Michael Gregory
Michael Gregory is Faculty Director of the Youth Advocacy and Policy Lab (Y-Lab). Mike is also Clinical Professor of Law at Harvard Law School and Senior Attorney at the Trauma and Learning Policy Initiative (TLPI). Mike teaches Harvard’s Education Law Clinic, in which law students represent individual families of traumatized children in the special education system and participate in TLPI’s larger systemic advocacy to create trauma-sensitive schools. Mike has also taught courses in Education Law and Policy and Education Reform Movements. Mike is a co-author of TLPI’s landmark report and policy agenda Helping Traumatized Children Learn, and is also a co-author of Educational Rights of Children Affected by Homelessness and/or Domestic Violence, a manual for child advocates. In 2009, Mike and Susan were named Bellow Scholars by the Association of American Law Schools, in recognition of TLPI’s advocacy for Safe and Supportive Schools legislation in Massachusetts. In 2013, Mike was appointed by Gov. Deval Patrick to serve on the Families and Children Requiring Assistance Advisory Board, a statewide panel that will advise the Commonwealth on the implementation of the reformed CHINS law. He received his JD from Harvard Law School in 2004, graduating cum laude. He graduated magna cum laude with a Bachelor of Arts in American Civilization from Brown University in 1998, and received a Master of Arts in Teaching, also from Brown University, in 1999. Mike began his work for TLPI in 2004 upon receiving a Skadden Fellowship.
Crisanne Hazen
Crisanne Hazen is the Assistant Director of Harvard Law School’s Youth Advocacy and Policy Lab (Y-Lab). Crisanne joined Harvard Law School in the summer of 2016. She came from San Jose, California, where she worked as a supervising attorney at Legal Advocates for Children and Youth (LACY), a program of the Law Foundation of Silicon Valley. Starting at LACY as an Equal Justice Works Fellow in 2006, Crisanne developed a “know your rights” curriculum for pregnant and parenting teens, which she taught at 6 area high schools. Over the 10 years at LACY, she represented hundreds of teen parents in family law and restraining order matters, as well as directly represented children and youth of all ages in a variety of civil proceedings including family law, guardianships, housing, benefits, special education, and school discipline. She helped to start and later manage a medical-legal partnership clinic in the Pediatric Department of Valley Medical Center in San Jose. She also managed other population-based projects, including a CSEC project, transition-age foster youth project, and a foster youth identity theft project. Crisanne is a graduate of Harvard University and the University of California-Davis School of Law.
Tyler Whittenberg
Tyler Whittenberg is Deputy Director of Advancement Project’s Opportunity to Learn Program. In this role, he supports grassroots campaigns led by youth of color fighting to end the criminalization of Black and Latine students and create liberatory systems of education. Prior to joining AP, Tyler was Chief Counsel for Justice System Reform at Southern Coalition for Social Justice. Tyler has dedicated his entire career to ending the school-to-prison pipeline and dismantling oppressive structures systematically imposed upon Black and Latine youth. He began his career as an 8th grade social studies teacher in Columbia, South Carolina before receiving a M.A. in Politics and Education from Teachers College, Columbia University, and a J.D. from Tulane University Law School. Tyler also advocated for the rights of youth in the justice and foster care systems as a Staff Attorney with the Youth Law Center and helped jurisdictions throughout the U.S. reduce racial and ethnic disparities in youth-serving systems while a Site Manager with the W. Haywood Burns Institute.
Jessica Alcantara
Jessica Alcantara is a Senior Staff Attorney in the Opportunity to Learn program at Advancement Project. Jessica supports Black and Latine communities on issues of the school-to-prison pipeline and school closures, with the goal of increasing Black and Latine students’ access to quality, sustainable community schools, as well as winning police free schools. She also works on the intersection of education law and immigration law.
Jessica has been with Advancement Project since 2016 when she joined as a Skadden Fellow. Jessica attended Columbia Law School, where she was involved with the Columbia Journal of Race and Law, the Black Law Students Association, the Latino Law Students Association, and the Student Public Interest Network. Prior to law school, she served in the Peace Corps as a Youth Development Volunteer in Azerbaijan. She earned her undergraduate degree from Dartmouth College and also holds an M.A. in Latin American and Latino Studies from Fordham University. Jessica is a proud alumna of the Prep for Prep program in New York City, where she has also taught.
