Below are the biographies for the Art of Social Change spring 2024 speakers.
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 Latinx communities on issues of the school-to-prison pipeline and school closures, with the goal of increasing Black and Latinx 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 joined Advancement Project in 2016 as a Skadden Fellow. She is a graduate of Dartmouth College, where she earned a B.A. in Geography and Latin American, Latino and Caribbean Studies, as well as a minor in Spanish Language and Literature. Following her time at Dartmouth she joined the Peace Corps, serving for two years as a Youth Development Volunteer in Azerbaijan. Jessica attended Columbia Law School, where she served as the Submissions Editor of the Columbia Journal of Race and Law. While at Columbia, Jessica also served as Admissions Chair of both the Black Law Students Association and the Latino Law Students Association, and was also involved with the Student Public Interest Network. She is an alumna of the Prep for Prep program in New York City, where she has also taught. Prior to law school, she earned a M.A. in Latin American and Latino Studies at Fordham University.
Judge Gloria Tan
Gloria Tan is First Justice of Middlesex County Juvenile Court. She was appointed to the bench in 2013. She previously served as the Deputy Director at Harvard Law School’s Criminal Justice Institute, where she taught and supervised law students representing indigent adults and youth in criminal and delinquency proceedings in Boston. She began her legal career as a public defender representing juvenile and adult clients in the Youth Advocacy Project and the Boston Trial Unit of the Committee for Public Counsel Services. She serves on the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court (SJC) Jury Management Advisory Committee, the SJC Advisory Committee on Massachusetts Evidence Guide, the MA Trial Court Standing Committee on Alternative Dispute Resolution, and the Board of Trustees for the Flashner Judicial Institute. She was a recipient of the Massachusetts Bar Association Access Justice to Award in 2013 and earned her B.A. from Rice University and J.D. from Yale Law School.
Joyce McMillan
Joyce McMillan is a thought leader, advocate, activist, community organizer, educator, and the Founder and Executive Director of JMACforFamilies (Just Making a Change for Families). Her mission is to remove systemic barriers in communities of color by bringing awareness to the racial disparities in systems where people of color are disproportionately affected. Joyce believes the conversation about systemic oppression must happen on all levels consistently before meaningful change can occur. Joyce’s ultimate goal is to abolish systems of harm – especially the family policing/regulation/destruction system (also known as the child welfare system) – while creating concrete community resources.
Zoe Russell
Zoe Russell she/her/hers is an Equal Justice Works Fellow in the Family Defense Practice at The Bronx Defenders. Her passion is supporting radical change for poor Black and Brown families, and the abolition of the family regulation system is her goal. She is a deep believer in investing in community, and being held accountable by community. She strives to use her role as legal advocate to expand community capacity and develop transformative methods of care and restoration outside of legal, carceral, and capitalist systems.
Zachary Clifton
Zachary Clifton is Legislative Coordinator and a Board Member of Kentucky Student Voice Team (KSVT). Zachary is currently a Senior at Corbin High School in Corbin, Kentucky. Click here to read Zachary’s full bio on the KSVT site.
Luisa Sanchez
Luisa Sanchez (she/her) is a Student Action Network for Equity (SANE) Coordinator and Board Member of Kentucky Student Voice Team (KSVT). Luisa is currently a Sophomore at Boyle County High School. Click here to read Luisa’s full bio on the KSVT site.
Raima Dutt
At the Kentucky Student Voice Team (KSVT) Raima Dutt (she/her) is Research Coordinator, Cross-Educational Coordinator, Board Co-President, co-lead for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Research and Policy work, and an analyst for KSVT’s Race to Learn Study (based on over 10,000 Kentucky middle and high school students’ responses to a survey on race, ethnicity, and school climate). Raima is currently a Senior in high school. Click here to read Raima’s full bio on the KSVT site.
Andrew Brennen
Andrew is Kentuckian and a co-founder, senior advisor, and board chair & treasurer of the Kentucky Student Voice Team. As a Black, LGBT high school student in Lexington, Kentucky, Andrew (he/him) experienced the impact of education injustice first hand. In response, he co founded the Kentucky Student Voice Team which helps to amplify and elevate students as partners in improving Kentucky schools. Nine years later, the Kentucky Student Voice Team has grown to over 100 members, led multiple successful legislative campaigns, published original, peer reviewed research and changed the narrative in Kentucky about the role students can play in creating more just and democratic schools. In 2020 Andrew was named a National Geographic Education Fellow and a Forbes 30 under 30 honoree for his work co leading these efforts as well as supporting youth led movements worldwide.
