NLGLA | Board of Directors

Board of Directors

Executive Committee

President

Laura Maechtlen joined the NLGLA Board as the affiliate representative for Sacramento Lawyers for the Equality of Gays and Lesbians in 2004. She has assumed responsibilities as the Membership Chair and most recently the President-Elect. Laura graduated from the Boston University School of Law after attending the University of Colorado at Boulder for undergraduate studies in Music and Political Science. She works at Seyfarth Shaw LLP in labor and employment litigation in their San Francisco, California offices.

Past President

Richard A. Wilson Richard A. Wilson is principal in The Law Offices of Richard A Wilson PC, in Chicago, where he concentrates exclusively on litigation and appellate practice relating to domestic relations law and legal issues, with particular emphasis on same-sex issues, including domestic partnerships, parentage, custody and visitation and related concerns and rights of persons in same-sex relationships. Mr Wilson is currently Chair of the Illinois State Bar Association’s Standing Committee on Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity (2006-2007). He is also immediate past chair of the Chicago Bar Association’s Committee on the Legal Rights of Lesbians and Gay Men (2005-2006 and 2004-2005), a member of the American Bar Association’s AIDS Coordinating Committee, and the Board of Directors of the AIDS Legal Council of Chicago. He also serves on a roundtable of lawyers who practice same-sex Domestic Relations law, founded in 2003 by the National Center for Lesbian Rights.

Secretary

Jenny Ryan is a staff attorney with the Minnesota Department of Revenue, specializing in corporate franchise tax and pass through entities. She began her volunteer career with NLGLA as an affiliate representative of the Minnesota Lavender Bar Association, and Jenny is also an active member of MLBA's board of directors. She graduated from the University of Minnesota Law School, where she chaired the GLBT student group. Jenny also teaches as adjunct faculty at William Mitchell College of Law and is active in pro bono service with Legal Assistance of Dakota County, a Minnesota legal aid program specializing in family law litigation and appellate practice.

Treasurer

Kate Fletcher is a solo practitioner in Chicago and its surrounding suburbs practicing in the areas of Tax and Estate Planning with an emphasis on estate planning for same-sex couples. She graduated from Loyola University Chicago School of Law with a J.D. and an LL.M. in Taxation. Ms. Fletcher began her career with NLGLA as a Law Student Division representative, where she coordinated the most successful writing competition in the organization's history. Ms. Fletcher is also a pilot with a major US Airline.

Law Student Division Representatives

ABA Law Student Division Chair
Ryan Dunn is a third-year student in a joint law and urban planning program at UCLA. Ryan graduated from the University of Wisconsin-Madison with a bachelor's degree in business administration and worked for a real estate development company in Minneapolis before beginning his graduate work. At UCLA, Ryan has been extensively involved in LGBT issues and was awarded the UCLA Outstanding Graduate Student Leadership Award. He has also served as co-chair of OUTlaw at UCLA, and worked with a UCLA School of Law professor on a book project examining the legal status of openly LGBT students and educators in public K-12 schools.

Michael Greenberg Student Writing Competition Chair
Alvin Lee is a second-year student at Harvard Law School. Prior to attending Harvard, Alvin studied violin performance at the Cleveland Institute of Music and received a bachelor's degree in Government from Cornell University. He has volunteered as a community outreach educator with the Whitman-Walker Clinic in Washington, DC and with the AIDS Action Committee in Boston. Since starting law school, he has worked as a legal intern for the Gay & Lesbian Advocates & Defenders (GLAD) in Boston and as a law clerk for the American Civil Liberties Union's (ACLU) LGBT & AIDS Project in New York. His research on transgender prisoners' health care has been published in the Harvard Journal of Law & Gender, where he serves as the Notes Director. He is the President of HLS Lambda, Harvard Law School's on-campus LGBT group, and is a regular contributing writer to Lesbian/Gay Law Notes.

ABA Delegate

Jeffrey G. Gibson is a civil litigator in San Francisco and a partner with the law firm of Goldstein, Gellman, Melbostad, Gibson and Harris. A graduate of the University of Texas and Pepperdine Law School, he has served on the national board of the Gay and Lesbian Victory Fund and was an originating board member of the Bay Area AIDS Legal Referral Panel. He organized programs on gay/lesbian children and youth for the Second World Congress on Children in San Francisco. From 1993-2000, he chaired the ABA’s IRR committee on the rights of lesbians and gay men, and has served since 2000 on the Steering Committee on the Unmet Legal Needs of Children.

Delegate to the ABA's Commission on Women in the Profession

Leslie Farber is an attorney at law practicing in Montclair, New Jersey, concentrating primarily in the areas of personal injury, workers compensation, employment law, real estate, contracts, LGBT rights (lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender), small estate planning, and general litigation. Ms. Farber received her law degree in 1991 from Pace University School of Law where she was an editor of the Pace Law Review. Currently, Leslie is Chairperson of the Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and Transgender Rights Section of the New Jersey State Bar Association, a member of the board of directors of the National Association of Employment LawyersÂ - New Jersey (NELA-NJ),Â and the National Lesbian & Gay Law Association’s (NLGLA), where she also serves as NLGLA’s liaison to the American Bar Association’s Commission on Women in the Profession. Outside of the practice of law, Leslie is member of the board of directors of Garden State Equality (a non-partisan LGBTI political action organization).

