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.
 

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.



 

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.

 

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.

Faculty Advisory Committee

David Cruz