Kaitlin Banner, J.D., is a Senior Staff Attorney at Advancement Project in the Ending the Schoolhouse to Jailhouse Track program. Ms. Banner works with communities on reducing the overuse and disparate use of zero-tolerance school discipline policies by employing creative legal tactics and policy reform. Prior to joining Advancement Project, Ms. Banner was a Clinical Instructor at the Took Crowell Institute for At-Risk Youth at the University of the District of Columbia (UDC) David A. Clarke School of Law. Students and professors in the clinic represent families in special education and school discipline cases, and advocate for policies that promote positive interventions and enable students to continue their education. From 2008 - 2010, Ms. Banner was the Crowell & Moring Equal Justice Works Fellow at the American Civil Liberties Union of the Nation’s Capital, where she founded the Fair Discipline Project and began working on schoolto- prison pipeline issues. She is also an adjunct professor with the Georgetown University Law School Juvenile Justice Clinic and on the D.C. Lawyers for Youth Board of Directors. Ms. Banner received her B.A. from Villanova University, her J.D. from the George Washington University Law School, and her LL.M. from the University of the District of Columbia David A. Clarke School of Law.

Prior to working at the Public Defender Service (PDS), Ms. Nilsen Blumenson received her Bachelor of Arts from Wesleyan University, majoring in government, sociology, and psychology. She earned her Master’s in Teaching while serving as a corps member of Teach for America in Brooklyn, New York. She taught third and fourth grade at Excellence Boys Charter School, part of Uncommon Schools, Inc.

Ms. Nilsen Blumenson is an attorney admitted to practice in the District of Columbia and the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.

Neena K. Chaudhry, J.D., is Director of Education and Senior Counsel at the National Women’s Law Center, where she works to promote the rights of women and girls at school, with a particular emphasis on improving outcomes for girls at risk for dropout, including girls of color, pregnant and parenting students, girls who experience harassment, are excessively disciplined, or attend schools where the climate is not conducive to learning. Ms. Chaudhry participates in administrative and legislative advocacy, litigation and public education to protect the rights of women and girls to be free from sex discrimination in school, with a particular focus on Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972.

Since joining the Center in September 1997, Ms. Chaudhry has served as counsel on several cases, including Davis v. Monroe County Board of Education, in which the Supreme Court established that schools have obligation under Title IX to address student-to-student sexual harassment; Communities for Equity v. Michigan High School Athletic Association, in which the Sixth Circuit held that scheduling girls’ sports, but not boys’ sports, in nontraditional seasons violates Title IX and the Equal Protection Clause; National Wrestling Coaches Association et al. v. United States Department of Education, in which the D.C. Circuit found that Title IX was not the cause of schools’ decisions to drop men’s teams; Simpson v. University of Colorado, in which the Tenth Circuit held that the university violated Title IX through encouragement of sexual harassment/ assault of female students by football players/recruits; and Hill v. Madison County School Board, in which the Eleventh Circuit held that school’s decision to use a 14-year-old girl as bait to catch a student with a known history of sexual harassment and its response to girl’s resulting rape was evidence of deliberate indifference that could violate Title IX.

Ms. Chaudhry has co-authored several publications, including When Girls Don’t Graduate, We All Fail; Finishing Last: Girls of Color and School Sports Opportunities; Check It Out: Is the Playing Field Level for Women and Girls at Your School?; Making the Grade on Women’s Health: A National and State-by-State Report Card; and Women in Construction: Still Breaking Ground. She has addressed gender equity in education issues in the media and before key national audiences throughout the U.S.

Prior to joining the Center, Ms. Chaudhry clerked for the Honorable Michael Daly Hawkins of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. She also served as a summer associate with Steptoe & Johnson in Washington, D.C. and as a legislative assistant with The Council of The Great City Schools in Washington, D.C.

Ms. Chaudhry received her J.D. from Yale Law School, where she served as Notes Editor of the Yale Law Journal. She graduated summa cum laude from the University of Maryland at College Park with a major in economics and a minor in mathematics.

