Initiative and participated in a White House internship as well as an internship with Senator Mark Begich.

Ronald Hughes

ronhughess15Ronald Hughes is the founder and executive director of the North American Resource Center for Child Welfare and the Institute for Human Services. Through these organizations, he has provided consultation and technical assistance around the world. Dr. Hughes has written extensively on topics related to child welfare values and “best practice” standards; bioethics; culture and diversity; risk assessment; and developmental disabilities, including the four-volume Field Guide to Child Welfare, the most widely used textbook in the history of the child welfare profession. He has considerable knowledge of other community service systems through his experience in the fields of mental health, drug and alcohol treatment, youth services, juvenile justice, and residential care for adolescents. He is the immediate past president and President Emeritus of the American Professional Society on the Abuse of Children, Chair-Elect of the National Council on Crime and Delinquency, and served as a member of the Civil Society Committee of the U.S. – Russia Bilateral Presidential Commission.  Dr. Hughes has degrees in philosophy, political science, social work, and psychology, and is a licensed Psychologist and a licensed Social Worker.

Daniel Heimpel

danielheimpels15Daniel Heimpel is a lecturer at U.C. Berkeley’s Goldman School of Public Policy and USC’s Sol Price School of Public Policy where he teaches graduate students in social work, public policy and journalism how to use journalism and media to drive social change. In 2010, Heimpel founded Fostering Media Connections (FMC), a non-profit organization, which harnesses the power of journalism to drive public and political will behind improving the lives of vulnerable children. Since its inception, FMC has used solution-based journalism to impel child welfare reform on the state and federal level. In 2013, Heimpel launched The Chronicle of Social Change, a news website dedicated to issues facing children and families. Prior to founding FMC and publishing The Chronicle, Heimpel worked as a journalist and received numerous prizes, including the Los Angeles Press Club’s Online Journalist of the Year.

Jacqueline Bhabha

jacquelinebhabhas15Jacqueline Bhabha is FXB Director of Research, Professor of the Practice of Health and Human Rights at the Harvard School of Public Health, the Jeremiah Smith Jr. Lecturer in Law at Harvard Law School, and an Adjunct Lecturer in Public Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School.  She received a first class honors degree and an M.Sc. from Oxford University, and a J.D. from the College of Law in London.

From 1997 to 2001 Bhabha directed the Human Rights Program at the University of Chicago.  Prior to 1997, she was a practicing human rights lawyer in London and at the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg.  She has published extensively on issues of transnational child migration, refugee protection, children’s rights and citizenship. She is the editor of Children Without A State (MIT Press, 2011), author of Child Migration & Human Rights in a Global Age (Princeton University Press, 2014), and the editor of Human Rights and Adolescence (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2014).

Bhabha serves on the board of the Scholars at Risk Network, the World Peace Foundation and the Journal of Refugee Studies.

Kathleen Hamill

Kathleen Hamill, an FXB Center fellow and Tufts adjunct professor wrote about the challenges facing Syrian refugee children in Lebanon. Rose Lincoln/Harvard Staff Photographer

Kathleen Hamill is a human rights lawyer, a Fellow at the FXB Center for Health and Human Rights at the Harvard School of Public Health, and an Adjunct Assistant Professor of International Law at The Fletcher School, Tufts University. She has worked as an independent researcher, advocate, and consultant in the Americas, Asia, Africa, Europe, and the Middle East where she was based from 2006-12. Hamill recently led FXB’s child protection assessments among Syrian refugees in Lebanon (Fall 2013) and Jordan (Summer 2014) driving FXB’s policy work to protect the rights and well-being of children impacted by the Syria crisis. She holds a J.D. from Boston College Law School, a Master of Arts in Law and Diplomacy from The Fletcher School, and a B.A. from Brown University. (Photo credit: Rose Lincoln/Harvard Staff Photographer)

Emily Bazelon

emilybazelons15Emily Bazelon wrote the national bestseller Sticks and Stones: Defeating the Culture of Bullying and Rediscovering the Power of Character and Empathy. She is a staff writer at the New York Times Magazine and the Truman Capote Fellow for Creative Writing and Law at Yale Law School. She is also a frequent guest on the Colbert Report.

