Mauricio Albarracín is an attorney at the Universidad Industrial de Santander in Colombia, where he studies philosophy.  His work focuses on the rights of the LGBT community, socio-legal research, constitutional law, monitoring human rights, and public interest litigation.  He has worked as a judicial assistant in the Colombia Constitutional Court and as a researcher at the Center for Law, Justice, and Society.  He worked as an attorney for Colombia Diversa, where he wrote two reports on the human rights of LGBT people and participated in the litigation strategy for the recognition of same-sex couples.

Dante Alencastre is a Director and Producer.  He was born in Lima-Peru and emigrated to the USA in 1976.  He graduated from Columbia University with a B.A. in French Literature and Drama.  While at Columbia, Alencastre began his career as a theater director.  Following his graduation from Columbia, he continued his theater studies in Paris at the RADA and Theatre Lucernaire. In 2007, Alencastre embarked on his life’s ambition to make a documentary on the plight of the LGBT community in his native country.  The fruit of that quest is EN EL FUEGO (2007) which had its world premiere at OUTFEST in Los Angeles on July 14, 2008.  It has since been screened in Austin, New York, Long Beach, Lima, Barcelona, Auckland, Boliva, San Francisco, Mexico City, and Bogota.

Amanda Alquist is currently attending law school at the University of La Verne College of Law.  Her article, “The Honeymoon is Over, Maybe for Good:  The Same-Sex Marriage Issue Before the California Supreme Court,” is forthcoming in Volume 11 Issue 4 Chapman L. Rev. (2008).  Her article, “The Migration of Same-Sex Marriage from Canada to the United States: An Incremental Approach,” is forthcoming in Volume 30 Issue 1 University of La Verne L. Rev. (2008).  Her article, “Same-Sex Marriage in California:  The California Supreme Court Decision and the Next Step Toward Equality,” was published in Volume 58 Number 8 Riverside Lawyer (Sept. 2008).

Jose Fernando Serrano Amaya is an anthropologist at the Universidad Nacional de Colombia in Bogotá.  He has an MA in Conflict Resolution and Peace Studies from the University of Bradford in the United Kingdom.  His research and teaching focus on gender, sexuality, youth, identity, violence, and peace building.  Since 2007, he has been involved in the formulation and implementation of public policy on LGBT Bogotá, participating in the drafting of the guidelines, the Framework Act, and its action plan, as well its monitoring system.  At present, he is also conducting a review of the two years since the implementation of the Strategy LGBT Community Center in Bogotá.  In 2008, he received Scholar of the Year Award by the Bureau of LGBT Bogotá and the Mayor of Bogotá.

Oliver Anene is a 22 year old graduate of Geology, and a visible youth advocate for health rights and LGBTI equality in Nigeria.  He has volunteered with Alliance Rights Nigeria since 2005, and has partaken in series of researches on sexual behaviors and sexuality in Nigeria.  These have provided him with valuable experience on Nigeria’s sexuality issues and made him an ardent writer of the annual ‘MANGO ISSUES” articles, by the Male Attitude Network (MAN).  MAN was formed by Mr. Oliver in 2005, to provide solitude and comprehensive counseling sessions to members of the various support groups under the network.  With membership including MSM, Drug addicts, Single male parents, and other men with challenging mental and social problems, he has been trained to provide professional counseling for these men.  He lives in Abuja, Nigeria.

Alejandra Azuero is a lawyer at the Universidad de los Andes.  Alejandra has experience with teaching law, in litigation, strategic sociological research, as well as working directly with communities, minorities, and acting nationwide.  Alejandra worked as a judicial assistant in the Colombian Constitutional Court and as a research for the Center for Law, Justice, and Society.  Alejandra was involved in the litigation strategy for the recognition of rights for same-sex couples.  Alejandra currently serves as a consultant to the United Nations Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM) and International Organization for Migration (IOM).

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. She’s currently working on a new book asking whether same-sex marriage will change marriage or change GLB people, drawing on the U.S. and European experiences with same-sex marriage.

Stefan Baral, MD, MPH, MBA, MSc, is a Post-Doctoral Fellow at the Center for Public Health and Human Rights in the Department of Epidemiology at the JHSPH.  While Stefan provides primary HIV clinical care in Toronto, his research focus has been on evaluating the HIV epidemic among men who have sex with men in lower income settings.  In collaboration with local LGBT rights groups, he designed and is coordinating a cross-sectional probe of HIV prevalence, determinants of infection, and human rights contexts of MSM in four sites across Southern Africa.  He is also providing technical support to LGBT groups interested in generating epidemiologic and human rights data across the African continent.

Paulo Biagi is the Director of the “Brazil Without Homofobia” Program, Secretary of State for Human Rights of Presidency of the Republic. The mission of the Program “Brazil Without Homofobia” is to combat and identify human rights violations of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender persons in Brazil, including unlawful killings, torture, rape, violence, disappearances, and discrimination in accessing health care and other economic, social and cultural rights.

Adam Bodnar PhD, LLM, is the head of the Legal Division at the Helsinki Foundation for Human Rights, Warsaw, Poland, and at the same time associate professor at the Warsaw University, Human Rights Chair. Since 2005 he has been involved in litigation of all important cases concerning LGBT persons in Poland, including landmark case of Bączkowski v. Poland, decided by the European Court of Human Rights. He co-authored report on legal aspects of homophobia in Poland, prepared by the Helsinki Foundation for Human Rights for the EU Agency of Fundamental Rights. He teaches a course at the Warsaw University on “Legal, social and political aspects of sexual minorities’ protection in Poland”.

Ally Bolour has been practicing immigration law since 1996 when he was admitted to the California State Bar.  He  graduated from Southwestern University School of Law and is a member of the American Immigration Lawyers Association, the Los Angeles County Bar Association, and the Los Angeles Gay and Lesbian Lawyers Association.  He is the co-chair of the International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission (IGLHRC) based in NY.  Since 1998, he has volunteered at and taken pro bono cases for the Los Angeles Gay and Lesbian Center and the HIV & AIDS Legal Services Alliance (HALSA).  Mr. Bolour has participated as a guest speaker in various immigration-related seminars sponsored by several associations, including the National Immigration Project, Harvard University LGBT Policy and Law Conference, and Lavender Law Project. 

Caroline Bowley was born in Zambia. At birth she was classified as male and grew up and lived in the role of a male up until the age 37. Caroline had always felt at odds with her gender but did not know why. At 33, through the internet she discovered that she was transgender and started to make contact with other transgendered people and at age 35 started to transition. Caroline had her Gender Reassignment surgery at 43 and now lives full time as a woman.  Caroline has worked for the South African Air Force as aircraft an instrumentation technician. She has done a degree in Theology and did community development in an informal settlement in Cape Town. She has also worked for 2 companies developing, maintaining and administering telecommunications equipment.

Mauro Cabral is a writer from Cordoba, Argentina. His academic work is focused on biotechnological issues within legal frameworks. As an activist, he participates in different regional initiatives (such as the Latin American Consortium on Intersex Issues, Mulabi, the Latin American Space for Sexualities and Rights, and Trans Men on Activism), and in several international coalitions. In November 2006 he took part in the writing of the Yogyakarta Principles. He has edited Interdicciones. Escrituras de la intersexualidad en castellano.

Carlos F. Caceres, MD, PhD, is a professor of Public Health at Cayetano Heredia University, and Director of the Institute of Studies in Health, Sexuality and Human Development. He has more than 20 years of experience in research on HIV/AIDS, sexual health and sexuality, with a focus on sexual diversity and young people. He was the co-PI of the NIMH Collaborative HIV/STI Prevention Trial for the Peru Site, in collaboration with Dr. Coates at UCLA. He has been a consultant for UNAIDS, WHO, UNPD and USAID, and has published a number of books, book chapters and papers in English, Spanish and Portuguese. A recent focus of his work is the intersection between a human rights framework for sexual diversity and the need for enabling environments for HIV prevention and care among sexually diverse groups. He is the Chair of the Board of the International Association for the Study of Sexuality, Culture and Society.

Erik Werner Cantor is an Anthropologist who teaches sociology at the Universidad Nacional de Colombia y en la Universidad Pedagógica  Nacional.  He is the Executive Director of the Corporation Promoting Citizenship, an organization working on human rights and sexual and gender diversity, including research, education, and influencing public policy.  He is a human rights defender and author of the book The Faces of Homophobia in Bogotá: Decoding the human rights situation of homosexuals, lesbians, and transgender person, Homophobia and Coexistence in The School, and Guidelines on Teaching Sexuality Education.

Gloria Careaga, ILGA Co-Secretary General. She has a master in Social Psychology. She is a teacher and researcher at the Faculty of Psychology of the National Autonomous University of Mexico. In this university she introduced the studies on sexuality-human rights and society. Her main studies have been developed within the gender and sexuality studies. She has many articles and books published in these fields.  She has been active within the feminist and lgbt movements since the 80s. Her broad participation in the UN arena since the early 90s has brought her to be active in different spaces as International conferences, CSW, CEDAW, UNGASS and Human Rights Council.  As researcher she has been a consultant and member of advisory board for a number of international organizations such as IGLHRC and Astrea. She is now a member of the Sexuality Policy Watch Board.

Sueann Caulfield is an Associate Professor of History at the University of Michigan.  Her publications include articles on race and gender in  Latin America, particularly Brazil, and two books, In Defense of Honor: Morality, Modernity, and Nation in Early Twentieth-Century Brazil (Duke University Press, 2000) and the co-edited volume, Honor, Status, and Law in Modern Latin American History (Duke University Press, 2005), with Sarah Chambers and Lara Putnam.  She recently held a National Endowment for the Humanities fellowship for her research on the transformation of social and legal conceptions of legitimacy and family in twentieth-century Brazil.