Judith Browne Dianis, J.D., is the Executive Director at Advancement Project. Ms. Browne Dianis has an extensive background in civil rights litigation and advocacy in the areas of voting, education, housing, and employment. She has protected the rights of people of color in the midst of some of the greatest civil rights crises of our modern times, including in Florida after the 2000 election and in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina.

Ms. Browne Dianis is also a pioneer in the movement to dismantle the school-to-prison pipeline in school districts. Dianis has authored groundbreaking reports on the issue, including Opportunities Suspended (2000) and Derailed: The Schoolhouse to Jailhouse Track, detailing the unnecessary criminalization of students by their schools. Working closely with grassroots organizations, DISMANTLING THE SCHOOL-TO-PRISON PIPELINE 19 Advancement Project’s work has significantly decreased student suspensions and arrests in Denver, Baltimore and Florida. Additionally, Advancement Project has worked to build and support a growing national movement on this issue. Ms. Browne Dianis’ commitment to racial equity in public schools carries over to her positions on the Board of FairTest, and she is a founding Convener of the Forum for Education and Democracy. In recognition of Ms. Browne Dianis’ work on these issues, she was recently named a Black Male Achievement Social Innovator by the Leadership & Sustainability Institute.

Ms. Browne Dianis joined Advancement Project at its inception in 1999, after serving as the Managing Attorney in the Washington, D.C. office of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) Legal Defense & Educational Fund, Inc. She is a graduate of Columbia University School of Law, was awarded a Skadden Fellowship, served as a Tobias Simon Eminent Scholar at Florida State University Law School, and is an Adjunct Professor of Law at Georgetown University Law Center.

David Domenici, J.D., is the Executive Director of Center for Educational Excellence in Alternative Settings and the co-founder of The Maya Angelou Schools, a network of alternative schools in Washington, D.C. He served as the founding principal of the Maya Angelou Academy, the school located inside D.C.’s long-term, secure juvenile facility, from 2007 to 2011. He designed the key elements of the school model, including short, thematic units aligned with state standards, incentive programming based on the Positive Behavioral Intervention and Supports framework, a technology-enhanced instruction and learning platform, and a set of technology tools designed to enhance communication between school and correctional staff.

The Maya Angelou Academy’s success has been widely recognized. The changes at the school were termed “remarkable” by a national expert and court-appointed monitor. The Middle States Commission’s accreditation team called the Maya Angelou Academy “one of the best schools we have ever seen.” The school has been featured in local and national publications, including the Washington Post Magazine and Education Week. David left the Academy in the fall of 2011 to start the Center.

Mr. Domenici is a graduate of the University of Virginia and Stanford Law School. He is the co-author, along with James Forman, Jr., of two articles about school reform. The first article titled “What It Takes to Transform a School Inside a Juvenile Facility: The Story of the Maya Angelou Academy” highlights lessons learned during the start-up and first year of the Maya Angelou Academy. The second article, “A Circle of Trust,” chronicles the first year of the Maya Angelou Public Charter School.

Nancy Drane, J.D., is pro bono director at Children’s Law Center. In that role, Ms. Drane engages with hundreds of pro bono attorneys from area law firms, government, and solo practice as they represent caregivers in adoption, guardianship, and custody cases; serve as guardian ad litem to children involved in complex custody proceedings; represent parents in special education advocacy; and bring affirmative housing conditions litigation when a child’s health is at risk. She also serves as a staff liaison to Children’s Law Center’s Advisory Board. Ms. Drane joined the organization in 2003 as a staff attorney with the guardian ad litem program and served as its first training director from 2006-2012. Previously, Nancy was a ChildLaw Fellow at Loyola University Chicago School of Law and participated in the ChildLaw clinic. She served as a law clerk to the Honorable Dominc J. Squatrito of the United States District Court for the District of Connecticut. Before her law career, Ms. Drane worked as a Chicago elementary school teacher and served in leadership roles for the Inner City Teaching Corps. Ms. Drane received her J.D. from Loyola University Chicago School of Law, cum laude, and her undergraduate degree from Boston College. She is the Secretary of the Board of the Washington Council of Lawyers and is an Associate Adjunct Professor at American University’s Washington College of Law. Ms. Drane has also been certified as a Child Welfare Law Specialist by the National Association of Counsel for Children.