Before joining the Times Magazine, Bazelon was a writer and editor for nine years at Slate, where she co-founded the women’s section DoubleX. She continues to co-host the Slate Political Gabfest, a weekly podcast. Bazelon has previously been a Soros media fellow and has worked as an editor and writer at Legal Affairs magazine and as a law clerk on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 1st Circuit. She has appeared on the PBS NewsHour, Morning Joe, Fresh Air, Morning Edition, and All Things Considered. Her writing has appeared in the Atlantic, This American Life, O Magazine, the Washington Post, and Mother Jones, among other publications. Bazelon is a graduate of Yale College and Yale Law School.

John Palfrey

johnpalfreys15John Palfrey assumed the role of Phillips Academy’s 15th Head of School on July 1, 2012. Prior to joining the Andover community, he was the Henry N. Ess III Professor of Law and Vice Dean for Library and Information Resources at Harvard Law School. He was also co-director of the Berkman Center for Internet & Society, where he served as executive director from 2002 to 2008.

Palfrey has published extensively on how young people are learning in a digital era, as well as the effect of new technologies on society at large. He is the author or co-author of several books, including Born Digital: Understanding the First Generation of Digital Natives, Interop: The Promise and Perils of Highly Interconnected Systems, Intellectual Property Strategy, and Access Denied: The Practice and Politics of Global Internet Filtering.

Outside of his work at Andover, Palfrey is chairman of the board of the Digital Public Library of America, and chairman of the board of trustees of the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation. He has also served on the boards of the Mass2020 Foundation, the Ames Foundation, and Open Knowledge Commons, among others.

Palfrey joined the Harvard Law School faculty after practicing law at the Boston law firm Ropes & Gray. He was a visiting professor at the University of St. Gallen in Switzerland during the 2007-2008 academic year. He also served as a special assistant at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency during the Clinton administration.

A teacher, author, and innovator, Palfrey has earned praise for his books and scholarly work, as well as his teaching. The Bok Center at Harvard recognized him in 2007 for Distinction in Teaching. In 2005, he earned a Dean’s Commendation for Excellence in Teaching from the Harvard Extension School. Palfrey holds a J.D. from Harvard Law School, an M.Phil. from the University of Cambridge, and an A.B. from Harvard College.

Jeffrey Shulman

jeffreyshulmans15Professor Jeffrey Shulman has made his academic home at Georgetown University, first in the Department of English (from 1988 to 2005) and, since 2006, at Georgetown Law. Mr. Shulman received his doctorate in English Literature from the University of Wisconsin-Madison; he received his J.D. degree, magna cum laude, from Georgetown Law in 2005.

In the Department of English, Mr. Shulman taught courses in Shakespeare, Milton, Renaissance Drama, and the biblical tradition in Western literature. At Georgetown Law, he offers seminars on constitutional family law as well as courses in legal research and writing.

Mr. Shulman’s legal scholarship has considered a number of tough constitutional law questions. He has challenged the right of protesters to interfere with a soldier’s private funeral; he has maintained that religious entities should not be immune from civil suit for aggressive advocacy. In his new book The Constitutional Parent: Rights, Responsibilities, and the Enfranchisement of the Child (Yale University Press, 2014), he argues that children are poorly served by a legal regime that too readily defers to parental rights. Shulman contends that our legal heritage supports the idea that parental authority is not a right, but a grant of power—a grant made contingent on a parent’s fulfillment of responsibilities set by children’s developmental needs and the needs of a liberal democracy to promote autonomy and tolerance.

With Edwin O. Guthman, Mr. Shulman edited the best-selling Robert Kennedy In His Own Words: The Unpublished Recollections of the Kennedy Years (Bantam, 1988).

Born and bred in Baltimore, Mr. Shulman makes his home in Frederick, Maryland.

