Maria Stamas works to accelerate climate action in cities across the country with a focus on developing and strengthening equitable clean energy policies for buildings. She has previously led advocacy efforts in regulatory proceedings before the California Public Utilities Commission, the California Energy Commission, and the California State Legislature, which have resulted in the allocation of $250 million in new funding programs for low-income households. Stamas holds a bachelor’s degree from Oberlin College and master’s and J.D. degrees from the University of California, Berkeley. She is based in San Francisco and is vice-chair of California’s Low-Income Oversight Board.

Rebecca Watson is a Directing Attorney at Inner City Law Center—the only provider of legal services based on Skid Row in downtown Los Angeles.  At ICLC, she directs the legal team providing legal technical assistance and hearing representation to Los Angeles County’s CBEST (Countywide Benefits Entitlements Services) program. CBEST is an innovative county-wide project that assists individuals who are homeless with gaining access to critical disability-based benefits. She has a broad understanding of public benefits programs and the barriers individuals face in accessing those benefits as well as in landlord-tenant law and the eviction process. Prior to directing the CBEST legal team at ICLC, she represented clients living with HIV/AIDS in public benefits and housing-related legal issues. Rebecca also previously worked at Neighborhood Legal Services of Los Angeles County where she staffed a Medical Legal Partnership helping patients at a low-income health clinic resolve their legal problems. Rebecca is a 2011 graduate of the University of Washington School of Law which she attended as a Gates Public Service Law Scholar. Prior to law school, Rebecca was a paralegal at the Southern Poverty Law Center in Alabama working on a project representing immigrant workers in the South and has lived and worked in Mexico, Cuba, and Guatemala. She speaks fluent Spanish and has expertise in representing immigrant clients.  

Kate Walker Brown directs an initiative to address the Commercial Sexual Exploitation of Children and Youth (CSEC/Y) at the National Center for Youth Law. Walker Brown and her team bring together public agencies and community partners to change perceptions, build trust, transform systems, and support and empower children, youth, and families who have been affected by commercial sexual exploitation. Her work involves multidisciplinary collaborations and coalitions at the state and local level to improve laws, develop policies, and support implementation of innovative practices in California and across the U.S. Walker Brown was the lead author of “Ending the Commercial Sexual Exploitation of Children: A Call for Multi-System Collaboration in California,” a seminal report on CSEC/Y in California that’s been credited with bringing increased attention and awareness to the issue of CSEC/Y in the state.  She currently serves as Project Director for the statewide CSEC Action Team and staffs the first-of-its-kind Advisory Board comprised of 12 survivors of CSE, which informs the policies and practices of in California. She has partnered with counties across California —including Los Angeles, San Francisco, Santa Cruz, Monterey, San Benito, and Santa Clara —to improve policies and practices to more effectively identify and serve CSEC/Y. She co-authored the Los Angeles Law Enforcement First Responder Protocol, which has become a national response model for CSEC/Y. Walker Brown provides expert testimony at legislative hearings on the intersection of the child welfare system and commercial sexual exploitation and trains across the country on this issue. She received her undergraduate degree in Public Policy with a focus in Psychology from Pomona College and her J.D. from University of Iowa.

Jessica Redditt is the Managing Attorney of Bay Area Legal Aid’s Alameda County office. She joined Bay Area Legal Aid in 2014 as a Staff Attorney and then served as Project Coordinator of the Alameda County SSI/SSDI Advocacy project in the Alameda County office. In that capacity, Jessica provided direct legal services and public benefits advocacy to low-income clients with mental and physical health disabilities. Jessica accepted the position of Managing Attorney for the Alameda County office in 2018. Jessica was instrumental in founding the Racial Justice Committee at BayLegal, which aims to improve race relations within the organization and promote racial equity across all areas of legal practice and employee recruitment, hiring, and retention. She served on a panel at Equal Justice Society’s 2018 Mind Science Conference discussing racial justice issues in the non-profit sector. Prior to joining BayLegal, Jessica engaged in community-based advocacy with the Oakland City Attorney’s Neighborhood Law Corps program, provided direct representation to parents and children in dependency proceedings, and represented plaintiffs in civil rights and consumer litigation. Jessica serves on the Board of Directors for the Legal Aid Association of California and has trained numerous advocates on the intricacies of Social Security law.

