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Williams Institute Staff
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R. Bradley
Sears, Executive Director
Brad Sears
is the Executive Director of the Williams
Institute and a lecturer in courses on disability law
and sexual orientation law at UCLA School of Law. Sears
graduated summa cum laude from Yale University and magna
cum laude from Harvard Law School. During college and
law school, he completed internships with the Center for
Constitutional Rights, Lambda Legal Defense and
Education Fund, the Jamaica Plain Legal Services
Center's AIDS Unit, the ACLU's National Gay and Lesbian
and AIDS Project, and the Neighborhood Defender Service
of Harlem. He also served as Editor-in-Chief of the
Harvard Civil Rights-Civil Liberties Law Review. After
law school, Sears moved to Los Angeles and clerked for
the Hon J. Spencer Letts of the Central District of
California. In 1996, he created the HIV Legal Checkup
Project, a legal services program dedicated to
empowering people living with HIV to address and prevent
legal problems. The HIV Legal Checkup Project provided
preventive legal services to over 800 clients per year
and over 100 UCLA School of Law students received
training through volunteering with the Project. In 1997,
Sears also became the Discrimination & Confidentiality
Attorney for the HIV/AIDS Legal Services Alliance of Los
Angeles (HALSA). In this capacity, he litigated and
settled HIV-discrimination cases, ending the
discriminatory practices of a number of medical
practices, schools, and residential care facilities. His
work also included settlements that resulted in mandated
HIV-training for 22,000 Los Angeles County employees,
the overturning of the City of Los Angeles'
discriminatory denial of licenses to HIV-positive
massage therapists, and the end of a major credit
reporting company's policy of disclosing consumers'
HIV-status on credit reports. He has also served on the
board of directors or advisory boards for Being Alive
Los Angeles, HALSA, USC's AIDS Education Training
Center, and CorrectHelp, an organization dedicated to
the needs of incarcerated persons living with HIV/AIDS.
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Christine Littleton,
Faculty Chair
Christine Littleton regularly teaches courses on women and
the law, sexual harassment and feminist legal theory in the
Law School and the Women’s Studies Programs. She has also
taught Contracts, Remedies, Employment Discrimination,
Disability Rights and Sexual Orientation and Law. From 1993
to 1996, she served as Director of the undergraduate Women's
Studies Program and since 1999 has chaired the expanded
Women's Studies Programs, overseeing the undergraduate and
graduate programs at UCLA. Littleton was a founding member
of the Board of Directors of the California Women's Law
Center, and still participates as a volunteer attorney and
consultant there. An active member of the California Bar
since 1982, she has assisted numerous public interest
organizations and attorneys in cases involving
discrimination on the basis of sex, race, pregnancy, sexual
orientation, and HIV status, and has received awards for
public interest legal work and feminist education. Since
moving to Orange County in 1997 she has replaced some of her
pro bono legal work with volunteer work in other areas,
including establishing a monitoring site for Monarch larva,
and with memorizing freeway exits. Before law school,
Littleton enjoyed a series of brief and ill-paid careers as
a high school teacher, legal secretary, and part-time actor.
While in law school, she was a member of the Harvard Law
Review and managing editor of the Harvard Women's Law
Journal. She clerked for the Honorable Warren J. Ferguson,
U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. Current
research interests include equality theory in feminism, law
and public discourse.
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Lee Badgett, Research Director
M. V. Lee Badgett is the
research director at the Williams Institute. She is also the
director of the Center for Public Policy and Administration
and associate professor of economics at the University of
Massachusetts Amherst. She has a BA in economics from the
University of Chicago (1982) and a PhD in economics from UC
Berkeley (1990). Her book, Money, Myths, and
Change: The Economic Lives of Lesbians and Gay Men
(University of Chicago Press) presents her ground-breaking
work on sexual orientation discrimination and family policy.
Her new book, When Gay People Get Married: What Happens
When Societies Legalize Same-Sex Marriage (NYU Press),
draws on U.S. and European
experiences with same-sex marriage and
asks whether
same-sex marriage will change marriage or change GLB people.