David Meyer

David Meyer is Dean and Mitchell Franklin Professor of Law at Tulane University Law School.  He earned his B.A. in History with Highest Honors and his J.D. magna cum laude from the University of Michigan, where he served as Editor-in-Chief of the Michigan Law Review.  After graduation, he clerked for Judge Harry T. Edwards of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit and Justice Byron R. White of the U.S. Supreme Court.  He was a legal assistant at the Iran-U.S. Claims Tribunal in The Hague and practiced law with Sidley Austin in Chicago and Washington, D.C.  Before coming to Tulane in July 2010, Dean Meyer spent 14 years on the faculty at the University of Illinois College of Law, serving as Associate Dean of Academic Affairs from 2009 to 2010.

Daniel Losen

daniellosen-cover-art-s15Daniel Losen, J.D., M. Ed., is the Director of the Center for Civil Rights Remedies (CCRR) at The Civil Rights Project/Projecto Derechos Civiles (CRP) at UCLA. He has worked at the CRP since 1999, when it was affiliated with Harvard Law School, where he has also been a lecturer on law. His work concerns the impact of law and policy on the rights of children of color, children with disabilities and language minority students to equal educational opportunity. On these and related topics he: conducts law and policy research; publishes books, reports, and articles; has testified before the U.S. Congress and the United Nations; helps draft model legislation; and provides guidance to policymakers, educators and civil rights advocates.

Under Losen’s leadership, CCRR is committed to producing useful education research on effective alternatives to disciplinary exclusion from school. For example, in 2015 Teachers College Press will publish the book Closing the School Discipline Gap: Equitable Remedies for Excessive Exclusion a collection of peer-reviewed research. Losen is the book’s editor and author of three of the book’s chapters. Other books Losen has co-authored and edited include, The School to Prison Pipeline: Structuring Legal Reform, (NYU Press 2010) (co-authored with Catherine Kim and Damon Hewitt) and Racial Inequity in Special Education (Harvard Education Press, 2002) (co-edited with Gary Orfield). The Center for Civil Rights Remedies, also maintains a data tool on the website, www.schooldisciplinedata.org, where researchers and advocates can search for their district’s most recent discipline data disaggregated by race, disability and gender, as well as find several research and policy studies including: Opportunities Suspended: The Disparate Impact of Exclusionary School Discipline, (August 2012); and Out of School and Off Track: The Overuse of Suspensions in American Middle and High Schools, (April, 2013). As an independent consultant Losen also has extensive experience working with states and large districts across the nation to address racial disproportionality in school discipline and special education. Before entering law school, Losen was a co-founder of an alternative public elementary school and taught for 10 years.

Marlies Spanjaard

Marlies Spanjaard serves as the Director of Education Advocacy and is responsible for supervising staff attorneys and interns, making program-wide policy decisions, and cultivating relationships with other individuals and agencies in an effort to promote the Edlaw Project mission of ensuring that Massachusetts’ highest risk children receive a quality education. Prior to serving as Director, Ms. Spanjaard gained valuable experience as a staff attorney at the EdLaw Project during which time she represented students in school disciplinary hearings, special education team meetings, and administrative hearings before the Bureau of Special Education appeals. Marlies has provided trainings on education related issues throughout the state and before a wide variety of audiences including parents, youth workers, students and lawyers. In 2007, Marlies began teaching at Wheelock College as an adjunct instructor in the college’s Juvenile Justice and Youth Advocacy Concentration. She earned her J.D. and her M.S.W. at Washington University Law School and George Warren Brown School of Social Work in St. Louis, MO.

Dulcinea Goncalves

Dulcinea Goncalves is the Attorney in Charge of the Quincy Office of the Committee for Public Counsel Services (CPCS) Youth Advocacy Division (YAD).  Ms. Goncalves began her work at the YAD Roxbury Office in 2005 where she represented juveniles in delinquency and youthful offender matters in the Dorchester, West Roxbury, and Boston Juvenile Courts.  From 2010-2011,while on a leave of absence from YAD, Ms. Goncalves worked as a staff attorney at Suffolk University School of Law’s Juvenile Justice Center (JJC).  As a staff attorney with the JJC, Ms. Goncalves supervised law students representing juveniles in the Boston Juvenile Court, assisted in the teaching of the Juvenile Defender Clinical Class, and maintained a small caseload of juvenile delinquency and youthful offender cases.  Ms. Goncalves is a recipient of the Massachusetts Bar Association’s 2012 Access to Justice Defender Award.  She earned her B.S. in Rehabilitation and Human Services from Boston University and her J.D. from Northeastern University School of Law.