Daniel Y.C. Chen is a LLM student at the National Taiwan University, Taipei, Taiwan (graduation expected in June, 2009). He finished his LL.B degree also in National Taiwan University in 2005 and has been admitted to the Taiwan Bar since 2006. His primary research interests are Constitutional Law, Administrative Law and International Human Rights Law. He also actively participated in international academic activities and has participated in two moot court competitions held respectively in HK and the U.S. in 2007.

Martha Miravete Cicero is President of Grupo de Mujeres de la Argentina, the Women’s Group of Argentina, Forum on HIV, Women, and Family.  She is a speaker on the topics of health, HIV/AIDS, human rights and gender issues.  She is a member of the Latin American Observatory of Prisons.

Thomas J. Coates co-founded the Center for AIDS Prevention Studies at the University of California, San Francisco in 1986 and directed it from 1991 to 2003. He was the founding Executive Director of the UCSF AIDS Research Institute, leading it from 1996 to 2003. His areas of emphasis and expertise are HIV prevention, the relationship of prevention and treatment for HIV, and HIV policies. His domestic work has focused on a variety of populations, and he is currently finishing a nationwide clinical trial of an experimental HIV preventive intervention focused on high-risk men. He is also finishing domestic trials of post-exposure prophylaxis. With funding from USAID and WHO, he led a randomized controlled trial to determine the efficacy and cost-effectiveness of HIV voluntary counseling and testing for individuals and couples in Kenya, Tanzania, and Trinidad. He is now directing a 48-community randomized clinical trial in South Africa, Zimbabwe, Tanzania, and Thailand to determine the impact of strategies for destigmatizing HIV on HIV incidence community-wide.

Constantin Cocjocariu holds a bachelor’s degree in law from the University of Iasi, Romania (2000), a MA in Public Policies from the same university (2002) and a LLM in Human Rights from the Central European University in Budapest, Hungary (2003). He has worked for a number of Romanian human rights organizations such as Pro Democracy Association and Equal Opportunities for Women Foundation. Between 2005 and 2007 he worked as Staff Attorney for the European Roma Rights Centre, having been involved in a number of topical Strasbourg cases concerning Roma rights. Currently, he works as a lawyer for London-based INTERIGHTS on cases concerning LGBT and disabled people’s rights.

Catherine Connell is a PhD candidate in Sociology at the University of Texas at Austin.  She is currently writing her dissertation, "School's Out: A Qualitative Exploration of Workplace Sexuality Through LGBT Teachers", which asks how LGBTQ teachers negotiate their identities in an occupational context that treats queer sexualities as incompatible, even dangerous, for one's work.  She is the chair of Campus Coalition for Sexual Literacy, a student-run advocacy group that promotes sexuality studies and sex education. Additionally, she teaches "Race, Class, Gender, and Sexuality in America", which addresses the intersections of inequality and identity.

Tatiana Cordero is a human rights attorney in Ecuador and the Executive Director of Corporation Promotion de la Mujer/Taller de Comunicacion Mujer. Taller de Comunicacion Mujer (TCM) is a feminist collective that was born in 1984 with the intent of joining forces of middle and working class women to assert women’s rights in Latin America with a specific focus on Ecuador. In 1999, TCM, along with other feminist groups in Latin America, organized the Women’s Tribunal for Sexual Rights. Recently, TCM has worked to ensure that lesbian sexuality is discussed and put on the agenda of the women’s movement in Ecuador.

Javier Corrales is an associate professor of Political Science at Amherst College.  Currently, he is a Visiting Scholar at the David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies at Harvard University.   With Mario Pecheny, he is editing a volume on the The Politics of Sexuality in Latin America:  A Reader.  He is also the author of Presidents Without Parties: the Politics of Economic Reform in Argentina and Venezuela in the 1990s.  In 2005, he was a Fulbright Scholar in Venezuela, and then, a lecturer at the Center for Research and Documentation on Latin America, in Amsterdam.  In 2000, he became one of the youngest scholars to be selected as a Fellow at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars.  He has also been a consultant for the World Bank, the United Nations, the Center for Global Development, Freedom House, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.  He serves on the editorial board of Latin American Politics and Society and the Americas Quarterly.

Sonia Corrêa is Brazilian. She has a degree in Architecture and a post- grade in Anthropology.  Since the late 1970´s she has been involved in research and advocacy activities related to gender equality, health and sexuality. She is the founder of various non-governmental initiatives in Brazil.  Since 2002 she co-chairs, with Richard Parker,  Sexuality Policy Watch – previously named  International Working Group on Sexuality and Social Policy – a global forum comprised of researchers and activists engaged in the analyses of  global trends in sexuality related policy and politics.  In the 2003 -2004 period she was directly with the process related to the resolution on human rights and sexual orientation tabled by Brazil in the UN Human Rights Commission. In 2006 she co-chaired the expert meeting that finalized the Yogyakarta Principles.  Her publications includes Population and Reproductive Rights: Feminist Perspectives from the South and Sexuality, Health and Human Rights co-authored with Richard Parker and Rosalind Petchesky.

Jose Ramon Merentes Correa is a Political Scientist, specializing in International Relations and Women’s Rights. He is a former coordinator of the LGBT Network within Amnesty International, Venezuelan Section and a former member of Coordinating Team, advisory group for AI on LGBT issues worldwide. He was a lecturer on “Éthics and Discrimination” at Gay Games, Sydney, 2002 (World Conference on Human Rights, organized by Amnesty International) and an advisor to the National Assembly on the reform of the Venezuelan law on gender violence.

Professor Jane Cross is an Associate Professor of Law and Director of the Caribbean Law Programs at Nova Southeastern University Law Center. She is presently the Secretary, an Executive Committee Member and an Advisory Board Member for the American and Caribbean Law Initiative ("ACLI"). She has also served on the Board of Directors of the Inter-American Center for Human Rights. In fall 2004, she was selected to be the Faculty Chair of the Goodwin Seminars and organized a seminar series entitled "Tradewinds in Caribbean Law: Evolution of Legal Norms and Quest for Independent Justice."

David B. Cruz is Professor of Law at the University of Southern California Gould School of Law and President of the International Lesbian and Gay Law Association (2005-2009).  Professor Cruz holds a B.S. in Mathematics, summa cum laude, and a B.A. in Drama, summa cum laude, from the University of California, Irvine; an M.S. in Mathematics from Stanford University; and a J.D. from New York University School of Law, where he was managing editor of the Law Review and first in his class at time of graduation.  Prior to joining the USC faculty, he clerked for the Hon. Edward R. Becker of the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit and worked in the Office of the Solicitor General of the United States (then, Drew S. Days, III).  His primary areas of scholarship and practice are constitutional law and sex, gender, and sexual orientation law.  Cruz is admitted to the bars of the State of New York and the United States Supreme Court, a past Chair of the American Association of Law Schools Section on Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity Issues, and one of the General Counsel of the national American Civil Liberties Union.  Professor Cruz was the first semester-long visiting scholar at the Williams Institute on Sexual Orientation Law and Policy and is a member of its Faculty Advisory Committee.

Luis M. Torres Cruz Nacido works to support children and young people as well as poor families through the Department of Carazo.  He is also the Administrative Coordinator of the Sexual Diversity Group Carazo.  This organization works through media campaigns and forums to communicate about the sexual diversity in Carazo.

Heloisa Melino de Moraes was born in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, and is a graduate student at Rio de Janeiro’s Federal University (UFRJ). Moraes participates in a Research Group about LGBT’s rights at FND – UFRJ and is a member of one of the LGBT associations at the university.  Moraes is currently an intern at NIAC (Interdisciplinary Nucleus of Actions to promote Citizenship) and at UFRJ. Last year Moraes worked as an intern at a Human Rights Non-Governmental Organization, where I fought homophobic manifestation at my state.

Boris Dittrich is the current Advocacy Director of the LGBT rights program of the Human Rights Watch based in New York City.  He is a former lawyer, judge, and parliament member.  He served as the judge for the district court of Alkmaar, the Netherlands for five years before he was elected as a member of parliament for the social liberal party in 1994.  He became leader of the party in 2003.  Dittrich was one of the first openly gay members of parliament.  While a member of the parliament, he was responsible for sponsoring bills which opened civil marriage and adoption for same-sex couples in the Netherlands.  In 2006, the Dutch Queen granted him knighthood in the Order of Orange Nassau for his political work. 

Tamás Dombos is a junior research fellow at the Center for Policy Studies, Central European University where he has been working on several large scale European comparative research projects on equal opportunities. He is currently involved with the project “Quality in Gender+ Equality Policies (QUING)” which provides a critical evaluation of marriage, partnership and reproductive policies around Europe with a special emphasis on intersectionality, the juncture of several axis of inequality including gender, race/ethnicity, sexuality, disability and class. Tamás is also a member of Háttér Support Society for LGBT people where he has been involved in advocacy work for several LGBT-relevant legislation including the Act on Registered Partnership.

Julie Dorf has been a leader in the LGBT rights movement for twenty years. Julie founded and directed the International Gay & Lesbian Human Rights Commission (IGLHRC) from 1990 to 2000.  She recently helped to create the Council for Global Equality, to ensure an American foreign policy that is inclusive of sexual orientation and gender identity issues, and where she works as a Senior Advisor. As an independent consultant, Julie has worked for Open Society Institute, Global Fund for Women, Arcus Foundation, and Fenton Communications/J-Street Project. Julie currently serves on the board of directors or advisory boards of Human Rights Watch’s Women’s Rights Division, Human Rights Watch’s LGBT Rights Program, IGLHRC, and PowerPAC. 