Sarah Flohre, J.D., is a supervising attorney in Children’s Law Center’s medical-legal partnership, Healthy Together. Ms. Flohre joined Children’s Law Center as a special education staff attorney in 2012 after working for many years in private practice, advocating for the special education needs of low-income children and families. She has litigated over thirty administrative due process hearings, has litigated appeals of Hearing Officers’ Decisions under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Improvement Act (IDEIA) in the United States District Court for the District of Columbia, and has assisted with class action litigation on post-Katrina health care issues. Ms. Flohre has also presented on special education issues and special education litigation practice in many forums, including at the Council of Parent Attorneys and Advocates (COPAA) Annual Conference. Ms. Flohre is a graduate of the University of the District of Columbia David A. Clark School of Law, received a Masters in Public Health from Harvard School of Public Health, and her undergraduate degree from Princeton University.

Isaac Hammond-Paul is the Deputy Director at the D.C. ReEngagement Center. He manages new and existing partnerships with community partners and District Agencies, carries a case load of young people, and oversees data collection and evaluation. Mr. Hammond- Paul grew up in New York and attended the University of Chicago for both his undergraduate degree and Master of Public Policy. While studying criminal justice policy in graduate school, he worked at CeaseFire, a Chicago-based organization that aims to reduce gun violence by mediating street level conflicts. Upon graduation, Mr. Hammond- Paul worked as a high school teacher at the Cook County Jail’s Day Reporting Center, an intensive supervision program that offers substance abuse treatment services, cognitive behavioral therapy, and education for non-violent offenders. From there, he moved to work at a Chicago based child welfare agency, where he worked on program development for a violence prevention program. When Mr. Hammond-Paul relocated to the District in 2013, he worked for the Department of Youth Rehabilitation Services in the Office of Education and Workforce Development.

Maheen Kaleem, J.D., is a staff attorney at Rights4Girls, an organization based in Washington, D.C. committed to ending gender-based violence against young women and girls in the U.S. Ms. Kaleem’s work focuses on the intersection between commercial sexual exploitation and justice involvement. She has extensive experience working with system-involved youth and their families, with a particular focus on sexually exploited youth. Ms. Kaleem is an alumna of the Equal Justice Works Fellowship, the Stoneleigh Emerging Leader Fellowship, and the National Juvenile Justice Network Youth Justice Leadership Institute. She holds a B.S.F.S. in International Politics from Georgetown University’s Walsh School of Foreign Service and a J.D. from Georgetown University Law Center. Ms. Kaleem is a member of the New York State Bar.

Clinton Lacey was appointed by Mayor Muriel Bowser in 2015, and is the Director of the District of Columbia Department of Youth Rehabilitation Services (DYRS). Before joining DYRS, Mr. Lacey had more than 25 years of experience working with youth and families, 19 of which have been focused in the field of juvenile and criminal justice.

Mr. Lacey joined the New York City Department of Probation as the Deputy Commissioner for adult operations in 2011. In this capacity, he was responsible for the oversight of a division that supervised approximately 24,000 clients on probation and led a series of innovative initiatives designed to reform the Probation Department’s key policies while building a host new relationships with system and community partners.

In June of 2006, Mr. Lacey held a project manager position at the W. Haywood Burns Institute, working in several jurisdictions around the nation with stakeholders engaged in the Institute’s process of addressing racial disparities in local juvenile justice systems. In this capacity, Mr. Lacey had the opportunity to train and collaborate with a cross section of stakeholders, including judges, probation officials, prosecutors, public defenders, educators, advocates, community organizers, and the court involved youth and families themselves.

Mr. Lacey also served as the director of the Youth Justice Program at Vera Institute of Justice, where he oversaw a technical assistance project focused on the reform of New York State’s juvenile justice policies. At Vera, he led an initiative to develop and improve collaborative relationships between community-based youth advocates and system based juvenile justice officials from various jurisdictions around the nation. From 1992 to 2004, Clinton operated as the associate executive director of Friends of Island Academy to develop and manage services for 16 to 24-yearolds involved in the juvenile and criminal justice systems in New York City.

