Chester Hartman

Poverty & Race Research Action Council

Phil Tegeler

Poverty & Race Research Action Council

Philip Tegeler is the Executive Director of Poverty & Race Research Action Council (PRRAC), a civil rights policy organization based in Washington, DC. PRRAC's primary mission is to help connect advocates with social scientists working on race and poverty issues, and to promote a research-based advocacy strategy on structural inequality issues. At the present time, PRRAC is pursuing work in the areas of housing, education, and health, focusing on the importance of "place" and the continuing social consequences of historical patterns of housing segregation. Before coming to PRRAC, Mr. Tegeler was the Legal Director at the Connecticut ACLU, where he brought affirmative litigation on housing and school desegregation, voting rights, prisoners rights, and criminal justice reform. Mr. Tegeler has written a number of articles and reports on federal housing policy, including, most recently, "Connecting Families to Opportunity: The Next Generation of Housing Mobility Policy," in All Things Being Equal: Instigating Opportunity in an Inequitable Time (New Press 2007); and "The Future of Race Conscious Goals in National Housing Policy," in Public Housing Transformation: Confronting the Legacy of Segregation (The Urban Institute Press, 2009). Mr. Tegeler is a graduate of the Columbia Law School.

Judith Liben

Massachusetts Law Reform Institute

Diane L. Houk

Fair Housing Justice Center

Diane L. Houk has been the Executive Director of the Fair Housing Justice Center based in New York City since 2004. She is one of the nation's leading fair housing attorneys with twenty-four years experience in the field. After graduating from Columbia University School of Law, Ms. Houk worked in private practice for seven years in Milwaukee, Wisconsin as lead plaintiff's counsel in more than 100 civil rights cases alleging race, national origin, sex, including sexual harassment, disability, family and marital status, and sexual orientation discrimination in housing, employment, and public accommodations. She joined the Civil Rights Division of the U.S. Department of Justice in Washington, DC in 1991 where she worked as a Senior Trial Attorney and then Special Litigation Counsel in the Housing Section until 2004. At the Justice Department, Ms. Houk concentrated her work on challenging race and national origin discrimination in local land use practices, including zoning, building and occupancy codes, redevelopment plans, and subsidized housing programs. She currently serves as adjunct faculty at Columbia Law School where she teaches an externship on fair housing law and policy.