Marsha Levick
Marsha Levick is the co-founder and Chief Legal Officer of Juvenile Law Center, America’s first public interest law firm for children. Throughout her career, Levick has advocated for youth involved in the justice and child welfare systems, in Pennsylvania and nationwide. Levick has participated in numerous cases before the U.S. Supreme Court as well as federal and state courts nationwide. Notable cases include Roper v. Simmons, Graham v. Florida, Miller v. Alabama, and Montgomery v. Louisiana, all U.S. Supreme Court cases striking severe adult sentences for youth in the criminal justice system, and J.D.B. v North Carolina, requiring consideration of a suspect’s youth in the Miranda law enforcement/custody determination. Levick also spearheaded Juvenile’s Law Center’s work in the Luzerne County, Pa. “Kids for Cash” judges’ scandal, resulting in the vacatur of nearly 2500 juvenile adjudications and substantial financial awards to the youth and their parents. Levick serves on the Board of Directors of the Southern Poverty Law Center and Louisiana Center for Children’s Rights and is a member of the Dean’s Council of the Indiana University O’Neill School of Public and Environmental Affairs. Levick has received numerous awards for her work, including the Philadelphia Award (2015) and the Philadelphia Inquirer Citizen of the Year Award (2009 – co-winner), as well as recognition for her work from the American Bar Association, American Association for Justice, the Pennsylvania Bar Association and the Philadelphia Bar Association. Levick is an adjunct professor at Temple University Beasley School of Law and the University of Pennsylvania Law School.
Kristin Henning
Kristin Henning is the Blume Professor of Law and Director of the Juvenile Justice Clinic and Initiative at Georgetown Law, where she and her law students represent youth accused of delinquency in Washington, DC. Kris was previously the Lead Attorney for the Juvenile Unit of the D.C. Public Defender Service and is currently the Director of the Mid-Atlantic Juvenile Defender Center.
Kris trains state actors across the country on the impact of racial bias and trauma in the juvenile and criminal legal systems. Her workshops help stakeholders recognize their own biases and develop strategies to counter them. Kris also worked closely with the McArthur Foundation’s Juvenile Indigent Defense Action Network to develop a 41-volume Juvenile Training Immersion Program (JTIP), a national training curriculum for youth defenders. She now co-hosts, with the Gault Center, an annual week-long summer academy for trial lawyers and a series of “Train the Trainer” programs for experienced defenders. In 2019, Kris partnered with the Gault Center to launch a Racial Justice Toolkit for youth advocates, and again in 2020, to launch the Ambassadors for Racial Justice program, a year-long program for youth defenders committed to challenging racial injustice in the juvenile legal system through litigation and systemic reform.
Kris writes extensively about race, adolescence, and policing. Her book, The Rage of Innocence: How America Criminalizes Black Youth, was published by Penguin Random House in September 2021 and was featured on the front page of the New York Times Book Review and received rave reviews in the Washington Post. The book was awarded a 2022 Media for a Just Society Award by Evident Change and the 2022 Social Justice Advocacy Award from the In the Margins Book Awards Committee. Henning serves on the ABA’s Juvenile Justice Standards Task Force and ALI’s Restatement on Children and the Law project. She has won several awards including the 2021 Juvenile Leadership Prize by the Juvenile Law Center and the 2022 Women of Distinction Award from the American Association of University Women.