Representative to the ABA's Young Lawyers Division

Mario Sullivan is an associate at the Law Offices of Peter Anthony Johnson, P.C. He counsels clients on a wide range of issues relating to real estate, evictions, business formation, and estate planning. Mr. Sullivan is a member of the Chicago Bar Association (CBA), the Illinois State Bar Association, and the American Bar Association (ABA). In addition, he is a member of the National Lesbian and Gay Law Association (NLGLA), the Lesbian and Gay Bar Association of Chicago (LAGBAC), and the American Constitution Society (ACS). Mr. Sullivan serves as NLGLA's National Representative to the ABA Young Lawyers Division (YLD), Committee Member for the ABA YLD Diversity Team, Board Member and Chair of the Program Committee for LAGBAC, Chair of the CBA Committee on the Legal Rights of Lesbians and Gay Men; and Board Member and Programming Committee Member of the ACS Chicago Lawyer Chapter. Mr. Sullivan graduated from the Illinois State University in 2000 and obtained his J.D. from The John Marshall Law School in 2005.

At-Large Board Members

O. Kim Byrd Mr. Byrd is a native of the Florida Panhandle, having been born in Niceville and growing up in Ponce de Leon. Kim graduated from the University of Florida in 1984 with a Bachelor of Science degree in Business Administration. Kim relocated to New York City to attended New York Law School, where he received his Juris Doctor in 1989. During his second year, he met his partner, Brian Winfield, and they have been together for the past 19 years. Kim and Brian returned to Kim’s home state of Florida and briefly lived in the panhandle, and then relocated to Tampa Bay in late 1997, recognizing the friendly and welcoming environment Tampa provides. As a member of the legal community since 1989, Kim is admitted to practice New York, New Jersey and Florida. Kim established Byrd Legal Counsel, PA in January 2001, as a general practice law firm that strives to meet the legal needs of the Tampa Bay community. Byrd Legal Counsel has extensive experience in family law, criminal defense, estate planning and civil litigation. Kim is a past Director of the Center of Tampa Bay, a cooperating attorney for NCLR and a volunteer lawyer for Florida Disaster Legal Services, offering free legal services to hurricane victims.

Susan Belinda Christian is an Assistant District Attorney in San Francisco specializing in criminal law and appellate practice. She received her B.A. and J.D. from Yale, and has been a member of the California Bar since 1992. In addition to serving on the Board of Directors of NLGLA, Susan also serves on the Board of Directors of Directors of Walden House, a non-profit drug and alcohol treatment organization that also offers re-entry services to ex-offenders, and the Transgender Law Center, a civil rights organization which advocates nationally for the transgender community. Susan is Co-Chair of the Alice B. Toklas LGBT Democratic Club and a also am a member of the Bar Association of San Francisco's Judiciary Committee.

Rowena Gargalicana received her B.A. from University of California Los Angeles in 1994 and her J.D. from the University of San Francisco School of Law in 1997. She is currently a principal with Gargalicana/Graceffa, LLP in Oakland, California, where her practice areas include civil litigation, real estate litigation and transactions, and family law. In her family law practice, Rowena represents same and opposite sex couples in dissolutions and child custody, visitation and support matters, as well as drafts pre- and postnuptial agreements. Prior to establishing her own firm, Rowena litigated civil rights cases focusing on employment and public accommodation discrimination, including discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation. Rowena is also currently Vice-President of the Board of the Pacific Center, the second oldest LGBT community center in the nation located in Berkeley, California.

Joseph T. Gasper received his BA in 1998 in Comparative Literature from the Pennsylvania State University. Following college, Joe served two years in the United States Peace Corps, teaching English to high school students in Poland. Afterwards, Joe studied for a year at the Friedrich Schiller Universitat in Jena, Germany before returning to the US to begin graduate studies at Howard University. Joe graduated in 2006 with a JD and MA in Philosophy from Howard University. While in law school, Joe was both a member and later an editor of the Howard Law Journal. Throughout his second year, he interned with Servicemembers Legal Defense Network--an experience that culminated in a 2005 student note published in the Howard Law Journal. Joe was also active in the school's OUTLAW group and helped found its American Constitution Society (ACS) student chapter. In his last year, he served as one of five Dean's Fellows responsible for teaching legal citation and basic legal writing principles to a section of first-year law students. Originally from Scranton, Pennsylvania, Joe currently lives in New York and works as an associate with Clifford Chance US LLP in the firm's litigation department. He joined NLGLA in 2003 as a law student and began serving on the board in 2008 and chairs the board's law student division subcommittee.