Mr. Lacey is an experienced trainer, facilitator, and keynote speaker on such issues as DMC, racial and ethnic disparity, transitional discharge planning, comprehensive re-entry services, gang intervention strategies, and overall youth and human development. He has conducted training workshops and delivered lectures around the nation as well as in Brazil and Barbados. Mr. Lacey has a B.A. in Latin American and Caribbean History from Herbert H. Lehman College (City University of New York) and is a graduate of the Institute for Not-for-Profit Management at Columbia University.

Tarek Maassarani has worked for over a decade with Washington, D.C. and charter schools on peace education, teacher training and mentoring, youth leadership, and school garden projects. In 2011, Mr. Maassarani was the Restorative Justice Coordinator for the Latin America Youth Center where he worked to integrate restorative practices into D.C. schools and the juvenile justice system. In 2012, he helped established the Prince Georges County Community Conferencing Program, a Maryland judiciaryfunded program that receives referrals from county schools and the juvenile justice system. Mr. Maassarani is an adjunct professor of conflict resolution at the American University and regularly offers training and presentations on restorative justice to non-profit organizations, schools, parents, and police. He is also the founding coordinator for the DC Alliance for Restorative Practices (DCARP) and a member of the Every Student Every Day Coalition Steering Committee.

Before joining OAG, Ms. Meekins served as a tenured Associate Professor, Clinical Law Center Director, and Supervising Attorney in the Criminal Justice Clinic at Howard University School of Law since 2002. She has also served as a member of the faculty at Harvard Law School Trial Advocacy Workshop and as a Visiting Professor at the American University Washington College of Law and the Seattle University School of Law. In addition, Ms. Meekins previously served as an attorney in the District’s Public Defender Service and in private practice at Dewey, Ballantine, Bushby, Palmer, and Wood. Ms. Meekins has served as a foster parent for the District of Columbia Child and Family Services Agency, has been a tutor at the Greater Washington Urban League Kids’ Learning Center, and is a founding member of the Greater Washington Urban League Urban Roundtable. Ms. Meekins earned her bachelor’s degree from the University of Pennsylvania and her Juris Doctorate from the University of Virginia School of Law.

Shelia Roberson-Adams is an Assistant Deputy Director with the Court Social Services Division (CSSD) at District of Columbia Superior Court. She is a graduate of Virginia Commonwealth University. Ms. Roberson-Adams has been employed with CSSD for over 27 years, 23 of which have been in management. There are two Balanced and Restorative Justice (BARJ) Drop In Centers in Ms. Roberson- Adams’ branch with plans to open another one in the coming months. The probation officers assigned to the Status Offender Juvenile Behavioral Diversion Program (SOJBDP) Drop-In Centers provide supervision and services for youth in the two diversion solution courts.

Honorable Steven C. Teske is the Chief Judge of the Juvenile Court of Clayton County, GA, and serves regularly as a Superior Court Judge by designation. He was appointed juvenile judge in 1999. Judge Teske is a past president of the Georgia Council of Juvenile Court Judges and has been appointed by the Governor to the Children & Youth Coordinating Council, DJJ Judicial Advisory Council, Commission on Family Violence, and the Governor’s Office for Children and Families. He has written articles on juvenile reform published in Juvenile and Family Law Journal, Juvenile Justice and Family Today, Journal of Child and Adolescent Psychiatric Nursing, and the Georgia Bar Journal.

Anise Walker, M.Ed., has over 18 years of experience in education, counseling/behavioral health and training. She received a Bachelor’s degree in Education for the Hearing Impaired and a Master’s degree in Guidance and Counseling from Indiana University of Pennsylvania. In addition, she has matriculated at Johns Hopkins University to pursue a Post Masters Certification in Counseling At-Risk Youth.

Throughout her professional career, Ms. Walker has provided services in a variety of settings including public schools, public charter schools, outpatient mental health centers, non-profit organizations, special education schools, and in the juvenile justice system. Ms. Walker has succeeded in leadership roles on a variety of teams and committees serving students, parents, schools and education professionals.

In addition to her full-time duties and consulting work, Ms. Walker is an adjunct professor at Trinity Washington University, serves as a member of the district-wide and school-based parent advisory council for a D.C. public charter school and is a proud member of Zeta Phi Beta Sorority, Incorporated.