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Nan D. Hunter, Legal Scholarship
Director
Nan Hunter is a professor of law at Georgetown
University Law Center. She teaches and writes
in three areas: health law; state regulation of sexuality
and gender; and procedure. Three of her recent articles
focused on health law have ranged in topic from a critical
analysis of new arbitration-style systems that allow
patients to challenge denials of treatment, to an
application of new governance theory to current trends in
the public health field, to a re-interpretation of the role
of deference to medical authority in the Supreme Court’s
opinion in Roe v. Wade. In addition to scholarship,
Professor Hunter’s experience in health law includes service
as Deputy General Counsel for the U.S. Department of Health
and Human Services from 1993 to 1996, and appointment to the
President's Advisory Commission on Consumer Protection and
Quality in the Health Care Industry. Professor Hunter’s work
in the area of sexuality and gender law has been published
in the Michigan Law Review, the Harvard Civil Rights-Civil
Liberties Law Review, the Virginia Law Review, the
Georgetown Law Journal, the Minnesota Law Review, the Ohio
State Law Journal, and several anthologies. With William Eskridge, she wrote first casebook to conceptualize the
field as embodying a dynamic relationship between state
regulation, sexual practices, and gender norms. In the field
of procedure, Professor Hunter is the author of The Power of
Procedure, which has been widely adopted for law school use
throughout the United States.
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Gary Gates, The
Williams Distinguished Scholar
Gary Gates, The
Williams Distinguished Scholar, co-authored The
Gay and Lesbian Atlas. His doctoral dissertation
included the first significant research study of the
demography of the gay and lesbian population using US Census
data. His work on that subject has been featured in many
national and international media outlets. He
holds a PhD in Public Policy from the Heinz School of Public
Policy and Management at Carnegie Mellon University along
with a Master of Divinity degree from St. Vincent College
and a BS in Computer Science from the University of
Pittsburgh at Johnstown.
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Matt Strieker, Development
Director
Matt Strieker joins the Williams Institute from
Thurlow/Associates, where he served as lead fund
development consultant on five capital and general
operating campaigns for regional and national nonprofit
organizations, including think tanks, healthcare
providers and youth development agencies. Formerly, he
served as development director for the Mexican American
Legal Defense and Educational Fund (MALDEF). In addition
to raising funds for the agency’s national litigation
and policy work, Matt also supported development of new
programs and infrastructure improvement projects related
to communications, new technologies and human resources.
While at MALDEF, Matt also served as a staff attorney,
representing immigrant and Latino clients in voting
rights and school reform litigation, as well as before
various local and state legislative bodies. Earlier,
Matt was a research associate at the Institute on Race &
Poverty at the University of Minnesota Law School.
Focusing primarily on state and federal housing reform,
he drafted various policy reports and briefs, which
informed active litigation and proposed legislation in
Minnesota and other parts of the country. A graduate of
the Georgia State University College of Law, Matt begun
his legal career as a judicial clerk and is admitted to
practice in California, Georgia and Minnesota. In
addition to his work at the Williams Institute, Matt
also supports the efforts of various LGBT organizations.
He is a board member for the Lesbian and Gay Lawyers
Association of Los Angeles, as well as a member of the
Young Professional's Council, which promotes the work of
the Los Angeles Gay and Lesbian Center.
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Katie Dowd, Development Associate
Katie Dowd joins the Williams Institute while also
working for UCLA Law School as the Events Coordinator.
Prior to joining the UCLA Staff, Katie worked at the
American Bar Association in Chicago where she provided
meeting planning and administrative support to the Law
Student Division Director. In addition, Katie worked
with elected Law Student Leaders to plan 15 annual
networking events for law students and served as their
liaison between students, faculty and community leaders.
Aside from her professional experience, she volunteers
by fundraising and planning events for various charities
in her community. Because of her commitment to public
service, Katie was honored with the prestigious Cardinal
George Award for exemplary compassion and community
service in the Chicagoland area. Katie graduated from
St. Mary's College, Notre Dame, IN with a degree in
Communication Studies and History where her senior
thesis explored civil rights in the Middle East. She
plans to eventually pursue an advanced degree in Public
Affairs.
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Randy M. Bunnao,
Education Coordinator
Randy Bunnao completed a Master of Science
in Public Policy & Management at Carnegie Mellon
University in 2003. Prior to graduate school, he was a
Coro Fellow in Public Affairs in New York City where he interned for the NYC Department of
Cultural Affairs, Bloomberg Radio, and the Working
Families Party. He received his B.A. in Sociology from
the University of California, Santa Cruz in 1998. During
college, he did a summer internship with Los Angeles
City Councilwoman Jackie Goldberg. He is also a
recipient of the Public Policy & International Affairs
Fellowship Program where he completed a summer institute at the University of
Maryland, College Park, School of Public Policy.
