Photo Credits: The Ambassadors Circle
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Learn More About Our Presenters
Michael Adame is an attorney with a background in federal, state, and local regulatory regimes and public policy. In addition to his PRP portfolio, he works alongside the Local Solutions Support Center's legal team and its efforts to support local democracy and combat abusive preemption. Prior to joining PRP, Michael worked on the 2020 campaign to elect President Joe Biden.
Michael graduated cum laude from Harvard Law School and cum laude from Columbia University.
Lida is an Afghan-American community organizer based out of Washington D.C. She is passionate about giving back to her community. She is the co-founder of Afghans For a Better Tomorrow (AFBT) and leads national campaigns on anti-Muslim bigotry for over 6 years. Her writing has been published in Newsweek and has been cited in Al Jazeera, Vox, LA Times, and Business Insider, among other media outlets globally.
Lida received her master’s in Intercultural and International Communications from American University.
Larissa has a background in museum education, cinema management and theatre performance. She specializes in project management and communication, and brings organizational skills to PRP. She received her Master’s in Literary and Cultural Studies and is interested in the intersection of arts and culture. Larissa is also a certified Pilates instructor and enjoys helping her clients feel better in their bodies.
William Brown is an aspiring Life Coach, current Peer Leader, Junior Peer Counselor, Junior Life Coach, Chicago CRED Participant, Published Author, licensed forklift driver, food service, and custodial maintenance certificate holder, loving father, and family man. He is the protector and provider better known as Juju.
Nicolette Del Palacio is a passionate community grassroots organizer with experience in millennial voter outreach and engagement in the state of Arizona. Prior to Public Rights Project, Nicolette was a Regional Organizing Director for NextGen America, leading a team of organizers to educate, register and mobilize thousands of young eligible voters in Maricopa County during the 2018 Midterm Elections. In a similar capacity, she managed a voter registration program for Mi Familia Vota to ensure that Latino voters are included in the political process and have a voice in all aspects of government and policymaking. Nicolette is a graduate of Arizona State University with degrees in Political Science and Psychology.
Mitra Ebadolahi is the Senior Project Director for Economic Justice at Upturn. Prior to joining Upturn, Mitra spent more than a decade with the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), where she co-created the Border Litigation Project and litigated civil rights cases at the intersection of immigrants’ rights, racial justice, and police practices. She has been a Lecturer-in-Law at the University of California, Irvine School of Law since 2015. She is conversant in Spanish and admitted to practice in California and New York.
Mitra completed her legal studies at New York University School of Law, earning her JD, cum laude, in 2008. At NYU Law, Mitra was a Root-Tilden-Kern Scholar and served as the Senior Notes Editor of the Law Review. After law school, Mitra clerked for Judge Margaret M. Morrow (C.D. Cal.) and for Judge Betty B. Fletcher (9th Cir.). She subsequently received her LL.M. in International Legal Studies, also from NYU Law, in 2012.
Kimberly M. Foxx is the first African American woman to lead the Cook County State’s Attorney’s Office – the second largest prosecutor’s office in the country. Born and raised in Cabrini Green on Chicago’s Near North Side, Kim is a graduate of Southern Illinois University, where she earned a B.A. in Political Science and a J.D. from the SIU School of Law.
Tiana works as the Operations & Special Projects Manager at Public Rights Project, bringing more than seven years of cross-functional team-building, project management, process development and systems optimization to the team. As Operations Manager, Tiana ensures the organization and its staff are set up to excel. Tiana oversees expense and budget management — aligning expenditures with PRP’s strategic goals and priorities — as well as managing its administration. She offers vital support to PRP’s Fellowships Program, aiding in the program design and execution for the current cohort. In addition, she manages PRP’s human resources.
Stephanie Gharakhanian is a community organizer and lawyer who works at the intersection of immigrants’ rights, workers’ rights and the criminal legal system. She is the former Special Counsel of the Texas-based worker center, Workers Defense Project. While with Workers Defense, Stephanie led campaigns to win wage and safety protections for Texas construction workers, paid sick leave policies, and a Freedom City ordinance that reduced arrests for nonviolent offenses. She joined the Travis County DA’s Office in Austin, TX as a PRP Fellow in 2021 to launch DIstrict Attorney José Garza’s Economic Justice Enforcement Initiative.
Jill Habig is an attorney and political strategist with experience in political campaigns, policy advocacy, affirmative litigation, and public law. She has been named an Ashoka Fellow, Open Society Foundations Leadership in Government Fellow, and Draper Richards Kaplan Social Entrepreneur for her work building Public Rights Project.
Before founding PRP, Jill was the Deputy Campaign Manager and Policy Director for Kamala Harris for U.S. Senate, and served as policy director for her transition team. Prior to joining the campaign, she served as Special Counsel to then-Attorney General Harris, advising the Attorney General on key legal issues and policy initiatives. Her work emphasized consumer fraud, health, education, human trafficking, and civil rights, including issues related to gender and LGBT rights.
Jenna currently serves as José “Chito” Vela's Policy & Communications Advisor handling public safety, abortion rights, and energy policy. Prior to her work with the Austin City Council, Jenna organized with the Sunrise Movement as a climate protester and direct action lead.