In 2017, Hans Moore joined Public Advocates’ education equity team, advocating on behalf of low-income and immigrant communities. Following law school, Hans clerked for the Honorable Eric M. Johnson of the Montgomery County Circuit Court and was subsequently hired by the State’s Attorney’s Office for Montgomery County where he developed extensive litigation skills, trying 20 jury trials and over 500 bench trials. Hans’ litigation experience includes defending low-income and Spanish-only speaking clients against serious felonies such as: rape, attempted murder, and armed robbery. Throughout his career Hans has remained committed to serving low-income and immigrant communities by representing clients pro bono, participating in know-your-rights trainings, testifying before state legislatures in favor of state financial aid to undocumented students, and organizing free legal clinics for low-income persons. Hans volunteers for community organizations such as East Bay Sanctuary and the Multicultural Institute. Hans graduated from University of Baltimore in 2008.

Sayoni Maitra is a Staff Attorney at the Center for Gender and Refugee Studies (CGRS), where she develops technical assistance resources, conducts trainings, provides individualized consultations to attorneys, and engages in impact litigation on issues facing women, children, LGBTQ individuals, and others seeking asylum and related protections from persecution in their home countries. Before joining CGRS, Sayoni worked at Sanctuary for Families as a Staff Attorney in the Immigration Intervention Project, where she represented survivors of gender-based violence and mentored pro bono lawyers in asylum matters. Sayoni first joined Sanctuary as an Equal Justice Works Fellow to advance protections for individuals facing child and forced marriage through representation in asylum and other humanitarian claims, community outreach, and legislative and policy advocacy. She has also interned with the U.S. Executive Office for Immigration Review at the Newark Immigration Court and the U.N. High Commissioner forRefugees (UNHCR) in Beirut, Lebanon. Sayoni received her J.D. from Columbia Law School, where she participated in the Human Rights Clinic and served as Managing Editor of the Columbia Human Rights Law Review and Policy Director of the Columbia chapter of the Iraqi Refugee Assistance Project (now the International Refugee Assistance Project). She graduated with a B.S. in Foreign Service from Georgetown University, where she received the Edmund A. Walsh Medal for Outstanding Achievement in International Law. Sayoni is admitted to practice in New York and speaks Bengali and Spanish.

Sushil is the Senior Attorney for Economic Justice at the Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights of the  San Francisco Bay Area (LCCR). At LCCR, Sushil is responsible for developing policy interventions to develop policies to advance racial and economic justice in the Bay Area. He is currently working on legislation to enable municipally-owned banks in California. He received  his J.D. in 2011 from Berkeley Law. He serves on the boards of the Cooperative Center Federal Credit Union and the Sustainable Economies Law Center. He is an avid drummer and a new swimmer.

Tess Feldman is a Staff Attorney and Manager of the Immigration Law Project at the Los Angeles LGBT Center in Los Angeles, California. Her work focuses on humanitarian immigration relief, removal defense representation and asylum representation for detained and non-detained LGBTQI+ immigrants and their families. Her practice is focused on representation of survivors of violence.

Previously, she worked at Community Legal Services in East Palo Alto as a Nationally Qualified Representative and a Rapid Response Network attorney responder. Prior to her work in California, she was an associate attorney at the firm of Robert D. Ahlgren & Associates in Chicago, Illinois. She is past chair of the Immigration Committee of the Chicago Bar Association. Tess holds a law degree from the Loyola University Chicago School of Law and an undergraduate degree from the University of Iowa, where she studied Spanish and International Business. Tess speaks Spanish.

Daniel is a Staff Attorney and Clinical Supervisor/Berkeley Law Lecturer in the Health and Welfare Clinic at East Bay Community Law Center (EBCLC). EBCLC is Berkeley Law School’s largest community-based clinical program.  Daniel joined EBCLC in 2015 where they provide holistic legal services primarily through medical-legal partnerships with Highland Hospital, UCSF Benioff Children’s Hospital Oakland, and through local HIV/AIDS medical providers.  Daniel is the founding supervising attorney of the Name and Gender Change Workshop, a Berkeley Law Student-initiated Legal Services Project (SLP), which provides assistance to obtain a court-ordered name and/or gender change and to update identification subsequently.  Prior to joining EBCLC, Daniel was the Tom Steel Fellow at Transgender Law Center, where they partnered with local transgender-specific community organizations to reduce barriers in accessing legal services. They also briefly practiced at Weiss Law, a small plaintiff-side firm that exclusively brings employment discrimination claims based on gender identity and gender expression. They were also a 2015-2017 Board Member of Bay Area Lawyers for Individual Freedom (BALIF), the Bay Area’s LGBT Bar Association. Daniel is also fluent in Spanish.