Eliza Byard

elizabyards15Eliza Byard is the Executive Director of the Gay, Lesbian & Straight Education Network (GLSEN). GLSEN is recognized worldwide as an innovative leader in the education, youth development and civil rights sectors fighting to end bias-based bullying, violence and discrimination in K-12 schools and promote a culture of respect for all.

Byard joined GLSEN in 2001 as deputy executive director, responsible for all program development and oversight, including the development of GLSEN’s award-winning national Think B4 You Speak campaign, the first-ever Ad Council campaign on lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) issues. She has shepherded the growth of GLSEN’s public education and advocacy efforts; student organizing and youth leadership development programs; professional development training for educators and school staff; research and program evaluation capacity; and in-school programming such as No Name-Calling Week, which the National School Boards Association termed “one of the most used and celebrated bullying-prevention programs in the country.”

During her tenure at GLSEN, Byard has crafted and implemented advocacy and legislative strategies that have won bipartisan support for GLSEN’s issues at all levels of government, and widespread acceptance of the urgency and importance of LGBT issues as part of our nation’s commitment to better educational opportunity for all. In 2011, the White House honored GLSEN as a “Champion of Change” for suicide prevention. In 2012, a division of GuideStar named GLSEN a Top 3 National Non-Profit for the organization’s impact on LGBT equality and support.

As GLSEN’s primary spokesperson, Byard has appeared on The O’Reilly Factor, AC360, CNN, ABC World News, MSNBC, CBS This Morning, ABC 20/20 and National Public Radio’s Talk of the Nation, among other programs. She serves on the Board of Trustees of the America’s Promise Alliance and on their Blue Ribbon panel to select the “100 Best Communities for Youth.” Byard served on Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s Commission on Runaway and Homeless LGBT Youth, and on the Diversity and Inclusion Advisory Board for Sodexo NA. She currently serves on the Steering Committee of the National Collaboration for Youth and the LGBT Suicide Prevention Task Force of the National Action Alliance for Suicide Prevention. Byard is an award-winning filmmaker, and holds a B.A. from Yale University and a Ph.D. in US History from Columbia University. She lives with her partner and their two children in New York City.

Vickie Henry

vickiehenrys15Vickie Henry is the Youth Initiative Director and a Senior Staff Attorney at Gay & Lesbian Advocates & Defenders (GLAD). GLAD works in New England and nationally through strategic litigation, public policy advocacy, and education, to create a just society free of discrimination based on gender identity and expression, HIV status, and sexual orientation. Ms. Henry works to ensure that LGBTQ youth are safe, affirmed, and celebrated wherever they are—schools, the community, the child welfare system and the juvenile justice system. Ms. Henry also was instrumental in the “business amicus” brief filed by over 275 employers in the United States Supreme Court in Windsor v. United States. She and GLAD have worked to implement Windsor and to ensure marriage equality nationwide.

Prior to joining GLAD, Ms. Henry was a partner at the law firm Foley Hoag LLP, where she focused her practice on intellectual property and commercial litigation. Ms. Henry served as law clerk to the Honorable Denise R. Johnson of the Vermont Supreme Court. Ms. Henry is the recipient of many honors and awards. From 2009-11, she was Chair of the 1,500- member Commercial Litigation Committee of DRI-The Voice of the Defense Bar, the international organization of attorneys defending the interests of business and individuals in civil litigation. She received DRI’s Davis Carr Outstanding Committee Chair Award in 2011. She was named one of Massachusetts Lawyers Weekly’s Top Women of Law in 2012. She received the Massachusetts LGBTQ Bar Association Pioneering Spirit Award in 2008.

Ian Kysel

Portraits of former OSF Fellow Ian Kysel, in New York City, NY on May 31, 2012.
Portraits of former OSF Fellow Ian Kysel, in New York City, NY on May 31, 2012.