Betsy Fordyce
Betsy Fordyce, CWLS is an attorney, trainer, and policy consultant in Denver, Colorado. She has spent her career advocating for and with children, youth, and families in the child welfare, juvenile justice, education, and homelessness arenas. Through her company, Upstream Shifts, she works to strengthen the capacity of nonprofit organizations, government agencies, community coalitions, and individual practitioners to address system challenges and better meet the needs of young people. Betsy has worn numerous advocacy hats over the years, most recently serving as the Executive Director of the Rocky Mountain Children’s Law Center. She has also previously served as an adult ally for a youth-led organizing initiative for youth in foster care, supported nonprofit program and organizational development efforts, provided direct legal representation as a guardian ad litem in Colorado dependency & neglect and delinquency cases, engaged in teaching and training, and advocated in legislative and policy spaces. Betsy received her law degree from Villanova University School of Law and her Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of Notre Dame (Go Irish!). She discovered her passion for child/youth advocacy during law school as a Bergstrom Child Welfare Law Summer Fellow.
Cara L. Nord
Cara’s passion for child advocacy started over 30 years ago when she competed in junior high school forensics competitions with an original oratory on child abuse. She earned her Bachelor’s Degree magna cum laude in American Politics and Philosophy Prelaw, then taught fourth grade in Washington, DC through Teach for America, an AmeriCorps Program. Her teaching experience afforded her the opportunity to attend law school on a full-tuition public interest scholarship. During law school, Cara represented children in At-Risk Youth and Child in Need of Services Proceedings, interned with TeamChild, completed Court Appointed Special Advocate (CASA) training, and served as CASA liaison to her law school. After graduating law school summa cum laude, Cara clerked for the Washington State Supreme Court and volunteered as a Big Sister. She then spent over 10 years litigating child welfare trials and appeals as an Assistant Attorney General in Washington State and as an Assistant, then Senior Assistant, County Attorney in Colorado Springs, Colorado. Currently, Cara is the Youth Empowerment Attorney (YEA) at the Office of the Child’s Representative (OCR). As OCR’s YEA, Cara’s responsibilities include co-championing OCR’s Lived Experts Action Panel (LEAP), a group of young people with lived experience in Colorado child welfare, truancy, and juvenile delinquency systems who participate in OCR’s efforts to create and improve laws, policies, and practice in ways that serve the best interests of children and youth.
Rachel Belin
Rachel Burg Belin (she/her) is the Managing Partner and, with young people, a co-founder of the Kentucky Student Voice Team. She has decades of experience supporting young people as research, policy, and storytelling partners, acting by turns as a social studies teacher, media literacy nonprofit innovator, education policy aide, development consultant, and commercial radio news director. In the course of this work, she has spearheaded nine different ventures specifically to amplify and elevate the voices of young people in civic discourse. With young people as collaborators, she has been the recipient of a Citizen’s and Scholars Civic Spring Award, the Kentucky Nonprofit Network Excellence in Public Policy Award, the Pathway 2 Tomorrow Breakthrough in Education Innovation Award, and a George Foster Peabody Award. Rachel holds a BA from Harvard University and an MAT from the University of Rochester.
Maggie Donworth
Maggie Donworth is a sophomore at Tates Creek High School in Lexington, Kentucky, where she plans to complete the International Baccalaureate Diploma Program, and is an avid member of the Kentucky Student Voice Team. Maggie serves as the Team’s litigation coordinator, where she helps lead weekly meetings, and to organize the Rose Revival campaign. Within KSVT, she also is a part of the communications team and the policy team, where she helps with both bill-tracking, and advocacy for student school board representation. Outside of KSVT, she is a member of her school’s varsity lacrosse team, counsels young children at her summer camp, and is a strong advocate for issues she cares about within her community.
Georgie Farmer
Georgie Farmer is a senior at Danville High School with nearly two years of involvement in the Kentucky Student Voice Team (KSVT). They first learned about KSVT through their older sister, who joined in 2017. In 2022, Georgie participated in a journalism workshop sponsored by KSVT, and they officially became a member in 2024. Georgie actively contributes to the litigation, policy, and bill tracking subteam and has represented KSVT at numerous events. Their speaking engagements include presenting at the Amendment 2 Myth Bus Tour, participating in the Rose Revival Case, discussing student mental health at the State Capitol, serving as an examiner at KSVT’s Civil Education Public Hearing, and traveling to San Francisco as a panelist at the New Schools Venture Fund Summit on student activism.