Today, in addition to serving as a “senior” advisor to the Kentucky Student Voice Team, Andrew serves as an associate at The Omidyar Network where he facilitates grants to people and organizations seeking to strengthen American democracy and grow youth power. In addition to the Kentucky Student Voice Team, Andrew serves on the Board of Directors of Seek Common Ground, Student Voice, and the National Parent Teacher Association. He also serves on the advisory boards of the Center For Information & Research on Civic Learning and Engagement (CIRCLE) as well as Vote 16 USA.
Andrew holds a Master’s in Education Policy & Management from Harvard University and a Bachelor’s in Political Science from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
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.
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.
Saba Bireda
Saba is an attorney with almost twenty years of experience in the education field. She grew up in Hillsborough County, FL (Tampa) and attended some of the district’s most prestigious public schools as an out-of-boundary student. Saba went on to attend Stanford University and Harvard Law School.
She started her career in education, as a teacher at Sousa Middle School in Washington, DC. Saba has worked at the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, the Education Law Center-PA, Center for American Progress, the Poverty and Race Research Action Council, and EducationCounsel. She served as a member of the senior political staff at the Department of Education during the Obama Administration, including two years as senior counsel in the Office for Civil Rights.
Saba was most recently a partner at a national civil rights law firm and was appointed by Mayor Muriel Bowser to serve five years on the District of Columbia Public Charter School Board. Saba has been named by the National Law Journal as one of Washington, DC’s Rising Stars. The Profiles in Diversity Journal also recognized her among its Women Worth Watching in Leadership and as a Black Leader Worth Watching. Saba was recently named a Lawdragon 500 Leading Plaintiff Employment Lawyer and recognized on the National Black Lawyers Top 100 list. Saba served as an inaugural Blume Public Interest Leader in Residence at Georgetown Law in 2022.
Ary Amerikaner
Ary Amerikaner is an education policy leader with experience spanning federal and state government, advocacy, and the law.
Ary served in President Obama’s Administration as a Deputy Assistant Secretary at the Department of Education, where she led efforts to advance equity in school funding and access to excellent educators. Ary’s federal experience also includes the Biden-Harris Transition Team and work on Capitol Hill. In Maryland, she served as the Chief of Staff at the State Department of Education and as an education advisor on Governor Wes Moore’s transition team.
As Vice President for P12 Policy, Research, and Practice at The Education Trust, she and her team supported advocacy coalitions in 14 states while producing original data and policy analysis. Ary’s legal experience includes serving as an expert in school funding litigation in Delaware, clerking for a federal judge, and being an editor at the California Law Review.
Ary has a JD and MPP from the University of California, Berkeley, a BA from Oberlin College, and grew up in West Virginia.
Julia Olson
Julia Olson is the Founder, Executive Director, and Chief Legal Counsel of Our Children’s Trust, the non-profit public interest law firm that provides strategic, campaign-based legal services to youth from diverse backgrounds to secure their legal rights to a safe climate system. Julia graduated from UC Hastings College of the Law (now UC Law San Francisco) in 1997, and founded Our Children’s Trust in 2010, initiating a global wave of rights-based climate litigation, especially cases brought on behalf of children. Julia is lead counsel in Juliana v. United States, the groundbreaking constitutional climate change case brought by 21 young Americans, including 11 Black, Brown, and Indigenous youth, against the U.S. government for violating their Fifth Amendment rights to life, liberty, property, public trust resources, and equal protection of the law.
Our Children’s Trust represents the plaintiffs in Held v. State of Montana, where the first-ever constitutional climate trial in the nation’s history in June 2023 resulted in a sweeping win in August, and in Navahine F. v. Hawaiʻi Department of Transportation, which is scheduled to be the second-ever constitutional climate case to go to trial in the U.S. in June 2024.
Julia and Our Children’s Trust are recipients of the Rose-Walters Prize for Global Environmental Activism, the International Center for MultiGenerational Legacies of Trauma’s Repairer Excellence Award, and the Climate Change Leadership Institute’s Climate Courage Award. She received the Kerry Rydberg Award for Environmental Activism in 2017 and the Katharine & George Alexander Law Prize in 2022. Julia is a member of Rachel’s Network Circle of Advisors and was named one of Bloomberg’s “Green 30 for 2020” and “Time100 Climate”.