Ian Kysel is the Dash/Muse Fellow with the Human Rights Institute and an Adjunct Professor of Law at the Georgetown University Law Center. Before joining the Institute, he was the Aryeh Neier Fellow with the Human Rights Program of the American Civil Liberties Union and the US Program of Human Rights Watch and contributed to the organizations’ legal and advocacy work related to the solitary confinement of children. He is an author or co-author of human rights reports on the solitary confinement of children in prisons and jails in the United States; prison conditions for youth offenders serving life without parole sentences in the United States; and, with the Human Rights Institute, on the resettlement of Iraqi refugees to the United States. He has also published on the rights of international migrants and is a co-chair of the steering committee of the International Migrants Bill of Rights Initiative, which is based at Georgetown. His academic research interests include children’s rights, the human rights of international migrants and the intersection of U.S. constitutional law and the enforcement of human rights obligations.

Ian has testified before state, federal and international bodies and his human rights work has regularly been the subject of reporting, editorials and opinion pieces in the press, including in The New York Times and The Washington Post, as well as television news magazines and public radio. He has worked on a range of constitutional, international, human rights and migration law issues with non-profit organizations, the U.S. federal government, international organizations, and in the private sector.

Ian graduated magna cum laude from Georgetown, where he was a Global Law Scholar and received a J.D., a Certificate in Refugees and Humanitarian Emergencies and the Bettina Pruckmayr Award. He is a Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Swarthmore College.

Alexander Reinert

alexanderreinerts15Alexander Reinert is a Professor of Law at the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law, where he teaches courses in constitutional law, civil procedure, and civil rights. Prior to joining the Cardozo faculty, as an associate at Koob & Magoolaghan for six years, Professor Reinert focused on prisoners’ rights, employment discrimination, and disability rights. Upon graduating from law school, he held two clerkships, first with the Hon. Harry T. Edwards, D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals, and then with United States Supreme Court Justice Stephen G. Breyer.

Professor Reinert conducts research in the areas of constitutional law, civil procedure, and criminal law. His articles have appeared in the Indiana Law Journal, Law and Contemporary Problems, Northwestern University Law Review, Stanford Law Review, the University of Illinois Law Review, and the University of Pennsylvania Law Review, among other journals. Professor Reinert argued before the Supreme Court in Ashcroft v. Iqbal, and has appeared on behalf of parties and amicus curiae in many significant civil rights cases.

Marcellus McRae

marcellusmcraes15Marcellus McRae is a partner in the Los Angeles office of Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher. He is Co-Chair of the firm’s White Collar Defense and Investigations Practice Group and a member of the firm’s Litigation, Labor and Employment, and Media and Entertainment Practice Groups. Mr. McRae’s litigation and white-collar criminal defense practices focus on a wide variety of business disputes, internal investigations, and criminal prosecutions including defense of individuals and corporations in cases involving allegations of: financial fraud, public corruption, violation of federal and state environmental laws, health care fraud, wrongful death, criminal antitrust violations, and other matters. He also represents and advises employers in a broad range of employment and labor matters including gender and race discrimination cases, wrongful termination and whistleblower claims, sexual harassment cases, and retaliation claims.

Mr. McRae has first chaired numerous jury trials, bench trials, and arbitrations in both federal and state courts. He recently successfully represented as co-lead trial counsel California schoolchildren in Vergara v. State of California in asserting a state constitutional challenge to laws that prevent school administrators from hiring and retaining the most effective teachers.  He also writes and speaks on trial and litigation skills, white-collar criminal defense, labor and employment law, and other topics. From 1995 until joining Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher in February 1998, Mr. McRae served as an Assistant United States Attorney with the Criminal Division, Major Frauds Section, of the United States Attorney’s Office in Los Angeles. While he was an Assistant United States Attorney, Mr. McRae investigated and prosecuted complex white-collar crimes (tax, securities, bankruptcy, and other business frauds) and traditional crimes that involved both jury and non-jury trial experience with a 100 percent conviction rate at trial. He also drafted numerous appellate briefs filed in the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals and had several arguments before the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. Prior to joining the United States Attorney’s Office, Mr. McRae was an associate with Debevoise & Plimpton.   He received his law degree from Harvard Law School in 1988 and earned a B.A. degree summa cum laude in 1985 from the University of California at Los Angeles, where he was elected to Phi Beta Kappa.

