Elise C. Boddie

Director of the Office of City Legislative Affairs

Juan Cartagena

Community Service Society

Robert Garcia

Executive Director and Counsel, The City Project

Robert García is an attorney who engages, educates, and empowers communities to achieve equal access to public resources. He is the Executive Director, Counsel, and founder of The City Project in Los Angeles, California. Hispanic Business Magazine recognized him as one of the 100 most influential Latinos in the United States in 2008, "men and women who are changing the nation." He has extensive experience in public policy and legal advocacy, mediation, and litigation involving complex social justice, civil rights, human health, environmental, education, and criminal justice matters. He has influenced the investment of over $20 billion in underserved communities, working at the intersection of social justice, sustainable regional planning, and smart growth. He graduated from Stanford University and Stanford Law School, where he served on the Board of Editors of the Stanford Law Review. As reported in the New York Times, "The City Project [is] working to broaden access to parks and open space for inner city children, and . . . to fight childhood obesity by guaranteeing that . . . students get enough physical education." N. Y. Times, Nov. 12, 2007. Stanford Law School called him a "civil rights giant" and Stanford Magazine "an inspiration."

Mr. García's work in the past decade has focused on equal access to park, school, and health resources throughout Los Angeles and California. He is a nationally recognized leader in the urban park movement, bringing the simple joys of playing in the park to children in park starved communities. He has helped communities create great urban parks and preserve public access to beaches and trails in Southern California. He has helped diversify support for and access to state resource bonds, with unprecedented levels of support among communities of color and low-income communities, and billions of dollars for urban parks. He served as chairman of the Citizens' School Bond Oversight Committee for five years, overseeing the investment of over $14 billion to build new and modernize existing public schools as centers of their communities in Los Angeles. He has worked with the Alianza de los Pueblos del Río to build national urban greening and Latino environmental movements.

Mr. García has helped make community dreams come true for the Los Angeles State Historic Park at the Cornfield, Río de Los Angeles State Park at Taylor Yard as part of the greening of the Los Angeles River, and the Baldwin Hills Park in the heart of African American Los Angeles. The Cornfield is "a heroic monument" and "a symbol of hope," according to the Los Angeles Times. The Baldwin Hills Park will be the largest urban park designed in the United States in over a century. He is working with the Acjachemen people to save the Native American sacred site of Panhe and San Onofre State Beach and to stop a toll road there. He is fighting to keep public lands open for all in Malibu and the Santa Monica Mountains.

Mr. García previously served as an Assistant United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York under John Martin and Rudolph W. Giuliani, prosecuting organized crime, public corruption and international narcotics trafficking cases. He helped release the former Black Panther leader Geronimo Ji Jaga Pratt from prison after 27 years for a crime he did not commit, working with Johnnie Cochran and others. He defended people on Death Row in Georgia, Florida, and Mississippi. He served as Western Regional Counsel with the NAACP Legal Defense & Education Fund, Inc. He has taught at Stanford Law School and UCLA Law School. He practiced international litigation at a large New York law firm.

Marianne Engelman Lado

Executive Sponsor, National Campaign to Restore Civil Rights

Marianne has been involved in the National Campaign to Restore Civil Rights since its inception. She is currently a Visiting Assistant Professor at Seton Hall University School of Law. From 1999 to 2009, she served as General Counsel to New York Lawyers for the Public Interest (NYLPI), where she oversaw the litigation and advocacy program, including impact litigation, administrative advocacy, direct representation, community organizing and outreach, and intake. The docket encompassed cases and advocacy on issues of disability rights, environmental justice, and access to health care.

Marianne was previously a staff attorney at the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund (LDF), where she worked on litigation and advocacy within LDF's Poverty & Justice Program, representing clients attempting to break barriers of access to health care and quality education. In this capacity Marianne was responsible for developing a health care docket aimed at addressing the scarcity of health resources in medically underserved communities; discriminatory practices by the health care industry, including nursing homes, and also managed care organizations; lack of access to reproductive health services; and related issues of environmental justice. She also organized the legal effort in the late 1990s to save the public hospitals in New York City. The education docket included case development, trial, and appellate work at the state and federal level to guarantee equal educational opportunity across racial and class lines.

Marianne has taught graduate and undergraduate level courses in public administration, health policy, and education law at Baruch College. She holds a B.A. in government from Cornell University, a J.D. from the University of California at Berkeley, and an M.A. in Politics from Princeton University. Her publications include "Unfinished Agenda: The Need for Civil Rights Litigation to Address Continuing Patterns of Race Discrimination and Inequalities in Access to Health Care," "Breaking the Barriers of Access to Health Care: A Discussion of the Role of Civil Rights Litigation and the Relationship Between Burdens of Proof and the Experience of Denial," "Evaluating Systems for Delivering Legal Services to the Poor: Conceptual and Methodological Considerations" (co-authored with Gregg G. Van Ryzin) and "A Question of Justice: African-American Legal Perspectives on the 1883 Civil Rights Cases."

Alma Lowry

Syracuse University, College of Law

Barbara Olshansky

University of Maryland School of Law

Jane Perkins

National Health Law Program

Jane Perkins, JD, MPH, is the Legal Director at the National Health Law Program, a public interest law firm working on behalf of low income people, children, people of color, and individuals with disabilities. She engages in federal and state litigation and advocacy on their behalf. Ms. Perkins also directs the Health Activist Court Watch Project and manages NHeLP's litigation docket. She has written numerous articles on Medicaid, children's health, and access to the courts. Ms. Perkins is admitted to the state bars of California, Maryland (inactive), and North Carolina; seven of the federal circuit courts of appeal; and the U.S. Supreme Court.

Wendy R. Weiser

Brennan Center for Justice at NYU School of Law

Janette Wipper

Associate at Sanford, Wittels &Heisler

Professor Rebecca E. Zietlow

University of Toledo College of Law