Virginia Corrigan is a Deputy Attorney General in the Bureau of Children’s Justice, Civil Rights Enforcement Section of the California Attorney General’s office. Prior to joining the Attorney General’s office, Virginia worked at the Youth Law Center, where she began as an Equal Justice Works Fellow before becoming a staff attorney.  Virginia’s work has focused on a range of issues affecting children and youth, including improving conditions of confinement, reducing reliance on juvenile detention and congregate care, supports for the transition to adulthood, the treatment of minors in immigration custody, and educational quality and equity. As an Equal Justice Works Fellow, Virginia represented probation-supervised youth in extended foster care in Contra Costa County and worked to improve conditions for youth in the juvenile justice system across California.  In law school, Virginia documented conditions in adult and juvenile detention facilities in Panama as a member of the Harvard International Human Rights Clinic. After graduation, she served as a clerk for the Honorable David M. Lawson in the Eastern District of Michigan.

Cecilia Candia joined Legal Services for Children in 2014. She is the Associate Legal Director in the Immigration Program, where she represents children and transitional age youth applying for Asylum, T Visas, U Visas, and Special Immigrant Juvenile Status. Her clients include children detained in custody of the Office of Refugee Resettlement, youth in foster care, juvenile justice-involved minors, and as well as at-risk minors living in the community. Before joining Legal Services for Children, Cecilia was the Immigration Program Coordinator and Immigration Attorney at La Raza Centro Legal in San Francisco. Cecilia received her J.D. from Northeastern University School of Law.

Mariel Block is a Staff Attorney with the National Housing Law Project in San Francisco, where she advocates for subsidized housing preservation and the housing rights of survivors of domestic violence. Prior to joining NHLP, Mariel was a Hearing Examiner with the City of Berkeley’s Rent Stabilization Board, where she conducted Rent Board and Berkeley Housing Authority administrative hearings. Prior to working with the Rent Board, Mariel spent over five years defending low-income tenants facing eviction as a legal services attorney with the Law Foundation of Silicon Valley and Legal Services of Northern California. Mariel holds a B.A. from UC Berkeley and a J.D. from the University of Michigan Law School. 

I am very fortunate to have spent the past six years working at Legal Services of Northern California, first as a staff attorney, and now as a managing attorney. After graduating from Georgetown Law in 2013, I relocated to California to begin work in LSNC’s Auburn office. I was hired as a generalist and encouraged to get out of my office and be a “community lawyer.” In the fall of 2015, I transferred to our field office in Vallejo. My position remained the same for two years. I handled housing, public benefits, civil rights, criminal reentry, education, and driver’s license related cases and projects.In January 2018, I was offered the opportunity to co-create and manage a new initiative. My co-manager and I, with considerable help and support, have formed what is now the Expanded Access Project (EAP), which seeks to better serve those who face barriers accessing services during normal business hours. Through EAP, LSNC offers evening phone intake appointments and places an added emphasis on the clinical delivery of legal services. The Project certainly remains a work in progress. I’m very excited and grateful to join the SLS Leadership Program — my hope is to develop into a better leader both now and for a long public interest career. On a personal note, I’m an Oakland resident originally from Atlanta who takes semi-regular trips to Ireland to visit my in-laws. The fact that my favorite sports team (Tottenham Hotspur) resides in London only adds to my geographic confusion.

C. Thomas Bridge Anderson (Staff Attorney: Medical-Legal Partnership) graduated from Thomas Jefferson School of Law in 2013 where his focus was on Corporate Civil Litigation. After law school he worked in Personal Injury and rediscovered his passion for public interest while advocating for victims and survivors of domestic violence with the San Diego Volunteer Lawyers Program. He currently lives in San Francisco with his fiancé, Niko. He has been working with BayLegal since October 2015, initially in Health Law in San Francisco before coming to Bay Area Legal Aid Contra Costa in March 2016. Thomas’ work with Bay Area Legal Aid expands on that focus through a Medical-Legal Partnership with Contra Costa Health Services where he currently practices in Economic Justice, Interpersonal Violence Preventions, and Housing Law.