Thomas Kane

tomkanes15Thomas Kane is an economist and Walter H. Gale Professor of Education at the Harvard Graduate School of Education.  He is faculty director of the Center for Education Policy Research, a university-wide research center that works with school districts and state agencies.  Between 2009 and 2012, he directed the Measures of Effective Teaching project for the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.  His work has spanned both K-12 and higher education, covering topics such as the design of school accountability systems, teacher recruitment and retention, financial aid for college, race-conscious college admissions and the earnings impacts of community colleges.  From 1995 to 1996, Kane served as the senior economist for labor, education, and welfare policy issues within President Clinton’s Council of Economic Advisers. From 1991 through 2000, he was a faculty member at the Kennedy School of Government.  Kane has also been a professor of public policy at UCLA and has held visiting fellowships at the Brookings Institution and the Hoover Institution at Stanford University.

Nicole Pittman

NicolePittmanNicole Pittman is a leading national expert who has spent the past 10 years doing groundbreaking work questioning the wisdom of placing children on sex offender registries. Nicole has provided expert testimony on the Adam Walsh Child Protection Act and sex offender notification and registration laws as they relate to children to over 30 states and before United States Congress. She has also presented widely on these issues to juvenile advocates, law enforcement, victim advocates and scientists.

As a Soros Senior Justice Advocacy Fellow at Human Rights Watch, Nicole interviewed hundreds of youth sex offenders across the country to document the abuses that stem from subjecting children to sex offender registration laws. Pittman’s 2013 Human Rights Watch report entitled, Raised on the Registry: The Irreparable Harm of Placing Children on Sex Offender Registries in the US, is the first comprehensive examination of the harm of placing children on sex offender registries, and features first-person narratives to illustrate the harrowing treatment of children, as young as 8, 10, and 12 years old, subjected to lifetime sex offender registration and public notification. In May 2014, Nicole received a Stoneleigh Fellowship with National Council on Crime & Delinquency (NCCD). The primary goal of Nicole’s the 3-year fellowship project is to dismantle the practice of placing children on sex offender registries in the U.S. She will also be working to build a strong collaboration between a range of disciplines, and a diverse group of individuals directly affected by sexual harm, to help create an alternative scheme, other than registration, to handle child-on-child sexual harm in a manner that attends to the needs of victims, responsible youth, their families/guardians, and communities.

Nicole, a graduate of Duke University and Tulane Law School, has held staff positions at the Juvenile Justice Project of Louisiana and the New Orleans Public Defender Office. From 2005 – 2011, Nicole worked as the Juvenile Justice Policy Analyst Attorney for the Defender Association of Philadelphia directly under Robert Listenbee, the current Administrator of the Department of Justice’s Office of Juvenile Justice & Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP).

Marsha Levick

marshalevickrf13Marsha Levick is the co-founder, Deputy Director and Chief Counsel of Juvenile Law Center, the oldest public interest law firm for children in the United States. For more than 35 years, Levick has been an advocate for children’s and women’s rights and is a nationally recognized leader in juvenile law. Levick has authored or co-authored numerous briefs before the US Supreme Court as well as many other federal and state courts, includingRoper v Simmons, striking the juvenile death penalty; Graham v Florida, striking juvenile life without parole sentences for non-homicide crimes; JDB v North Carolina, requiring consideration of youth status in the Miranda custody determination; and Miller v Alabama, striking mandatory juvenile life without parole sentences in homicide cases. Levick has also written many scholarly articles on children and the law. Levick has led Juvenile Law Center’s work addressing the Luzerne County, PA “kids for cash” judges’ scandal, believed to be the largest judicial corruption scandal in American legal history. Levick serves on the board of several national non-profit organizations, including the Southern Poverty Law Center and the Juvenile Justice Project of Louisiana, and is a member of the Dean’s Council of the Indiana University School of Public and Environmental Affairs. Levick has received numerous awards for her work, including recognition from the Philadelphia, Pennsylvania and American Bar Associations, the American Association for Justice, and was the co-recipient of the Philadelphia Inquirer 2009 Citizen of the Year Award. Levick was also named the inaugural recipient of the 2013 Arlen Specter Award, established by the Legal Intelligencer to recognize the lawyer or judge who has done the most to promote the law, the legal profession or justice in Pennsylvania in the last ten years. Levick is also an adjunct professor at both the University of Pennsylvania Law School and Temple University Beasley School of Law.