Kathleen A. Doty is a recent graduate of the University of California, Davis School of Law. Her paper, From Fretté to E.B.: The European Court of Human Rights on Gay and Lesbian Adoption was the first runner up in the 2008 National Lesbian and Gay Law Association Michael Greenberg Student Writing Competition.  She has worked with various community organizations in the Hispanic and French Caribbean and studied abroad at La Universidad de la Habana in Cuba.  She is currently serving as law clerk to the Honorable Alexa D.M. Fujise on the  SEQ CHAPTER \h \r 1Hawai’i Intermediate Court of Appeals.  She is a regular contributor to IntLawGrrls, an international law blog where she comments on LGBT human rights and global health policy.  She is also a founding member of the SEQ CHAPTER \h \r 1Hawai’i Lesbian and Gay Legal Association.

Andrés Ignacio Rivera Duarte is a male transsexual activist, and a pioneer in the struggle of transgender men in Chile.  He founded the first organization for transgender people in Chile and is a now a university lecturer.  He sued the Universidad de Rancagua, thereby setting the precedent for gender identity discrimination in the courts.  He participates in working groups for the OAS along with IGLRHC.  He was internationally recognized by IGLHRC with receipt of the Felipa de Souza Award in 2008.

Andrés Duque is one of the leading Latino LGBT rights advocates in the United States.  As moderator of Latino LGBT News, Duque currently maintains the most comprehensive and up-to-date e-mail network on the topic and has often been quoted as an expert on the topic in the New York Times, El Diario La Prensa, La Opinión and Univisión.  Mr. Duque also blogs at Blabbeando, which has drawn praise for its coverage of LGBT issues throughout Latin America and was recently nominated for a Weblog Award as one of the ten best LGBT blogs in the United States. Mr. Duque is a founder of several organizations, including the Audre Lorde Project community center, the Out People of Color Political Action Committee (OutPOCPAC) and the Colombian Lesbian and Gay Association (COLEGA).  Mr. Duque was named as one of the top 100 LGBT personalities in the United States by Out magazine in 2002 and has also received recognitions from the New York City Council, the Office of the New York City Comptroller, Gay City News and Heritage of Pride.

Douglas Elliot is a co-founder of ILGLaw and was its first president.  He was the founding co-chair of the Lesbian and Gay Issues and Rights Committee of the Ontario Bar Association, and founding co-chair of the Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity Committee of the Canadian Bar Association.  Douglas has represented a diverse range of community organizations in some of Canada's most significant lesbian and gay equality cases in the Supreme Court of Canada and elsewhere, including Vriend v Alberta, M v H, Little Sisters Bookstore v Canada, Trinity Western University v BC College of Teachers and Hall v Powers. Douglas is currently representing the Metropolitan Community Church of Toronto in its equal marriage litigation, and is lead counsel in Hislop v Canada, a nationwide class action seeking same sex survivors' pensions from the Canada Pension Plan. 

Paula L. Ettelbrick is the Executive Director of the International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission, a US-based global organization that engages in and supports global sexual and gender rights advocacy.  She was the legal director at Lambda Legal Defense, policy director at National Center for Lesbian Rights, legislative counsel for the Empire State Pride Agenda, and family policy director at the Policy Institute of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force. Paula has written, lectured and presented extensively about the civil and constitutional rights of lesbians and gay men. She is an adjunct professor of law at New York University Law School, where she teaches Sexuality and the Law.

Stefano Fabeni works with Global Rights, as Director of the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Intersex Initiative. His work has been focusing mostly in Latin America, in Africa (particularly in West Africa), in the Balkans and in South Asia.  Previously, Mr. Fabeni served as the Italian member of the European Group of Experts on Combating Discrimination on grounds of Sexual Orientation. He is the author of several bills introduced to the Italian Parliament in the XIV, XV and XVI legislatures, namely on transgender rights, legal recognition of same sex and de facto couples, and anti-discrimination legislation.

Judith Faucette is a law student at the University of Iowa.  She is looking forward to a career in international gay and lesbian human rights activism and has researched topics including sodomy laws in India and Singapore; non-discrimination in human rights law; a comparison of sexual autonomy in the laws of England, the Netherlands, and the European Court of Human Rights case law; and treatment of women who voluntarily choose sex work under the UN trafficking protocols.  She has studied seven foreign languages, written two novels, and enjoys blogging on human rights issues of particular relevance to lesbians and feminists.

Gary J. Gates is The Williams Institute’s Williams Distinguished Scholar and co-author of 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 is also co-author of a study examining the interplay of diversity and the location and growth of the technology sector. 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.

Federico Godoy, lawyer, leads the Pro-bono Department of Beretta Godoy that represents and advises a group of Human Rights professors and international experts presenting an opinion on equal access to legal marriage for same-sex couples before the Supreme Court of Argentina as Amicus Curiae.  Federico founded and raised funds to sustain a non-profit organization for the promotion of Argentine artists in Argentina and abroad, that over a time span of 10 years resulted in more than 20 exhibitions and substantial sales. Federico also founded and funded Interzona Editora www.interzonaeditora.com, an independent publishing company that in the past 5 years published over 80 titles focusing on contemporary Latin American literature and essays, distributed in the Americas and Spain.

Andil Gosine is interested in "the work of sex."  His research examines how anxieties about sexual identities and practices underpin and rationalize a range of regulatory interventions in the global South.  He is currently completing work on a book, "Toxic Sex: Heteronationalism in A Developing World," and guest editing a special "Sexualities" edition of the Caribbean Review of Gender Studies.  Publications include "Monster, Womb, MSM: The Work of Sex in International Development" (Development), "Mia Mottley speaks (homo) sex: An interrogation of HIV/AIDS scripts on sexuality" (in Gender, Sexuality and HIV/AIDS: The Caribbean and Beyond),  and "'Race', culture, power, sex, desire and love: Writing in 'men who have sex with men'" (IDS).

Helmut Graupner is an attorney and President of Rechtskomitee LAMBDA and co-director for Europe of the International Lesbian and Gay Law Association.  He has successfully litigated several gay-rights cases before the European Court of Human Rights (L. & V. vs. Austria 2003; S. L. vs. Austria 2003; Woditschka & Wilfling vs. Austria 2004; Franz Ladner vs. Austria 2005, Thomas Wolfmeyer vs. Austria 2005; H.G. & G.B. vs. Austria 2005, R.H. vs. Austria 2006), before the European Court of Justice (Tadao Maruko vs. VdBB 2008) and before the Austrian Constitutional Court (age of consent; police data storage; same-sex partner rights, transsexual marriage).  He has co-edited the books Sexuality & Human Rights - A Global Overview and Adolescence, Sexuality & the Criminal Law - Multidisciplinary Perspectives.

Richard Green, MD, JD, is a professor at the Imperial College Faculty of Medicine, London.  He formerly taught at Cambridge University and UCLA.  For a decade, Dr. Green directed the world’s largest program for the treatment of transsexuals, with over 1000 patients and three sex reassignment operations a week.   Authored “Sexual Science and the Law”, Harvard University Press, 1992 and 200 other publications, primarily in the area of sexual behavior.

Professor Greenberg is an internationally recognized expert on the legal issues relating to gender, sex, sexual identity and sexual orientation. Her path-breaking work on gender identity has been cited by a number of state and federal courts, as well as courts in other countries. Professor Greenberg joined the Thomas Jefferson faculty in 1990 and was the Associate Dean for Faculty Development from 2003-2005. She serves on a number of nonprofit organizations’ boards of directors and has also been involved in a variety of community service projects relating to the rights of women and sexual minorities. Professor Greenberg’s work on behalf of LGBTI rights was recognized by the Tom Homann Association in 2006 when it presented her with the “Friend of the Community” award. She also was voted by her peers as one of San Diego’s Top Attorneys in Academics for 2006 and 2008.

Moninne Griffith is the Director with MarriagEquality, a single-issue organization working for equal marriage rights for same-sex couples in Ireland.  At MarriagEquality, Moninne manages the mobilization, communications and legal functions of the organization.  Moninne worked on the Irish Equality Authority’s report on Enabling Lesbian, Gay and Bisexual individuals to access their rights under the Equality law. In the past, Moninne volunteered for Women's Aid which provides support and information to women and their children who are being abused in their own homes and currently volunteers for the Free Legal Advice Centres in Dublin.  Moninne holds a BCL from UCD, was admitted to the roll of solicitors in 1998 and since then completed an MA in Women’s Studies in 2007.

Michael Guest is a senior advisor to the Council for Global Equality, which seeks stronger U.S. support for LGBT equality at home and abroad.  Before joining the Council, Mr. Guest served as a career Department of State Foreign Service Officer, with senior-level duties including Ambassador to Romania, Dean of the Department’s Leadership and Management School, and Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary for Legislative Affairs.  He retired from the Department in 2007 in protest of policies that discriminate against LGBT partners.  Mr. Guest recently served on President Obama’s State Department Transition Team.  He and his partner of 13 years, Alex Nevarez, reside in Washington.

Alok Gupta currently practices as an Advocate in the Bombay High Court. He has been involved with the queer movement in India for the last ten years. He has written extensively on S.377 of the Indian Penal Code that criminalizes sodomy. He has worked as a research assistant in the past with Justice Edwin Cameron of the Supreme Court of Appeal in South Africa, now elevated to the Constitutional Court of South Africa in the summer of 2002 and 2003. He clerked with Justice Albie Sachs of the Constitutional Court of South Africa from July-December 2007. He recently researched and wrote a report titled "This Alien Legacy: the Origins of 'Sodomy' Laws in British Colonialism", published by the Human Rights Watch.