Before the Williams Institute, Randy served as
a program coordinator at The Institute for Pure and
Applied Mathematics at UCLA.
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Deseree
Fontenot, Administrative Assistant
Deseree graduated with Honors from the University
of Southern California with a degree in English and
minor in Cinematic Arts. While at USC, Deseree was the
Executive Director of the Gay Lesbian Bisexual
Transgender Assembly, a division of student government
that focused on advocating for the rights of queer
students on campus through academic, political, and
cultural programming. Deseree also served as the
Communications Director for USC’s LGBT Resource Center.
Deseree plans to pursue a graduate degree in Gender
Studies.
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Michael D. Steinberger, Public
Policy Fellow
Michael Steinberger is an Assistant Professor of
Economics at Pomona College. He graduated from the
University of California at Berkeley with degrees in
Economics, Political Science and Statistics in 1999. He
earned a Ph.D. in Economics from the Massachusetts
Institute of Technology in 2005. Michael’s research is
in the area of empirical labor economics, with an
emphasis on wage inequality. His current projects
explore causes for gay and lesbian differences in wages,
labor force participation, unemployment, occupational
choice and work hours. Michael is the recipient of
Pomona’s Wig Distinguished Professor Award for
Excellence in Teaching, an MIT Economics Fellowship and
a Sloan Dissertation Fellowship.
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Naomi Goldberg, 2008-2010 Peter J.
Cooper Public Policy Fellow
Naomi Goldberg is the 2008-2010 Peter J. Cooper
Public Policy Fellow. She has authored a number of
reports at the Institute. Her studies, estimating the
economic impact of prohibiting unmarried couples from
adopting and fostering children, have informed state
policy in Kentucky, Florida and elsewhere . In addition,
Naomi has also co-authored several studies on the topic
of domestic partner benefits. Her report, estimating the
cost of providing domestic partner benefits to the
same-sex partners of federal employees, was recently
introduced before a congressional committee considering
domestic partnership legislation. Naomi received a
Master of Public Policy from the Gerald R. Ford School
of Public Policy at the University of Michigan and
graduated magna cum laude from Mount Holyoke College.
Naomi’s work has been published in PolicyMatters, the UC
Berkeley Goldman School of Public Policy journal, and
the Michigan Journal of Public Affairs.
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Alexandra Lang Susman, 2009 Law Teaching Fellow
Alexandra Lang Susman researches and writes on the ways in
which minority communities co-exist, resist and dialogue
with the dominant culture and legal regime. Before
joining the Williams Institute, Alexandra was an
associate at the Los Angeles law firm of Munger, Tolles
& Olson, where she focused on complex commercial
litigation. At Munger, Alexandra also served as pro bono
general counsel for a Los Angeles area rape crisis and
domestic violence center, represented a transgender
survivor of domestic violence in obtaining a U-Visa, and
advised undocumented lesbians on their ability to seek
asylum. Alexandra received her A.B. with Honors in
Comparative Literature from Brown University, where she
was awarded the Rosalie Colie Prize for Outstanding
Scholarship on an Honors’ Thesis. She continued her
studies of Comparative Literature at Stanford University
as a doctoral candidate and lecturer. Alexandra received
her J.D. from the University of Southern California,
where she graduated Order of the Coif and served as
Executive Articles Editor of the Southern California Law
Review. After graduating, she served as a law clerk for
the Honorable Raymond C. Fisher on the Ninth Circuit
Court of Appeals. She is the author of “Revolutionary
Fictions? Rearticulating the Nation: Rereading Quarup as
a Foundational Fiction,” Law and Literature (forthcoming
2009), and “No Strings Attached: An Analysis of the Eruv
Under the Religion Clauses of the First Amendment and
the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons
Act,” University of Maryland Law Journal of Race,
Religion, Gender & Class (forthcoming 2009).