Instagram, Facebook & Twitter: @cmchitovela
Instagram and TikTok: @jenna.hnz
Twitter: @jenna_hnz
Marin regularly integrates her work at both Deloitte and CorePower Yoga, as she believes wellbeing is an important part of inclusion. She hosts regular vinyasa classes for Deloitte practitioners in the Chicago office, and has designed wellbeing programs for front line workers in the travel, hospitality, and healthcare industries. Marin also serves on CorePower Yoga's Diversity Equity Inclusion and Belonging Council, which is focused on implementing strategies to improve access to yoga in marginalized communities.
Madison Jacobs is a content and storytelling strategist and product inclusion practitioner leading marketing and communications at PRP. She is also the co-founder of The Edtech Equity Project, an organization on a mission to hold education technology companies accountable for racial equity in the design and development of their products to champion the needs of Black and Brown learners. Before her current endeavors, Madison was a fellow at the Aspen Institute's Tech Policy Hub, where her work focused on producing policy solutions to various issues like improving access to water quality data, defining a fairness metric for mortgage algorithms to create equity in housing loans, and addressing racial bias in AI-driven education tools. Madison was previously a product marketing leader in the tech industry, where she led global campaigns at several Silicon Valley startups and Google. Madison earned her B.A. in Journalism, with an emphasis in African American Studies, from the Walter Cronkite School of Mass Communication at Arizona State University.
Lynne joined Midwest Access Project as its new executive director in the fall of 2017. Lynne has extensive experience in nonprofit management and leadership, program development and oversight, public policy, and fundraising.
Sarah Lyons: Sarah Lyons is a Research Analyst for UNITE HERE Local 1, a labor union that represents more than 15,000 hospitality workers in Chicagoland and Northwest Indiana. In 2017, UNITE HERE Local 1 successfully organized to pass legislation requiring the introduction of new workplace technology to better protect workers from sexual harassment and threats of workplace violence. The legislation covers all Chicago hotel workers, both union and non-union, and requires hotels to provide panic buttons to anyone who works alone in guest rooms and restrooms. The ordinance also protects hotel workers from retaliation when they report sexual violence by guests and mandates hotels to implement an anti-sexual harassment policy.
Instagram & Twitter: @uniteherelocal1
Facebook: UNITE HERE Local 1
Jonathan Miller is an experienced litigator and government attorney who has committed his career to public interest endeavors.
Prior to joining PRP, Jon served as the Chief of the Public Protection & Advocacy Bureau in the Massachusetts Attorney General's Office. Jon’s portfolio of work has included a wide range of matters from those brought on behalf of individuals facing housing discrimination or violation of their civil rights to U.S. Supreme Court advocacy on national topics such as affirmative action, reproductive rights, and marriage equality. In addition to Bureau Chief, Jon served as both an Assistant Attorney General in and Chief of the Civil Rights Division.
Lauren Miller serves as counsel in the Brennan Center’s Democracy Program, where she focuses on voting rights and elections. Prior to joining the Brennan Center, Miller was a litigation associate at the Chicago law firm Hughes Socol Piers Resnick & Dym, Ltd., where she practiced in the areas of civil rights, constitutional law, and labor and employment. Previously, Miller was a Public Rights Project fellow and special assistant state’s attorney in the Cook County State’s Attorney’s Office, where she served as the first attorney in the office’s Affirmative & Impact Litigation Section. In this role, she handled a variety of complex litigation matters, including the county’s successful challenge to the Department of Homeland Security’s “public charge” rule and the defense of several county firearm ordinances.
Harumi Miura (she/her) is a 2019 graduate of UC Berkeley with degrees in Media Studies and Peace & Conflict Studies, and is particularly interested in conflict mediation and community empowerment. Harumi wrote her undergraduate thesis exploring multiracial identity formation in Brazil and the connection of racial identity to civil liberties, social belonging, and policy. This research translates to a personal and professional dedication for addressing and dismantling systemic injustices on the basis of identity.
Seema Mohapatra holds the MD Anderson Foundation Endowed Professorship in Health Law at SMU Dedman School of Law. Mohapatra’s research centers around health care equity, reproductive justice, and public health law. Professor Mohapatra is the co-editor of “Feminist Judgments: Health Law Rewritten” (with Lindsay F. Wiley) and serves on the Board of Directors of American Society of Law, Medicine, and Ethics. She also co-chairs the Health Justice: Engaging Critical Perspectives in Health Law and Policy Initiative.
Dr. Wilneida Negrón is a social entrepreneur, researcher, and public interest technologist developing new models for people-centered systemic change and equity, focused on four interconnected sectors: labor markets, capital/finance, tech, and the governmental/public sectors.
Her current work is focused on: the intersections of tech and labor policy, reforming short-termism in capital markets and aligning private and philanthropic capital towards greater social impact, growing the public interest technology and responsible tech fields, co-founding Racial Equity Incubation Hub for supporting black-led social enterprises and NGOs. Wilneida is currently writing a book titled, “Using Behavioral Economics to Center People and Communities in an Era of Rapid Technological Change”.