Cheryl I. Harris teaches at the UCLA School of Law. Professor Harris was the National Co-Chair for the National Conference of Black Lawyers for several years and was a key organizer of several major conferences both in South Africa and in the United States that helped establish a dialogue between U.S. legal scholars and South African lawyers during the development of South Africa's first democratic constitution in 1994. She is the author of Whiteness as Property (Harv. L. Rev.) and her work has taken up the relationship among race, gender and property and most recently has focused on race, equality and the Constitution through the re-examination of Plessy v. Ferguson and Grutter v. Bollinger. Professor Harris is the recipient of the ACLU Foundation of Southern California 2005 Distinguished Professor Award for Civil Rights Education.

Tamara M. Adrián Hernández is a Venezuelan lawyer.  She is a professor of law at the Universidad Católica Andrés Bello and at the Universidad Central de Venezuela in undergraduate and postgraduate and doctoral studies.  She is author of several articles concerning banking and financing, capital markets, insurance, international licensing, copyrights and commercial law, and LGTTTBI and gender rights. As a transsexual woman, she has been fighting for the legal recognition of her own identity, in a manner different than the current "marginal note" on the birth certificate, which keeps intact the original certificate and does not change any other documents (diplomas, etc.).

Presiding Justice Carol W. Hunstein was appointed to the Supreme Court of Georgia in November 1992 and is the second woman in history to serve as a permanent member of the Court. Prior to joining the Supreme Court, she served on the Superior Court of DeKalb County, Georgia.  In 1989, she was to Chair the Georgia Commission on Gender Bias in the Judicial System, which issued its report to the Supreme Court in 1991. She is a former district director of the National Association of Women Judges (NAWJ). She currently chairs the Georgia Commission on Access and Fairness which is charged with implementing the recommendations of the Commission on Gender Bias and the Commission on Racial and Ethnic Bias.

Nan D. Hunter is Professor of Law at Georgetown University Law Center and Legal Scholarship Director at the Williams Institute for Sexual Orientation Law and Policy at UCLA Law School.  She was the founding Director of the ACLU LGBT Rights and AIDS Projects, and served from 1993 to 1996 as Deputy General Counsel at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. She is co-author of the casebook, Sexuality, Gender and the Law, now in its third edition. Her articles have appeared in the Michigan Law Review, the Harvard Civil Rights-Civil Liberties Law Review, the Georgetown Law Journal, the Minnesota Law Review, the Virginia Law Review, and the NYU Law Review, among others.  Professor Hunter was awarded the first NLGLA Dan Bradley award. In her spare time, she blogs at hunter of justice.

Lucas Paoli Itabotahy has studied English and international relations. He has been working as an English teacher. During his studies he focused on human rights issues and social movements and led a research on the discrimination of black people and homosexuals in the member countries of the former UN Human Rights Commission. He wrote his dissertation about the legalization of same-sex marriage in Spain, analyzing the international, transnational and domestic influences on the internalization of a same-sex union norm by the Spanish government and society.

Nellsen Jong was born in Malaysia and lived there for his entire life until he managed to escape and gained political asylum in the United States, based on anti-gay persecution. He is  now working with Professor Walter Williams on some ideas and strategies how to get the Malaysian government and other anti-gay nations to change its policies, by building national and international boycott against homophobic persecution in Malaysia. His goal is to become a leading activist on the international scene, working to end persecution of LGBT brothers and sisters around the world so that never again will people have to suffer what he and others have had to endure.

Nayia Kamenou is from Cyprus and is a second year full-time PhD student in the Department of European Studies at King’s College London.  Her MSc dissertation, which received a distinction mark, was titled “Perils and Promise: What role could the invocation of human rights play for the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender (LGBT) Movement?” The topic of her PhD research is the construction of national identities, genders and sexualities in Cyprus in light of its Europeanization, and the role of the European legal system towards LGBT substantive-beyond mere legal- equality. Dr. Jan Palmowski of the King’s College School of Humanities, and Professor Robert Wintemute of the King’s College School of Law co-supervise my project.

David Kaye is the Executive Director of the UCLA School of Law International Human Rights Program. For more than a decade, David Kaye served as an international lawyer with the U.S. State Department, responsible for issues as varied as human rights, international humanitarian law, the use of force, international organizations, international litigation and claims, nuclear nonproliferation, sanctions law and policy, and U.S. foreign relations law. From 1999 to 2002 he was the principal staff attorney on humanitarian law, handling issues such as the application of the law to detainees in Guantanamo Bay and serving on several U.S. delegations to international negotiations and conferences. The State Department honored him with four of its prestigious Superior Honor Awards. He has also written numerous articles and book chapters in the area of international human rights, and has published essays and op-eds in such publications as The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, International Herald Tribune, Foreign Policy, Middle East Insight and The San Francisco Chronicle.

Pouline Kimani works with the Kenya Human rights commission as a consultant on sexual and reproductive health and rights. An activist on equality and non discrimination, she fronts for the recognition and inclusion of sexual minorities (Lesbian Gay Bisexual Transgender Intersexes and Queer identities).  A volunteer with the Gay and Lesbian Coalition of Kenya (GALCK), she has engaged in direct campaigns through networks in Africa to promote and protect LGBTI rights while negotiating within a feminist frame work of deconstructing negative socialization of sexuality.

Justice Michael Donald Kirby was the longest serving justice of the  High Court of Australia. First appointed to federal judicial office in 1975, he had served in a succession of federal and State judicial offices, including as President of the New South Wales Court of Appeal. He also served as President of the Court of Appeal of Solomon Islands. Between 1995 and 1998 he was President of the International Commission of Jurists when that organisation adopted sexual orientation and HIV status as major concerns for its mandate. He was Special Representative of the Secretary-General of the United Nations for Human Rights in Cambodia and placed HIV issues at the head of human rights concerns. He presently serves on the Global Reference Panel on Human Rights of UNAIDS and was a member of the inaugural WHO Global Commission on AIDS. He was awarded the Australian Human Rights Medal in 1991 and named laureate of the UNESCO Prize for Human Rights Education in 1998.  So far as is known, he is the first openly gay man to serve as a judge on any final national court.

Dimitry Kochenov is an Assistant Professor of European Law and a fellow of the Groningen Graduate School of Law. He focuses on  European non-discrimination and equality law, EU citizenship law, and EU external relations law.  He consulted the government of the Netherlands on the application of EU law in the overseas possessions of the Kingdom. His recent publications include EU Enlargement and the Failure of Conditionality and Schurende Rechtsordes: Over de Eurpese Unie, het Koninkrijk, en zijn Caribische gebieden as well as articles in Columbia J. Eur. L., Boston Coll. Int'l & Comp.L.Rev., J. Cont. Eur. Res. and others.

Craig Konnoth is a second-year law student at the Yale Law School, and the National Co-Chair for the Student Division of the National Gay & Lesbian Law Student Association. Craig has worked with the International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission and the ACLU-LGBT Project on various assignments and has clerked for both organizations. At Yale, Craig works as an Activism co-chair for OutLaws, and is working to put together an LGBT Litigation Clinic. His research and writing centers on the early gay rights movement, and international human rights law.

Geoff Kors is the Executive Director at Equality California (EQCA). Prior to EQCA, Geoff was a partner in a California civil rights law firm. During that time he originated and orchestrated passage of San Francisco’s landmark Equal Benefits Ordinance. Geoff has served as director of both the Gay and Lesbian Rights Project and the AIDS and Civil Liberties Projects of the Roger Baldwin Foundation of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Illinois. At EQCA, he directs legislative efforts which have given LGBT Californians the most comprehensive civil rights protections in the nation.  Geoff also oversees EQCA's Political Action Committee activities and educational work with the EQCA Institute, including the Let California Ring campaign. He has appeared on hundreds of television and radio programs and has been quoted extensively in the media.

Kathleen Lahey is a professor of law, cross-appointed to women’s studies at Queen’s University, and the author of Are We ‘Persons’ Yet?  Law and Sexuality in Canada (Univ. of Toronto Press 1999), The Impact of Relationship Recognition on Lesbian Women (Status of Women Canada 2006), and numerous articles on LGBTTI issues.  She specializes in human rights, equality, and public policy law, and acted for some of the BC couples in the Canadian same-sex marriage litigation.

Máximo Langer is a Professor at the UCLA School of Law. While at the University of Buenos Aires, Professor Langer served as a legal clerk in Argentinean Federal District Court No. 2, and after graduation, worked in criminal defense as an associate and a partner  with Gottheil & Asociados in Buenos Aires. Before leaving Argentina for Harvard, he also served as director of the Non-Conventional Offenses Program at the Institute for Comparative Studies in Criminal and Social Sciences and worked as legal advisor to the Commissions of Justice and Criminal Law under Argentinean Congressman Jose Cafferata Nores. His teaching career began at the University of Buenos Aires where he served as a graduate teaching fellow, and continued at Harvard, where he was a Teaching Fellow under Professor Carol Steiker, and a Byse-Rockefeller Center Fellow.

Akim Adé Larcher is a Canadian social activist who values the principles of equality, justice, and social responsibility. Born in St. Lucia, he immigrated to Toronto, Canada in 1999. He is the Equity and Diversity Coordinator at Egale Canada, the national LGBT human rights organization. As a recent law graduate and 2008 Golbal Youth Fellowship recipient, Akim is interested in the aspects of gender as it inter-relates with economic, social, political, religious and legal spheres. He is the founding member of the Stop Murder Music (Canada), a coalition of human rights organizations advocating against “murder music” which targets the LGBT communities and is also a member of Egales Legal Issues Committee.