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Kim Pearson, 2008 Law
Teaching Fellow
Kim Pearson's research and writing interests are
post-colonialism and sexuality, lesbians in patriarchal
systems, the imputation of sexuality on minors, and
sexualized violence in custody disputes. Kim completed
her B.A. in English at the University of Utah. She also
earned her M.A. in British and American Literature from
the University of Utah. During her M.A. program, Kim
studied critical theory with Professor Kathryn Bond
Stockton, worked as a Teaching Assistant in the
Asian-American Studies Department, and ran a
collaborative workshop for book artists and creative
writers. Kim graduated from the J. Reuben Clark Law
School at Brigham Young University where she was a
senior editor of the BYU Law Review and worked as a
research assistant for Professor Fred Gedicks. Kim
practiced law in Las Vegas from 2005 to 2008 in a family
law firm. In 2006, Kim published an article called
"Patriotic Homosocial Discourse" which appeared in the
William and Mary Journal of Women and the Law.
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Christopher Ramos, Research Associate
Christopher Ramos received his B.A. from
Pomona College in 2008 with a degree in Sociology -
Public Policy Analysis. His undergraduate research
focused on communities of color and racial inequalities;
culminating in his honors thesis, The Latino/a Home
Owning Class: Navigating Wealth, Securing Property, &
Utilizing Social capital. Professionally,
Christopher has interned with such organizations as
Equality California, El Colegio Público San Cristóbal,
in Madrid, Spain, and the Housing Rights Center of Los
Angeles. As a 2007 Public Policy & International Affairs
Fellow, Christopher plans to obtain an advanced degree
in public policy.
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Christy Mallory, Legal Research
Fellow Christy Mallory received her J.D. from
UCLA School of Law in 2008, where she was a Dean’s Merit
Scholar. Christy's research at the Williams Institute
focuses on sexual orientation and gender identity
discrimination against state and local government
employees. During law school, Christy worked at the
Children’s Law Center of Los Angeles assisting dependent
youth and a plaintiff’s side employment firm where she
focused on disability and race discrimination cases.
Christy received her B.A. in Psychology from the
University of Arizona, graduating Phi Beta Kappa and
magna cum laude.
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Stephanie Plotin, Williams
Institute Librarian
Stephanie Plotin is a reference librarian at the UCLA
Law Library and manages the Williams Institute Reading
Room and Collection on Sexual Orientation Law and Public
Policy. Stephanie received both her law degree and her
library & information science degree from UCLA, and
received her B.A. from Smith College. She is an
instructor for the Advanced Legal Research course
offered at the Law School. Prior to joining the Law
Library, Stephanie practiced law at the Legal Aid
Foundation of Los Angeles, focusing on workers’ rights
issues. She has also worked as an immigration attorney
in a private immigration firm.
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Todd Brower, Judicial Training
Consultant
A
professor of Constitutional Law at Western State
University College of Law in Fullerton, California, Todd
Brower
has an LL.M from Yale Law School, a J.D. from Stanford
Law School, his A.B. from Princeton University, and was
a Fulbright scholar in France. Professor Brower serves
on the California Judicial Council - Access and Fairness
Advisory Committee and is the author of various
publications on the treatment of lesbian, gay, bisexual
and transgender persons in the courts of the United
Kingdom and California.
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Darren Mitchell,
Judicial Training Consultant
Darren Mitchell is Co-Executive Director of the Legal
Resource Center on Violence Against Women (LRC) and a
consultant on domestic violence issues. The LRC, based
in Takoma Park, Maryland, is a national nonprofit that
provides training and technical assistance to attorneys
and others who assist survivors of domestic violence in
complex interstate custody cases. From 2001 to 2004,
Darren managed the National Center on Full Faith and
Credit (NCFFC), a Washington, D.C.-based national
training and technical assistance project of the
Pennsylvania Coalition Against Domestic Violence. Prior
to that, Darren was a staff attorney with the NCFFC, a
consumer advocate, a litigator in private practice, and
a clerk to a federal district court judge.
Darren’s areas of expertise include protection order
issuance and enforcement, full faith and credit,
firearms and domestic violence, and interstate custody.
Over the past nine years, he has trained judges,
attorneys, advocates, and other professionals and has
published various papers on these topics. Darren
is a graduate of Stanford Law School (J.D. 1995),
Harvard University (M.A. 2001), and UCLA (B.S. 1988).
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Click
here
to view bios of our Former
Fellows. |
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Faculty Advisory Committee
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Stuart Biegel |
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Sharon Dolovich |
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Russell Robinson
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Devon Carbado |
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Cheryl Harris |
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William B. Rubenstein |
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Kimberlé Crenshaw |
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Gia Lee
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Seana Shiffrin |
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David Cruz
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Gary
Rowe |
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Jonathan Varat |
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