Jeffrey Butts

jeffreybuttss15Jeffrey Butts (Ph.D., University of Michigan) is director of the Research and Evaluation Center at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice, City University of New York (CUNY). His research focuses on discovering and improving policies and programs for youth involved in the justice system. Previously he was a research fellow with Chapin Hall at the University of Chicago, director of the Program on Youth Justice at the Urban Institute in Washington, D.C., and senior research associate at the National Center for Juvenile Justice in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He began his career in Oregon, first as a juvenile court drug and alcohol counselor in Eugene and then as a public child welfare caseworker in Portland. He is a member of the juvenile justice subcommittee to the Science Advisory Board for the Office of Justice Programs, U.S. Department of Justice, and from 2010 to 2012 he served as a member of the committee on assessing juvenile justice reform for the National Research Council of the National Academies. Since 1990, Dr. Butts has managed more than $16 million of research projects and worked with policymakers and justice practitioners in 28 states. He has published two books, dozens of book chapters and reports for philanthropic foundations and government agencies, as well as peer-reviewed articles in journals such as the American Journal of Criminal Law, Crime and Delinquency, Criminal Justice Policy Review, Judicature, Law & Policy, Juvenile & Family Court Journal, Youth & Society, and Children and Youth Services Review. His research findings and policy views have been covered by the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, the Chicago Tribune, the San Francisco Chronicle, the Miami Herald, thePhiladelphia Inquirer, USA Today, the Economist, the Guardian, Le Monde, Christian Science Monitor, BusinessWeek, US News & World Report, Time Magazine, CNN, National Public Radio, and the American Prospect, among others. Jeffrey Butts is a native of Springfield, Ohio.

Joshua Dohan

Joshua Dohan is the Director of The Youth Advocacy Division (YAD) of the Committee for Public Counsel Services (CPCS). Joshua Dohan became a public defender in 1988 and joined YAD (at that time the Youth Advocacy Project), at its inception, as its first staff attorney in 1992 and assumed the role of Director in 1999. YAD’s 450 lawyers and social workers use a Youth Development Approach to advocating for all indigent children and youth accused of crimes in Massachusetts. Mr. Dohan is on the Board of Directors of Citizens for Juvenile Justice and is President of the Board for the Youth Advocacy Foundation. He is a member of the Community Advisory Board of the Institute on Race and Justice (Northeastern University) and a member of the Advisory Committee for the Brennan Center’s Community Oriented Defender Network. He also serves on the Institutional Review Boards for Tufts University. In 2001, YAD became the first Juvenile Defender organization to win the Clara Shortridge Foltz award for outstanding achievement from the National Legal Aid and Defender Association. In 2011, Massachusetts was recognized as a Champion for Justice by the MacArthur Foundation for creating one of the first statewide juvenile defender departments in the country.

Molly Baldwin

mollybaldwins15Molly Baldwin is the Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Roca, Inc., an organization committed to helping disengaged and disenfranchised young people move out of violence and poverty. A graduate of UMass, Amherst, Molly began her professional life as a street worker and community organizer, and soon founded Roca in 1988. For over twenty-six years, she has been a tireless advocate, mentor, and community convener, reaching out to the highest-risk young people in Massachusetts’ most dangerous urban communities, and bringing together the major institutions, corporations, and agencies that affect these young people’s lives. With the help of engaged institutional partners and a committed team of youth workers, Molly’s efforts at Roca have helped over 20,000 young people transform their lives.

Today, Roca is the primary service provider for the Massachusetts Juvenile Justice Pay for Success Project, a social innovation financing model that aims to reduce recidivism among high-risk young men and move them towards sustained employment. Roca intensively reaches out to over 700 participants each year, operating on the singular belief that people can change in spite of seemingly insurmountable circumstances.

Molly has been the recipient of numerous regional and national awards and has been recognized as one of the Boston Globe’s Top 100 Innovators for 2013. She holds a Master’s Degree in Education from Lesley University and an honorary Ph.D. from Salem State University.