Holning Lau will join the University of North Carolina as Associate Professor of Law in July, 2009.  He is currently Associate Professor of Law at Hofstra University.  Lau completed his B.A. at the University of Pennsylvania and received his J.D. from the University of Chicago where he was named a Stonewall Scholar for excellence in his work related to sexual orientation rights and was awarded the Ignacio Martín-Baró Award for the best human rights paper by a professional or master’s degree student.  Lau served as the 2006-2007 Harvey S. Shipley Miller Teaching Fellow and a 2005-2006 Public Policy Fellow at UCLA School of Law’s Williams Institute on Sexual Orientation Law & Public Policy.  Professor Lau has worked for the Hong Kong Human Rights Monitor, Children Rights, and the law firm of Debevoise & Plimpton in New York.

Nicole LaViolette teaches public international law, international humanitarian law, conflicts of laws and family law. Her research and publications are devoted mainly to international human rights, international humanitarian law, and the rights of refugees. She is also interested in lesbian and gay legal issues, international feminist theory and transnational family law.  Prior to joining the faculty, Prof. LaViolette worked as a legislative assistant in the House of Commons and collaborated with both governmental and non-governmental organizations specializing in human rights. She is a graduate of the University of Ottawa's Faculty of Law and Carleton University. She was a law clerk to Justice Alice Desjardins at the Federal Court of Appeal of Canada before completing a graduate degree at Cambridge University.

Robert Leckey is an assistant professor in the Faculty of Law, McGill University, where he teaches and conducts research in family law, constitutional law, and comparative law. He is a former law clerk to Mr. Justice Michel Bastarache of the Supreme Court of Canada. His book, Contextual Subjects: Family, State, and Relational Theory, was published by University of Toronto Press in 2008. He is the chair of the McGill Equity Subcommittee on Queer People and a member of the legal issues committee of Egale Canada.

Mónica León is an Argentinine transgender activist.  From 1993 through 2004, she worked for several human rights NGOs and was a spokesperson for GLTTTB Argentina’s March of Pride from 2001, 2002, and 2003.  León was the manager of the Gondolin Hotel in Argentina from 1998 through 2003 and established the Gondolin Civil Association which seeks to help the homeless transgender community of Buenos Aires by offering them free housing.  In 2005, while living in Paris, León and her partner were refused a marriage license by the French government.  She is currently studying to be a lawyer and volunteers for the French Red Cross.  She has been HIV+ since 1994 and, in her current position with the Red Cross, she helps to ensure that health care is available for female transgender sex workers in France.

Justice Virginia L. Linder serves on the Oregon Supreme Court and is the first woman to obtain a seat on that court through a contested election. Previously, she was a Judge on the Oregon Court of Appeals. She participated in the briefing and argument preparations for Oregon on seven cases in the United States Supreme Court; she personally briefed and argued Dept of Revenue v. ACF, 510 US 332 (1994); and she co-authored Oregon's amicus brief in Romer v. Evans, 116 S Ct 1620 (1996), in which Oregon took the lead for several states in urging the unconstitutionality of Colorado's anti-gay rights state constitutional provision.  Justice Linder is the first openly LGBT person elected to statewide office in Oregon, the first open lesbian member of a state supreme court in the nation, and the first openly LGBT person to be elected to a state's highest court as a non-incumbent.

Christine Littleton teaches courses on women and the law, sexual harassment and feminist legal theory at UCLA.  Littleton was a founding member of the Board of Directors of the California Women's Law Center, where she is still a volunteer and consultant. A 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. 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.

Scott Long is director of the LGBT Division of Human Rights Watch.  He has lobbied the United Nations on sexual rights issues; his work led to U.N. human rights mechanisms agreeing publicly for the first time to take up gay and lesbian concerns.  As program director of the International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission, he edited or co-authored reports on LGBT parenting, and on the use of sexuality to target women's and feminist organizing.  In 2006, Long was the principal author of a report on binational same-sex couples and the discrimination they face in U.S. immigration law, amid a fierce religious and social backlash against recognition of same-sex relationships in the United States. Long has also produced a widely-used manual introducing grassroots activists to international human rights systems.  He has written and published extensively on issues of sexuality, culture, and human rights. 

María José Lubertino is currently President of Instituto Nacional contra la Discriminación, la Xenophobia y el Racismo (INADI), a position she has held since 2006, Assistant Professor in charge of lecture in CBC (University of Buenos Aires) and Assistant Professor of Human Rights and Elements of Civil Law at the Faculty of Law, University of Buenos Aires. She was National Deputy (2003), constituent of the City of Buenos Aires (1996) and President of the Committee Tripartite for Equality between Men and Women in the Workplace (2001-2002). Among other activities carried out in public duties and in NGOs, she coordinated projects with international financing from UNIFEM, UNFPA and Italian Cooperation.

Fatma E. Marouf is an immigration attorney and focuses on asylum and deportation defense.  Fatma has extensive experience arguing cases before the immigration courts, Board of Immigration Appeals, and Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals.  She will be co-teaching the Immigration Clinic at the University of LaVerne School of Law in Spring 2009.  Fatma also volunteers with the Los Angeles Gay and Lesbian Center, providing free legal advice on immigration issues. She clerked for the Honorable Consuelo B. Marshall, then Chief Judge of the United States District Court for the Central District of California, and is a graduate of Yale University and Harvard Law School.

Salvatore Marra was born in Southern Italy and graduated with full marks in Oriental Languages and Civilizations at University “La Sapienza” in Rome. Salvatore then started working at Federazione CEMAT and was Responsible for International Relations. He has been an activist of civil rights and environmental movements for several years, beginning with his involvement in Trade Union Actions in 2000. Salvatore currently works for the CGIL (Italian General Confederation of Labour) as the New Rights Officer for Rome and Lazio and is in charge of LGBT, HIV+ workers, drug addiction and secularism issues within the trade union and has been a board member of CGIL Roma e Lazio since 2006.

Wamala Dennis Mawejje is a human rights defender and a researcher majoring in social research. He is the current office administrator of Icebreakers Uganda-an LGBTI organization in Uganda.  He has worked on a number of projects, including the LGBTIQ response challenges to discrimination and stigma in Uganda. 

Penny Miles is currently in the second year of a PhD program at Cardiff University, School of Social Sciences.  She is studying judicialization processes in relation to LGBTTI issues in Chile. This follows an MSc obtained in Latin American Politics in ILAS, University of London and a BA in Hispanic Studies/French at Liverpool University.  She is also a qualified Spanish-English Interpreter.  Her research interests include citizenship, and political and judicial institutions in Latin America, with a special focus on Chile, and gender and sexuality. Her first article is awaiting publication.

Alice M. Miller is currently a Lecturer in Residence at UC Berkeley School of Law and a Senior Fellow at Boalt’s Thelton E. Henderson Center for Social Justice.  At Columbia University, she directed the Center for the Study of Human Rights and the Human Rights Concentration at the School of Public and International Affairs (SIPA) and worked as an Adviser to the Sexual Health and Rights Project (SHARP) of the Open Society Institute. Miller has also worked for over 20 years on staff or as a board member with non-governmental organizations working on human rights in the US and globally. Her scholarship and policy work has addressed gendering humanitarian law, rights-based anti-trafficking policies, and abolition of the death penalty, women’s rights, sexual rights, sexual and reproductive health and LGBT rights. She publishes regularly in both scholarly and activist venues on these topics.

Shannon Price Minter is the Legal Director of the National Center for Lesbian Rights, one of the nation's leading advocacy organizations for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people. Shannon was lead counsel for same-sex couples in the marriage case recently decided by the California Supreme Court, which held that same-sex couples have the fundamental right to marry and that laws that discriminate based on sexual orientation are inherently discriminatory and subject to the highest level of constitutional scrutiny. Shannon was also NCLR's lead attorney on Sharon Smith's groundbreaking wrongful death suit and has litigated many other impact cases in California and across the country. Shannon serves on the American Bar Association Commission on Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity. He also serves on the boards of Equality California and the Transgender Law & Policy Institute.

Argelis del Socorro Montano Ortega works for the Center for AIDS Education and Welfare in Nicaragua.

Maria Federica Moscati is a PhD candidate in Law at the School of Oriental and African Studies in London. Her research, which draws on themes in Comparative Family Law, Human Rights and Legal Anthropology, is entitled: Pasolini’s Premonitions: Legal Issues of Same-Sex Unions and their Dissolution in Comparative Perspective. Maria Frederica is an attorney in Italy and a former Programme Officer for Save the Children Italy. Currently, she teaches on courses in the areas of comparative law, human rights, and family law.  Ms. Moscati participated last year in the Summer School on Sexual Orientation and Law, held in Amsterdam. Ms Moscati is a member of Avvocatura LGBT (Lawyers for LGBT rights) an Italian association for legal support for, and implementation of, LGBT rights.

Douglas NeJaime researches and writes on antidiscrimination law and social movement lawyering, with a focus on gay rights and women’s rights.  He also teaches Law & Sexuality at the UCLA School of Law.  Before joining the Williams Institute, Doug was an associate at the Los Angeles law firm of Irell & Manella, where he focused on intellectual property litigation.  At Irell, Doug also represented women’s rights organizations in same-sex marriage litigation around the country.  He is the author of “Marriage, Cruising, and Life in Between: Clarifying Organizational Positionalities in Pursuit of Polyvocal Gay-Based Advocacy,” which appeared in the Harvard Civil Rights-Civil Liberties Law Review, and co-author of “Sex Stereotypes in Same-Sex Marriage Jurisprudence,” which appeared in the Harvard Journal of Law & Gender.