Beyond KSVT, Georgie has demonstrated significant activism efforts, leading three protests at their school, speaking at two additional protests, and founding their school newspaper to promote student voices. Additionally, they hold leadership positions such as President of the Thespian Club, Executive Editor of the school newspaper, Secretary and founding member of their Educators Rising chapter, Reporter for their chapter of the Technology Student Association, and Captain of the Speech Team. Georgie also works part-time at Walmart which has become their backdrop for multiple KSVT Zoom calls. Georgie plans to attend college this fall with the goal of becoming a high school social studies and performing arts teacher.
Kevin Tse
Kevin Tse is a senior at Elizabethtown High School in Elizabethtown, Kentucky, and serves in the role of Communications Coordinator for the Kentucky Student Voice Team. In this role, he works to uplift and empower student stories through social media, website management, and public-facing communications, helping ensure KSVT’s mission is meaningfully represented in educational policy conversations. He is also actively involved in KSVT’s Rose Revival campaign, contributing as a member of the research, policy, and litigation teams to support student-led advocacy. Outside of KSVT, Kevin pursues a surgical internship at Baptist Health Hardin and is involved in Academic Team, FBLA, Beta Club, and a range of other student organizations.
Daniela DiGiacomo
Dr. Daniela Kruel DiGiacomo is an Associate Professor at the University of Kentucky. With a background in teaching and social work, Daniela’s program of research focuses on how to design formal and informal learning settings in ways that support and extend young people’s lived experiences, interests, and expertise. As a learning scientist trained in the sociocultural tradition, her scholarship is guided by a commitment to pursuing research that is both just-conferring and humanizing– research that proceeds with the assumption that diversity is a resource to be leveraged, rather than a problem to be solved. As a senior research partner, Daniela leads on research project support and the development of organization-wide capacity building research training to build and maintain skills around ethical and effective youth-led education research.
Will Powers
Will is a graduate of Occidental College, where he studied diplomacy and world affairs and graduated as an Obama Scholar. He has worked for the Brookings Institution, Blue Haven Initiative, and the House Foreign Affairs Committee advancing social impact through policy making. Will is currently the policy and public engagement partner for the Kentucky Student Voice Team helping lead the Rose Revival campaign and supporting high school students to facilitate a series of public hearings related to issues raised in KSVT’s recently-filed legal complaint, Kentucky Student Voice Team v. The Commonwealth of Kentucky.
Paige Duggins-Clay, J.D.
Paige Duggins-Clay, J.D., is IDRA’s Chief Legal Analyst. She coordinates IDRA’s legal research and strategy, expert testimony, and amicus curiae advocacy to elevate the voices of students and coalition partners. Her work builds on IDRA’s over 50-year legacy of support to families, educators and their attorneys seeking education justice through the courts. Paige also leads IDRA’s policy advocacy related to addressing bullying and harassment, school discipline, and school policing in Texas.
Paige also works as an Assistant Professor of Practice in the Department of Educational Leadership and Policy at the University of Texas at Austin. Her co-authored article, Youth Dignity Takings: Understanding and Restoring the Involuntary Property Loss of Book Bans and Trans Bans, appears in the Loyola Interdisciplinary Journal of Public Interest Law.
Prior to joining IDRA, Paige worked as an associate at Husch Blackwell LLP, where she handled civil rights litigation, investigations, training, and compliance on behalf of education institutions, with a focus on equity and organizational response to misconduct.
Paige also served as a law clerk for Texas Supreme Court Justice Jeff Boyd and intern for federal district court Judge Lee Yeakel. During law school she served as a legal fellow for the Texas Civil Rights Project, Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund, and Texas Rio Grande Legal Aid, supporting the organizations’ litigation and policy advocacy. As a legislative aide and Luna Scholar, she advised Texas Senators Judith Zaffirini and Wendy Davis on school finance and school-to-prison pipeline issues.
Paige earned a law degree from the University of Texas School of Law, where she was the inaugural G. Rollie White Public Service Scholar. She holds a bachelor’s degree in education and English and a minor in race and ethnic studies from Southwestern University. She also completed a certification in human rights, conflict management, and community development from the Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University in South Africa and a certificate in restorative justice leadership and facilitation from the University of San Diego Center for Restorative Justice.