Jason S. Gibson is an associate with Holland & Knight LLP in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. He practices in the area of transactional real estate law - focusing on retail, office, and industrial leasing. Jason has been a member of NLGLA since 2006. He graduated from the University of Miami School of Law after attending Harvard College for undergraduate studies in Economics.

Sarah Alexander Goldfrank is a counsel in the Washington, D.C. office of O'Melveny & Myers LLP. Her practice focuses on the representation of financial services institutions in litigation, regulatory and enforcement matters. She also has served as outside general counsel to Women for Women International, a 501(c)(3) corporation, since 2003. Sarah is an active member of her firm's community, where she serves as Secretary to the Office of the Chair and is a member of the Washington, D.C. office's Employment Committee. She previously chaired the office's 2006 Summer Committee, and served on the firm's Diversity Task Force.

Lousene Hoppe is an associate attorney in Fredrikson & Byron’s White Collar & Regulatory Defense, Commercial Litigation, and Health Care Fraud & Compliance Groups. She recently graduated from the University of Michigan Law School, where she sat on the leadership board of OUTLaws, the law school's advocacy group for GLBT rights. Since moving to Minneapolis, she has joined NLGLA's regional affiliate organization, the Minnesota Lavender Bar Association. Her current pro bono work focuses on providing criminal defense services to underserved minorities and advocating for fair and equal access to the criminal justice system for the hearing impaired.

Becca Levin is a recent graduate of American University, Washington College of Law. She also holds a Masters in Public Administration from Syracuse University. Becca has interned at the ACLU LGBT Project, Equality Advocates Pennsylvania, The National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, and the Whitman-Walker Clinic. Starting in September 2008, she will be clerking in New Jersey's Family Court for the Honorable Thomas Dilts. Becca is personally and professionally committed to achieving complete equality for LGBT families and hopes to pursue a career to this end.

Larry Levine is a professor of law at the University of the Pacific, McGeorge School of Law in Sacramento, California. A frequent panelist, lecturer, and speaker on legal issues involving sexual orientation, he is a member of the prestigious American Law Institute. Larry has served on the State Bar Committee on Sexual Orientation Discrimination as well as the board of directors of the AIDS Legal Referral Panel of Northern California and Sacramento Lawyers for the Equality of Gays and Lesbians. He is the immediate past chair of the Law School Admission Council’s Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and Transgender Issues Subcommittee. Larry graduated from UC Hastings College of the Law and was an associate with Morrison & Foerster in San Francisco for two years before joining the Pacific McGeorge in 1985. He is the author or co-author of several books on torts, a subject he teaches along with courses on Sexual Orientation and the Law, and Bioethics and the Law.

Irene M. Recio Irene M. Recio focuses her practice on immigration law, with an emphasis on employment issues and consular processing. She has successfully represented individual and corporate clients in affirmative filings with the U.S. Government, including applications for temporary and permanent residency and naturalization, as well as defensive procedures before the U.S. Department of State and Immigration Court. As part of her practice, Irene has also represented clients seeking political asylum in the United States on the basis of prior persecution as a result of political opinion, gender, religion, and sexual orientation, and has considerable experience with international adoptions. Irene is involved in numerous pro bono efforts representing individuals in deportation proceedings and as counsel to non-profit organizations including the Whitman Walker Clinic and the Rappahanock Council on Domestic Violence.

General Counsel

William S. Singer has been in the private practice of law in New Jersey for over 30 years. His practice concentrates on the creation and protection of non-traditional families and as counselor to numerous, varied non-profit organizations throughout the United States. He has worked to extend rights to lesbian and gay families through the Court system and the legislative process in New Jersey. In 2005, he won a landmark victory by convincing a court to establish a non-biological mother’s parentage as of birth by applying New Jersey’s artificial insemination statute, thus avoiding the delay and intrusive nature of the adoption process. In re Parentage of Robinson, 383 N. J. Super. 165, 890 A. 2d 1036 (Law Div. 2005). He is also the attorney who convinced the NJ Department of Health to change its birth certificates for same-sex couples from mother/father to parent/parent. Bill co-authored an article entitled “The State of Gay and Lesbian Adoption in New Jersey” in the April 2006 New Jersey Lawyer Magazine. In the non-profit world, Bill has counseled many different types of organizations through the process of their creation, securing their tax exempt status and the ensuing complex of issues they confront as an ongoing entity. For over 25 years he has represented numerous condominium and homeowner associations, trade associations, bar associations, foundations, political action committees and social welfare organizations. He has served as the General Counsel of the National Lesbian and Gay Law Association since its inception in the 1980’s and, among others, serves as general counsel to ACLU-NJ, the Sierra Club in New Jersey and the Trial Lawyers of America-New Jersey Branch. Mr. Singer received a degree in history with distinction from Rutgers College and his Juris Doctorate degree from the Columbia University School of Law.