Abdelaziz Nouaydi is a professor of law and Political science at the Universities of Fez and Rabat-Sale , Morocco.  He is a lawyer at Rabat Bar (trials related to human rights & press freedom, homosexual rights, terrorism, etc) and a founding member of the Moroccan Organization of Human Rights.  He is a  Coordinator of the main three Moroccan Human Rights NGOs and in the Follow-up Committee of the work of Instance Equity and Reconciliation. He is an International elections observer with NDI-Carter Center delegation to Palestinian presidential elections and President of a new Moroccan NGO “Justice” aiming at monitoring and improving the laws and practices related to the right to a fair trial.  He is also a member of the National Council of Transparency Morocco.

Pepe Julian Onziema is a Human Rights Defender in the field of LGBTI rights advocacy since 2003. He went into frontline activism in 2007 when he began to volunteer at Sexual Minorities Uganda (SMUG) as the Administrator. He was recently appointed The Program Director. He holds a Diploma in Procurement/Shipping and a Certificate in Grants Writing. He has volunteered as a VCT youth counselor, and has attended several trainings and meetings both local and international on various issues of social change. His current interest is research on Female Genital Mutilation.

Olga I. Orraca-Paredes, a lesbian, lives in Puerto Rico and has been dedicated to community work for over 35 years. She co-founded and coordinates Taller Lésbico Creativo, a group of lesbians who use art as a tool for social change.  She also coordinates the Pride Rainbow Coalition, which organizes the Pride Parade in Puerto Rico.

Daniel Ottosson is a master student of law at Södertörn University in Stockholm. He is the author of the ILGA report State-sponsored Homophobia, which focuses on the current sodomy laws around the world. This report is updated and published in May each year in connection with the International Day Against Homophobia. Previously Daniel has been involved in international issues within the Swedish Federation for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Rights (RFSL).

Dr. Nan Palmer Ph.D. ACSW/LMSW is a Professor of Social Work, Department of Social Work, School of Applied Studies, Washburn University.  Dr. Palmer has been a social worker for over 38 years having practiced in child welfare and mental health with a specialty in working with survivors of trauma.  Doctoral research examined the presence of resiliency in adult survivors of alcoholic homes.   Interests include on-going study in the field of trauma, animal assisted therapy, and GLBT issues.

Dean Peacock has developed and implemented many projects on gender and HIV/AIDS in both the United States and his native South Africa over the last fifteen years. In the U.S., he founded and directed the Men Overcoming Violence Youth Program, co-authored The United States Agenda for the Nation on Violence Against Women, and developed and coordinated the Building Partnerships Initiative to End Men's Violence for the Family Violence Prevention Fund. He currently is affiliated with both Sonke Gender Justice Network and UCLA's Program in Global Health, and works as a consultant to the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. In March 2006, Dean co-founded Sonke Gender Justice, an organization focused on gender, HIV/AIDS, and human rights now implementing projects in all of South Africa's nine provinces and across Southern Africa; he currently serves as co-director responsible for the organisation's advocacy and policy work and its research and evaluation activities. In July 2006, Dean joined the UCLA Program in Global Health.

Kim Pearson is the 2008-2010 Law Teaching Fellow at The Williams Institute.  Her 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 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.

Belissa Andía Perez is a transgender activist focusing Rights of Trans people and the foundress of “Red Carnation” and an NGO Runa Institute member that raises thematic trans in its Sexual Diversity Programme.  She was Elected as ILGA- LAC Regional Secretary and  later elected for the Trans Secretariat in ILGA’s World Conference. She postulated to her Country Parlament allowing highlight the LGBT agenda. She lives in Lima, Peru.

Germán Humberto Rincón Perfetti is a Human Rights attorney, professor, and the current international representative of ILGLaw- Latin America. Born and raised in Bogotá, Colombia, Mr. Perfetti graduated with his law degree from the University Militar Nueva Granada and obtained a degree in human rights from the University of Rosario. In 1998, Mr. Perfetti returned to the University of Rosario as a professor specializing in the international human rights of people with HIV/AIDS. He has participated in conferences around the world and has reported Colombian human rights violations to the UN. Mr. Perfetti has published several papers on human rights and sexuality and same-sex marriage in Colombia. He has also assisted members of the transgender community in making legal name changes. Mr. Perfetti formerly served as the Coordinator of the Department of Human Rights and Juridicial Advisor of the Colombian League against AIDS. He is currently a legal representative, juridicial advisor, and lecturer with G&M of Colombia Lawyers.

Hari Phuyal is a practicing lawyer in Nepal and works with the ICJ Program Office in Nepal. He holds LL.M from the University of Essex, the UK in International Human Rights Law and NLSIU, Bangalore, India on Constitutional Law. He has worked as a legal consultant to the National Human Rights Commission, Nepal and National Legal Advisor to OHCHR-Nepal Office. He represents human rights litigation in the courts of Nepal and advises to other organizations on human rights issues. He has authored books and articles on rule of law and human rights.

Susel Paredes Piqué is currently studying Constitutional Litigation.  Piqué has a law degree from the Universidad Nacional Mayor de San Marcos.  In addition to the law degree, Piqué holds master’s and doctoral degrees from Universidad Complutense de Madrid and a second master’s degree from the Amazon UNMSM.  Piqué is presenting involved fighting stigma, discrimination, and barriers to treatment on behalf of people with HIV/AIDS.  Piqué is the founder of the Association LTGB Legal.

Federico Podeschi has spent the last two years as Managing Director of the LGBT Excellence Centre Wales, developing a social enterprise model for delivering LGBT equality and human rights in Wales and is currently developing an International Leadership Network for LGBT people.  He is also Honorary Consul of San Marino in Wales , president of LGBT San Marino, and a council member of Stonewall Cymru and has over ten years experience in the equality and diversity arena.

Eszter Polgári is a researcher and lecturer in the Legal Studies Department, Central European University, and teaches human rights courses in the CEU Roma Access Program as well as at Faculty of Social Sciences of the Eötvös Loránd University. Since 2001, she has been active in monitoring human rights in Hungary, currently she is one of the national expert of the Fundamental Rights Agency. Her current research area is the jurisprudence of the European Court of Human Rights, in particular the role of the European consensus in gay and transsexual rights cases. Eszter has also been involved in advocacy work for various LGBT-relevant legislation, including the Act on Registered Partnership.

Jairo Mauricio Pulecio Pulgarin is a specialist in constitutional law at the Universidad Nacional de Colombia.  His work focuses on gender studies.

Orly Rachmilovitz is an S.J.D. candidate at the University of Virginia School of Law. Her research focuses on family law, law and sexuality, and children and the law. She holds degrees in law (LL.B.) and psychology (B.A.) for Haifa University in Israel and a Master of Laws (LL.M. with honors) from the UCLA School of Law. Ms. Rachmilovitz's practical experience includes a clerkship at a Jerusalem court and fellowships at Learning Rights Law Center in Los Angeles, CA and at the University of Virginia Institute of Law, Psychiatry and Public Policy.

Justice Bala Ram K.C. has served as Justice of the Nepalese Supreme Court since 2005. Judge Balaram K.C. was a member of the court in December, 2007 when the court issued a decision ordering the government to end discrimination against sexual minorities. Immediately prior to 2005, Justice Balaram K.C. worked in the private legal sector as an attorney and arbitrator for several years. Between the years 1974 and 2000, before he entered the private sector, Judge Balaram K.C. held a number of government positions including Senior Government Advocate, Joint Government Advocate, and Special Prosecutor of the Office of the Attorney General and a Legal Advisor in the Department of Mines. 

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. 

Brian Ray is an Assistant Professor of law at Cleveland-Marshall College of Law.  His work focuses on theoretical and practical issues surrounding the South African Constitutional Court’s enforcement of the Bill of Rights provisions in South Africa’s post-apartheid constitution.  Brian has published in the Human Rights Law Review and has an article forthcoming in the Stanford Journal of International Law.  Brian has presented his work at the Law and Society Association (2008), the South Africa Reading Group hosted by New York Law School (2008), the Comparative Law Works in Progress Workshop co-sponsored by the University of Michigan Law School, the Princeton University Program for Law and Public Affairs, the American Society of Comparative Law and the University of Illinois College of Law (2008), and the American Association of Law Schools’ 2009 conference.

Leonardo J. Raznovich is a Principal Lecturer in law at Canterbury Christ Church University.  He has been Lovells Visiting Lecturer in Anglo-American Law (2002-2003) at the School of Law of Heinrich Heine Universität, Düsseldorf, Germany and Visiting Professor (2007) of the Catholic University of Valparaiso in Chile. Currently, he is the head of Law and Dispute Resolution at Canterbury Christ Church University. He has developed a research interest in international private law and the recognition of same sex marriages across jurisdictions and has served in the LGBT Action Group of the Kent Police in the U.K. as its academic advisor. He is currently co-leading with Professor Robert Wintemute of King's College, University of London, a group of Human Rights professors and international experts who is to present an opinion on equal access to legal marriage for same-sex couples before the Supreme Court of Argentina as Amicus Curiae.

Matthew Reeg is a third-year law student at Washington University.  He was raised in St. Louis, Missouri, and plans to move to New York with his partner after graduation in May.  Matthew has been active in gay causes since college at Truman State University and is involved with the gay student group at Wash U., OutLaw.  His academic interests include Labor and Employment Law, Constitutional Law and Individual Rights.  Last year he had the privilege of teaching an undergraduate course called Women and the Law.

Karen Atala Riffo lost custody of her three daughters because of her identity as a lesbian and having a family with another woman after a supreme court battle in Chile in 2004. Her court case established an ominous judicial precedent for lesbian mothers and sexual minorities in Chile. For this reason, she testified against Chile’s policies in front of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights. In June of 2008, her testimony was declared permissible by the court and she hopes that her government’s policies will be denounced due to violations of the human rights of sexual minorities. She has collaborated with the organization “The Other Families,” whose goal is to make visible and normalize families headed by lesbian mothers. She is working in the Chilean judicial system as a Jueza de Garantía in the city of Santiago.