She was named Outstanding Young Alumna by the Texas Law Alumni Association in October 2025, one of “18 Under 40” by Southwestern University in 2020, and a “Top 20 Up and Coming Lawyer” by the Austin Black Business Journal.
Cameron Samuels
Cameron Samuels (they/them/theirs) is co-founder and Executive Director of Students Engaged in Advancing Texas, a movement demonstrating youth visibility in policymaking. With SEAT, Cameron has spearheaded grassroots opposition to anti-LGBTQ+ mandates in Texas school districts, introduced legislation to elevate student rights, partnered with the Biden-Harris Administration to center youth leadership, and testified before the U.S. Senate at a hearing on book bans.
In high school, Cameron organized nationally-recognized efforts against censorship in the Katy Independent School District in Texas. Within months of once facing the school board alone, Cameron packed board meetings and distributed hundreds of banned books across Texas. With the ACLU, Cameron filed legal action that unblocked LGBTQ+ Internet resources like the Trevor Project.
President Barack Obama recognized Cameron for their efforts against book banning, and in 2023, Cameron received the Trailblazer Award from the Human Rights Campaign. In 2022, Cameron was named Banned Books Week’s inaugural Youth Honorary Chair, a Seventeen Magazine Voice of the Year, an NBC Pride 30 trailblazer, and one of Teen Vogue’s 21 Under 21 and GLAAD’s 20 Under 20 changemakers.
Ayaan Moledina
Ayaan Moledina (he/him) is a Pakistani-American 11th grade student in Austin, Texas who first got involved with activism at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, at age 10, when he worked on public health and pro-vaccine policy and grassroots campaigns. Since then, he has worked on multiple public health, education, youth mental health, and civic engagement policy campaigns. Given his lived experiences with mental health, he is passionate about providing resources to struggling youth and expanding suicide prevention resources for students across the country. He believes youth have the power to bring people together and he strives to help unite legislators, advocates, and citizens around important issues affecting youth.
Ayaan has served in various roles including at the US House of Representatives and the Texas legislature. He has worked on organizing advocacy campaigns and awareness events in partnership with various institutions such as The White House, the US Department of Health and Human Services, and the US Department of Education, featuring leaders like President Biden and Vice President Harris, among many other elected, appointed, and nonprofit leaders.
Ayaan has been honored by organizations such as the National Alliance on Mental Illness of Texas, Texas American Federation of Teachers (AFT), Texas Gun Sense, The Westly Foundation, and The Congressional Award Foundation. He now serves as the Federal Policy Director at Students Engaged in Advancing Texas or SEAT, a movement of young people developing transferable skills and demonstrating youth visibility in policymaking by seeking a seat at the table. He spearheads local action, grassroots organizing efforts, and state and federal legislation touching issues ranging from mental health, suicide prevention, and youth civic engagement to education, racial justice, and gun violence prevention. He has written various pieces of legislation at the federal level, including H.R.5725 and H.R.5706, among several others based on his lived experiences, which focus on mental health crisis response practices. At the state level, he has written bipartisan legislation to enable school districts to have a student member of their school board.
Locally, he has successfully advocated for increased funding for 24/7 mental health crisis response in Austin. Additionally, he is an Executive Council member of Team ENOUGH which works to educate young people about gun violence and mobilize them to take meaningful action to prevent it. He serves on their Policy and Legislation Committee, working to engage young people across the country in legislative advocacy and helping them be aware of state and federal actions around gun violence prevention. He is now running for local office on his local Board of Education where, if elected, he would be the first South Asian and Muslim elected to the Board and one of the youngest elected officials in the entire country.
Hayden Cohen
Hayden Cohen is an activist, student, and dedicated advocate for youth visibility in policy making. Their journey in activism began in high school, where they worked to improve sexual education curriculum and served as Gender-Sexuality Alliance president for three years.
Now, Hayden is the State Policy Director for Students Engaged in Advancing Texas (SEAT), a movement of young people developing transferable skills and ensuring youth representation in policymaking. In this role, they’ve testified before Texas legislative committees and the State Board of Education, engaged directly with legislators, and empowered students to advocate for themselves. Their work has been instrumental in fighting censorship efforts and advancing policies that protect LGBTQ+ students and marginalized youth.