Sarah Petrie is an Assistant Attorney General in the Consumer Protection Division at the Massachusetts Attorney General’s Office. She has practiced there for nine years. Prior to joining the Attorney General’s Office, she completed legal internships with the Honorable Susan Dlott of the United States District Court, Southern District of Ohio in Cincinnati, Ohio; the Federal Trade Commission, Bureau of Consumer Protection in Washington, D.C.; Greater Boston Legal Services, Consumer Rights Unit, in Boston, MA. She is a graduate of Northeastern University School of Law and Brown University.
Shareese joined BPI as Senior Staff Counsel and Director of Justice Reform in 2020 continuing a career dedicated to public service. She is responsible for identifying, developing, and implementing nuanced, community-driven, and evidence-based legal advocacy strategies that work toward the goal of achieving a society that ensures community safety and justice without compromising the rights, dignity, or humanity of any person.
Octavia Reese, MHI is a classically trained musician of more than 35 years, Octavia has expanded her musical accomplishments to include winning concerto competitions, performing internationally with more than five touring ensembles, appearing as a featured artist on multiple albums, and performing cello for her talent as Miss Michigan at Miss America 2006. Octavia is also a composer and has scored a film, which was featured at IndieNight Film Festival in Hollywood in 2020. Octavia is a published author of sci-fi fantasy young adult series, The Hibouleans, and wrote the “book score” for the series. Octavia is a summer 2023 artist-in-residence at Chateaux d’Orquevaux in France, where she will continue to blend music, art, and writing.
While music is one of Octavia’s many passions, her career is in global health care technology. She is the founder of a digital health startup, holds a Master of Science in healthcare informatics administration from Northwestern University, and has most recently been accepted into the global health care leadership program from Harvard Medical School. Octavia is also a mom of three and her family resides in Logan Square, Chicago.
Marissa is an attorney who has spent her career working with local governments to engage in high-impact litigation. As a Deputy City Attorney for the City of Los Angeles, Marissa helped bring one of the Office's first large-scale workers' rights lawsuits to hold accountable port trucking companies that were classifying truck drivers as independent contractors rather than employees and deducting thousands of dollars from their wages. In addition to protecting workers' rights, Marissa worked with the City of Los Angeles and later the County of Los Angeles to challenge the Trump Administration's hostile immigration agenda, from the federal district court all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court.
Seema Rupani will serve as a PRP Fellow at the Oakland City Attorney's Office of Community Lawyering & Civil Rights, focusing on impact litigation to advance housing and economic justice. Prior to PRP, Seema was a Staff Attorney and Clinical Supervisor at the East Bay Community Law Center for 4 years, where she taught law students, provided direct legal services to community organizations and small businesses, and engaged in policy campaigns to advance development without displacement. Using a movement lawyering approach, Seema's work has involved partnering with coalitions to develop long-term solutions to the housing crisis, including expanding tenant protections and preserving affordable land and housing as public resources. Seema grew up in the Bay Area and is a graduate of Berkeley Law. She worked as a community organizer prior to pursuing a career in law.
Caroline Sacerdote is a Staff Attorney in the U.S. Litigation Program of the Center for Reproductive Rights. She has fought restrictions on reproductive rights in state and federal courts, including through proactive challenges to longstanding, comprehensive abortion restrictions.
Instagram: @cmsacerdote
Twitter: @cm_sacerdote
Facebook: Caroline Sacerdote
Christina Schuler da Costa Ferro is a 2021 graduate of NYU Gallatin with a degree in Revolutionary Politics and a minor in History. Their studies around resistance work led to their involvement in organized actions around New York, including the “Nine Weeks of Art and Action” held at the Whitney. Following undergrad, Christina worked as an Urban Fellow for the New York City government and a Legal Intern for New Sanctuary Coalition, an NYC-based immigrant advocacy organization. Their professional and organizing experience ultimately translates to an interest in connecting grassroots politics to municipal policy. During their time in New York, Christina has also worked as a supervisor and barista at a local coffee chain, a server, and retail-employee—experiences which have instilled in them a dedication for workers rights and fair compensation.
Katie Tandy is veteran editor, journalist, digital media entrepreneur, and Editor-in-Chief of PRP’s civil rights magazine The Public, working alongside the Communications team. She is the former co-founder of three online magazines centering social justice and intersectionality – Ravishly, The Establishment and PULP – celebrating voices and stories marginalized, silenced, or overlooked by mainstream media. Katie is deeply invested in storytelling that takes the “I to the Universal” — championing first-person stories and narratives from the communities most affected by the laws at hand and honoring the humans behind legislation. She is the recipient of the Supermakers Entrepreneurial Dream Project, the Turkeyland Cove Foundation and Hambidge writing residencies, and was a 2021 finalist with Blackacre.
Melissa is a reproductive justice and sexual health advocate who has worked at nonprofit organizations shaping policies at every level of government. She has dedicated her professional career to addressing the lack of affordable quality healthcare in the United States and advancing sexual and reproductive autonomy.