Russell Robinson is an Acting Professor at UCLA School of Law. Robinson graduated with honors from Harvard Law School (1998), after receiving his B.A. summa cum laude from Hampton University (1995). Robinson clerked for Judge Dorothy Nelson of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals (1998-99) and for Justice Stephen Breyer of the U.S. Supreme Court (2000-01). He has also worked for the U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Legal Counsel (1999-2000) and the firm of Akin, Gump, Strauss, Hauer and Feld in Los Angeles, practicing entertainment law (2001-02). He was a Visiting Professor at Fordham Law School (2003-04). Robinson’s current scholarly and teaching interests include antidiscrimination law, law and psychology, race and sexuality, and media and entertainment law.)

Marcela Romero is a social activist working with the Argentinean transgender group, Transexuales y Trangéneros de Argentina.  As part of this work, Marcela intervenes in the various decision-making forums at the regional level.  

Alejandro Merino Rosas is a university professor and civil engineer at the Universidad Nacional de Ingeniería.  Alejandro is a gay activist and co-editor of Revista Paradero.  He published the book La imagen in/decente: diversidad sexual, prejuicio y discriminación en la prensa escrita, which presents research about sexual diversity, prejudice, and discrimination.

Darren Rosenblum is an Associate Professor at Pace Law School.  Professor Rosenblum joined the Pace faculty in July 2004 after teaching sexuality and the law at the Unversity of Pennsylvania and Fordham Law Schools.  Prior to teaching, Professor Rosenblum practiced litigation and international arbitration at Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom LLP and Clifford Chance LLP in New York.  Professor Rosenblum clerked for the Honorable José Antonio Fusté in the U.S. District Court of Puerto Rico.  Professor Rosenblum holds an M.I.A. from Columbia University and his B.A. and J.D. are from the University of Pennsylvania.  Author of several widely-regarded law review articles on LGBT issues, his recent scholarship focuses on gender and sexuality in international and comparative contexts.

Clifford J. Rosky is an Associate Professor of Law at the University of Utah’s S.J. Quinney College of Law.  Before joining the faculty, he served as a research fellow for the Williams Institute on Sexual Orientation Law & Public Policy at the UCLA School of Law.  After graduating from law school, Professor Rosky served as a law clerk for the Honorable Robert D. Sack on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit.  Rosky continues to serve the Williams Institute as a Senior Research Fellow by conducting training courses at statewide judicial conferences.  He teaches courses on criminal law, family law, and sexuality, gender and law, and he is writing a series of articles on gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgendered parenthood, including “Like Father, Like Son: The Gender of Homophobia in Family Law,” in the Yale Journal of Law & Feminism.

Jorge Saavedra, MD, MPH, MHPM, is Chief of Global Affairs for AHF. Previously, Dr. Saavedra was General Director for the National HIV/AIDS Programme in Mexico. Dr. Saavedra is the first openly gay and openly HIV positive person to Head a National HIV Program in a developing country. He was responsible for launching the Universal Access to ARV policy in Mexico. In 2005, he launched the first government-endorsed anti-homophobia campaign in Mexico. Dr. Saavedra appointed the first transgender woman in an official position with the Mexican Government.  2009, Dr. Saavedra sent each State Congressmen of Mexico City a letter supporting and encouraging them to approve the Gay Marriage initiative, the first one in Latin America.

Marcela Sánchez is a social worker at the Universidad Nacional de Colombia.  Marcela has worked on issues such as women’s political participation, violence against women, and sexual and reproductive health and rights of LGBT persons.  Marcela currently serves as director of Colombia Diversa.

Douglas Sanders, a Canadian, now resident in Bangkok, Thailand, is Professor Emeritus, Faculty of Law, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada; LL.M. Professor, Chulalongkorn University, Bangkok; and part of the graduate program in human rights at Mahidol University also in Bangkok. He was one of the founders of the Association for Social Knowledge in 1963, the first gay and lesbian rights organization in Canada. In 1992, he was the first person to make an "out" statement in a UN human rights meeting, speaking in the Subcommission on the Prevention of Discrimination and Protection of Minorities in August of that year. He represented the International Lesbian and Gay Association at the UN in 1993-4, during the year it had accreditation with the Economic and Social Council. He was one of the first in Canada to teach a LGBT rights course for credit in a Canadian law school. His 1996 article Getting Lesbian and Gay Issues on the International Human Rights Agenda, published in Human Rights Quarterly, was a pioneering bringing of LGBT issues within mainstream human rights literature.

Saul Sarabia is a professor at the UCLA Law and serves as the Director of the Law School’s Critical Race Studies Concentration. Previously he served as a Program Director at the UCLA Center for the Study of Urban Poverty, working with transnational social change activists. He has served as a Program Director at the Community Coalition in South Central Los Angeles and as an Advocate at the Central American Human Rights Commission in San Jose, Costa Rica. His community-based social justice advocacy has ranged from documenting human rights violations in Central American countries to community organizing with poor people on welfare and in the foster care system in Los Angeles. He has written numerous articles which have been published worldwide on a host of issues affecting Latinos living in the United States and in Latin American countries.

David Scamell is the Manager of Policy, Planning and Research at ACON, the largest and one of the leading LGBT community organizations in Australia. As part of this role, he has led the development of the National LGBT Health Alliance, and is the current co-coordinator of that organization. He has a long history of LGBT law reform advocacy, having been involved with the Gay and Lesbian Rights Lobby (NSW) since 2002, including serving two years as its Convener. He has also served on the National Committee of Australian Lawyers for Human Rights and holds an LLB/BA from the University of New South Wales.

Peter Schieder is the President of International Institute of Peace.  Mr. Schieder is also the Honorary President of the Parliamentary of the Council of Europe, an international body committed to eradicating discrimination and recognizing the rights of LGBT individuals as an integral part of human rights.  From 1970 – 1972, Mr. Schieder was a member of the Austrian Parliament Sub-Committee to abolish the criminalization of sodomy.  When Mr. Schieder served as a member of the Council of Europe from 1991-2005, he worked to end discrimination against LGBT individuals in the Council of Europe Member States and in those States applying for membership.  He also has experience as a City Councillor in Austria and Chairman of the Foreign Policy Committee of the Austrian Parliament.

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.  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. Sears 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. In 1997, Sears also became the Discrimination & Confidentiality Attorney for the HIV/AIDS Legal Services Alliance of Los Angeles.

Slyvatosav Sementsov is a Belarusian LGBT human rights expert and activist.  Sementsov is founder and leader of TEMA (LGBT information center), founder of Vstrecha (HIV/AIDS and STD prevention among MSM), and founder and ex-coordinator of Amnesty International Belarus LGBT Network. Sementsov is the InterPride regional director. In June 2008, Sementsov got Rainbow Key Award from City of West Hollywood (LA, USA).

Patricio M. Serna is currently a Justice of the New Mexico Supreme Court. He served as Chief Justice during 2001 and 2002. He was appointed as a District Court Judge to the First Judicial District in Santa Fe and served for over 11 years, from 1985 until 1996, during which he was also President of the New Mexico District Judges Association.  Among his awards and honors, he was named one of Hispanic Business Magazine's 100 Most Influential Hispanics in America, received the Judge of the Year Award from the National Hispanic Bar Association, and received the Outstanding Lawyer Award from the New Mexico Hispanic Bar Association. He is a former President/Moderator of the National Consortium on Racial and Ethnic Fairness in the Courts and remains on the Board of Directors. In 2006, the Justice received the Excellence in Jurisprudence award from the University of New Mexico Law Review. Also in 2006, he was appointed to the Board of Advisors for the Institute for the Advancement of the American Legal System, University of Denver.

Joel Simpson has worked as Human Rights Associate for the Social Cohesion Programme at the UNDP Guyana country office and as UNESCO Human Rights Researcher at the HIV Education Unit of the University of the West Indies St. Augustine campus in Trinidad. As a human rights researcher, his interests include homophobia, sexual rights, gender, vulnerability, sexual heath, and stigma and discrimination. He is also the founding Co-Chairperson of the Society Against Sexual Orientation Discrimination (SASOD) in Guyana, Steering Committee Member of the Caribbean Forum for Liberation and Acceptance of Genders and Sexualities (CARIFLAGS) and Legal Core Member of the Caribbean Vulnerable Communities (CVC) Coalition Human Rights Working Group.

Catherine Smith is an Associate Professor at the University of Denver Sturm College of Law and is currently a Visiting Scholar at UCLA Law School's Williams Institute. Professor Smith clerked for the late Chief Judge Henry A. Politz of the U. S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit and for U.S. Magistrate Judge William M. Catoe Jr.  She then served as a legal fellow at the Southern Poverty Law Center.  Before joining the faculty at the University of Denver, Professor Smith was an Assistant Professor at the Thurgood Marshall School of Law from 2000 to 2004.  Her research interests include torts, civil rights, and critical race theory. Professor Smith's current work in progress is entitled "Straight Scrutiny," which explores how the racial and class diversity of the LGBT community is ignored by state and federal courts in order to deny a "politically powerful minority" heightened scrutiny and reinforce heterosexism in equal protection law. 

Charlene L. Smith worked closely with the bar on a variety of LGBT issues.  She was the point person on the ACLU challenge to the Kansas sodomy statute and other cases that involved sexual identity issues.  She has been on Mayor’s taskforces that examined discrimination issues.  She organized a yearly conference on discrimination issues for Washburn University Law School that had worldwide leaders as participants.  She has presented papers to ILGA several times and has published in European Law Journals.  She is currently the co-director of the Inter-American Center for Human Rights.