Hayden is also a passionate advocate for voter registration and education, serving as a Deputy Voter Registrar and introducing a high school voter registration bill. Their dedication to activism has earned them national and local recognition, including being named to Teen Vogue’s 20 Under 20 for 2024, OutSmart Magazine’s Most Prominent Youth Activist of 2024, and Houston Pride Grand Marshall for 2025. They are currently pursuing a degree in social work at University of Houston-Downtown and remain committed to building a more inclusive and equitable future for young people in Texas.
Cara Berg Powers
Cara is the Massachusetts State Director for Brown’s Promise and has been working for over 20 years in education, arts and culture to help people reimagine and reshape the world. She spent five years supporting the development of new courses, community partnerships, and promising policies in the Community, Youth, and Education Studies program at her alma mater, Clark University. She has also taught courses in education, urban studies, sociology and media UMASS Boston and Wheelock College, and Worcester State University, where she continues to serve part-time as a Visiting Professor. Cara was founding Executive Director of the Transformative Culture Project, where she spent over a decade supporting arts, culture, and economic development programming in classrooms and community settings. She has produced content for MTV and NBC, and has presented at national conferences on issues of education, media,
Cara’s research and policy work at the intersection of race, class, education, and cultural studies has supported dozens of community partnerships and policy initiatives. Her recent co-edited volume, Uncovering Possible, explores the pedagogical and policy learnings of the overlapping crises of the COVID pandemic and civic health and is available from Vernon Press.
Dr. Raul Fernandez
Dr. Raul Fernandez is a public impact scholar. As a Senior Lecturer in Educational Leadership & Policy Studies, he studies, writes, and teaches about inequities in education. As the Executive Director of Brookline for Racial Justice & Equity, he rallies his neighbors in the relentless pursuit of racial and economic justice.
While Chair of DESE’s Racial Imbalance Advisory Council, he co-authored Racial Segregation in Massachusetts Schools, the first report in a generation to evidence the substantial and pervasive disparities between segregated white and nonwhite schools in Massachusetts.
Raul also served as a member of Brookline Select Board – the first Latino elected to that position. During his time there he created a working group to support public housing residents, a Racial Equity Advancement Fund, and a task force to reimagine public safety.
Raul’s academic pursuits have focused on how policymaking through the courts, state legislatures, and the federal government impact education policy and practice. He also designed a graduate-level course on School Segregation, which is also being taught as part of the Boston Public Schools Dr. Carol Johnson District Leadership Fellowship.
He has been named a Public Impact Scholar by the Boston University Initiative on Cities and a Massachusetts Education Policy Fellow by the Rennie Center for Education Research & Policy.
He is also on the board of Amplify Latinx, which seeks to build economic and political power for Latinos in Massachusetts, and a board member of Commonwealth Kitchen, which supports women and people of color in starting food businesses.
Jillian Lenson
Jillian Lenson joined Lawyers for Civil Rights (LCR) in 2025. As a Senior Attorney, she represents clients across a wide-range of civil rights cases, including education, fair housing, immigrant rights, and police accountability matters.
Jillian is co-counsel in LCR’s federal lawsuit challenging an unlawful policy authorizing Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers to enter private homes without a judicial warrant, and she represents a family who was illegally seized and assaulted by ICE. Jillian’s work in both housing and education at LCR is focused on eliminating barriers to and affirmatively fostering more integrated, inclusive, and equitable communities.
Prior to LCR, Jillian was a Trial Attorney at the Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division, where she was awarded Distinguished Service Awards from both the Attorney General and Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights. Jillian began her career enforcing the Fair Housing Act at the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development and served as a Special Assistant U.S. Attorney for Civil Rights Enforcement in the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Virginia.
She is a graduate of the University of Chicago and Boston College Law School, where she authored and published a litigation primer for challenging state “No Promo Homo” laws, which ban discussion of LGBTQ+ identity in public schools.