Mark Strasser is Trustees Professor of Law at Capital University Law School in Columbus, Ohio.  Much of his work involves constitutional and public policy analyses of laws that adversely impact the families of sexual minorities.  Professor Strasser is the author of numerous books and articles in the areas of family law, bioethics, and constitutional law. His most recent books include On Same-Sex Marriages, Civil Unions, and the Rule of Law: Constitutional Interpretation at the Crossroads, Marriage and Same-Sex Unions: A Debate, and Questions and Answers: Family Law.  He also spoke before the Vermont House Judiciary Committee on interstate implications of Vermont recognizing same-sex marriages or domestic partnerships.

Anne Tamar-Mattis is the founder and Executive Director of Advocates for Informed Choice, the first organization in the country focusing on legal advocacy for the civil and human rights of children born with intersex conditions or DSDs.  She is the former Director of the national LYRIC Youth Talkline and former Program Director of the San Francisco LGBT Community Center.  She has been an involved ally of the intersex rights movement for many years and has worked with intersex community leaders to forge connections between the intersex and LGBTQ civil rights movements.  Ms. Tamar-Mattis  is the author of Exceptions to the Rule: Curing the Law's Failure to Protect Intersex Infants, 21 Berkeley J. Gender Law & Just. 59 (2006).

Hiroyuki Taniguchi is a research associate at Waseda University Institute of Comparative Law. He is the author of Law and Sexuality: An analysis of sexual minority cases on international law and editor-in-chief of the Japanese law journal Law and Sexuality, which has been published annually since 2002. He has published numerous articles and case notes on human rights protection and the promotion of gender and sexuality in the judicial processes. He is also a founder of the Workshop on Sexual Minorities and Law in Japan – a conference of lawyers who research and work on legal issues in gender and sexuality, and an executive board member of Japan Association of International Women's Rights - a NGO working for advancement of women's rights worldwide, which has a consultative status with ECOSOC since 1998.

Maria Gigliola Toniollo has led and directed New Right Department since its inception.  Toniollo has a degree in Economics and is an activist for the Radical Party. Toniollo’s primary fields of interests are: Homosexuals and Transsexuals Rights, Prostitution, Freedom of Expression and Censorship, New Technologies, New Sciences. From 1999 to 2001, Toniollo was the Chairperson of the Commission on Rights to Gender Identity of the Ministry of Equal Opportunities.

Daniel Townsend is no stranger to advocacy.  He has worked extensively in his country and the Caribbean on Human Rights and HIV/AIDS issues, as well as researching other areas of Sexual and Reproductive Rights and Young People. He is a member of the Youth Coalition for Sexual Reproductive Rights where he sits as co-chair for the Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity Task Force. Currently he is interning with LGBT Division at Human Rights Watch in New York.

Pablo C. Vargas works for the human rights of LGBT people in Bolivia.  He is also a researcher of the LGBT network, which works for the rights of LGBT people in Bolivia.  He is also the chairman of the Foundation for LGBT Equality and communication researcher.  He is currently writing a book on the history of the LGBT collective in Bolivia.

Carlos Villagrasa Alcaide is Ph. D. in Law, Full Professor for Civil Law at University of Barcelona (Spain), Judge of the Superior Court (Appeal Court), Professor and academic coordinator at UNED (National University, Santa Coloma de Gramenet centre), Trustee and General Secretary of Olof Palme International Foundation, Chairman of Scientific and Organizing Committee of the Third World Congress on Children and Adolescent’s Rights, Director of Family Law Master and Postgraduate in Childhood and Protection of  People at the University of Barcelona, Director of Legal Area of The Institute of Childhood and Urban World (CIIMU), and President of Defense of Children and Adolescent’s Rights Association.

Cheng-Tong Wang is a current student in the Master of Arts Program in the Social Science (MAPSS) in University of Chicago. She got a double degree of L.L.B and Bachelor of Arts in Sociology from National Taiwan University (NTU) in 2005. Cheng-Tong was a student activist in undergrad and worked in Awakening Foundation, a feminist organization in Taiwan, for two years after graduated from NTU. Her research interests are Social movement, Sociology of law, Urban Sociology, and Gender studies.

Karin Wang is Vice President of Programs at the Asian Pacific American Legal Center (APALC), a civil rights and legal services organization in Southern California. Before her current position, Karin directed APALC's immigrant rights advocacy. Karin also ran the first Los Angeles field office of the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services, enforcing civil rights across the Southwest. Currently, she is chair of the California State Bar's Standing Committee on the Delivery of Legal Services; president-elect of the Asian Pacific American Bar Association; and a founding steering committee member of API Equality-LA. She was one of the lawyers who filed an amicus brief in in support of marriage equality. After the November 2008 election, she and APALC filed a writ petition and amicus brief, along with other leading race-based civil rights groups, seeking to stop implementation of Prop 8.

Jill Weinberg is currently a master’s degree candidate at the University of Chicago where she is researching federal employment discrimination laws and the implications on the transgender community.  She graduated from Seattle University School of Law in May 2008.  She was a judicial extern for the Honorable Ronald B. Leighton of the United States District Court for the Western District of Washington.  She is a member of the Connecticut Bar Association.

C. Todd White received his PhD. In anthropology from the University of Southern California in 2005. He has taught classes on wide-ranging subjects including human evolution, cultural linguistics, magic and witchcraft, and world poverty and underdevelopment. As lead ethnographer, Dr White is currently working with the administrators and library faculty at Rutgers University to redesign the libraries’ Web interface. He is currently a Visiting Assistant Professor of anthropology at James Madison University in Harrisonburg, Virginia, and he resides with his partner in the Highland Park district of Rochester, New York.

Jim Wilets is a Professor of Law at Nova Southeastern University and is Chair of the Inter-American Center for Human Rights. Professor Wilets prepared, at the request of the UN Secretary-General, the first two drafts of a proposal for reforming the human rights functions of the United Nations, which was subsequently incorporated into the U.N.’s Agenda for Peace.  Professor Wilets worked in Paris on some of the first negotiations between Israelis and Palestinians for a two-state solution and assisted in drafting a proposed Basic Law for a future Palestinian state.  Professor Wilets has written extensively on gender and sexual identity, contributing two chapters to “The Marriage and Same-Sex Unions Debate,” three chapters to the Greenwood Encyclopedia of LGBT Issues Worldwide (El Salvador, Honduras and Liberia) and numerous law review articles on the subjects, including Conceptualizing Private Violence Against Sexual Minorities as Gendered Violence: an International and Comparative Law Perspective.

Walter L. Williams is a Professor of Anthropology, History, and Gender Studies at the University of Southern California, where he teaches classes on the cross-cultural study of sexuality. He has published ten books, including Overcoming Heterosexism and Homophobia: Strategies That Work. He serves as an expert witness for U.S. Immigration Courts on sexual orientation persecution in Asia. He is now doing research in Thailand, and writing a book on the social acceptance of homosexuality and transgenderism in Thai Buddhism.

Robert Wintemute teaches European Union Law, Human Rights Law, and Anti-Discrimination Law in the School of Law, King's College London.  He is the author of Sexual Orientation and Human Rights, and the editor of Legal Recognition of Same-Sex Partnerships.  His pro bono legal work has included delivering or drafting oral arguments in Fretté v. France and Maruko, as well as drafting third-party interventions on international and comparative law, on behalf of NGOs or law professors, in such cases as Karner v. Austria, Goodridge, E.B. v. France, and Rachid and Castro.  In Lawrence v. Texas, he advised the drafters of Yale Law School's intervention.  In Nov. 2006, he was one of the experts invited to draft the Yogyakarta Principles on international human rights law, sexual orientation, and gender identity. 

Evan Wolfson is Executive Director of Freedom to Marry, the gay and non-gay partnership working to win marriage equality nationwide. Before founding Freedom to Marry, Evan served as marriage project director for Lambda Legal Defense & Education Fund, was co-counsel in the historic Hawaii marriage case, and participated in numerous gay rights and HIV/AIDS cases.  Citing his national leadership on marriage equality and his appearance before the U.S. Supreme Court in Boy Scouts of America v. James Dale, the National Law Journal in 2000 named Evan one of "the 100 most influential lawyers in America."  In 2004, Evan was named one of the "Time 100," Time magazine's list of "the 100 most influential people in the world."  Evan Wolfson’s first book, Why Marriage Matters: America, Equality, and Gay People’s Right to Marry, was published by Simon & Schuster in July 2004.

Justice Eugenio Raúl Zaffaroni is an Argentine lawyer and member of the Supreme Court of Justice of Argentina since 2003. Dr. Zaffaroni is Professor and Head of the Department of Criminal Law, Universidad de Buenos Aires, and Vicepresident of the Scientific Committee, International Association of Penal Law. He is the President of the Advisory Committee of the Instituto de Políticas Públicas (Public Policies Institute) (IPP). He was awarded with OEA and Max Planck Stiftung fellowships. Previously, he was the General Director at the Instituto Latinoamericano de Prevención del Delito, a specialized organism of the UN. He was part of the ad hoc assembly that drew the 1994 reform of the Argentine Constitution, representing FrePaSo, member of the Buenos Aires Chamber of Representatives in 1997, and Director, National Institute Against Discrimination (INADI) during 2000-2001. Dr. Zaffaroni has been a strong supporter of the individual guarantees granted by the Constitution of Argentina as first principles. He was the author of projects for Penal Law in Argentina (1991), Ecuador (1992) and Costa Rica (1991). He wrote 25 books, including Manual de Derecho Penal, Tratado de Derecho Penal in five volumes, En busca de las penas perdidas and Estructuras judiciales.

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