TRINA GRILLO 2013 University of Washington School of Law
“Social justice lawyering – innovation, creativity, entrepreneurship”
March 22-23, 2013
Speaker Bios
Sara Ainsworth, Surge Northwest
Sara Ainsworth is a part time Lecturer at University of Washington School of Law.
Before joining the law school she was senior legal & legislative counsel at Legal Voice
(formerly the Northwest Women's Law Center), from 2002 to 2012. Her career has been
spent working for social justice, from founding the UW's Public Interest Law
Association to practicing poverty law for the Northwest Justice Project and Snohomish
County Legal Services. As Public Service Counsel at Foster Pepper, Ainsworth managed
the firm's pro bono program and carried an entirely pro bono caseload for low-income
clients. Ainsworth is a board member of Surge Northwest, an organization dedicated to
a world where all communities are free from reproductive oppression, racism, and
violence.
Hank Balson, Public Interest Law Group
Hank Balson is an attorney with the Public Interest Law Group, PLLC, in Seattle. PILG
is a private law firm that emphasizes public interest work and making legal services
available to clients who might otherwise be unable to hire a lawyer. Hank’s practice
focuses on civil rights, including employment discrimination claims and cases
challenging unconstitutional conditions in prisons and jails. In addition, he frequently
represents clients of varying means in claims for unpaid wages. Prior to joining PILG,
Hank was a staff attorney with the Institutions Project of Columbia Legal Services. He is
a 1999 graduate of the University of Washington Law School, where he served as cochair of the Public Interest Law Association.
Professor Laura Dym Cohen, Southwestern School of Law, Director of the Street Law
Clinic and Community Outreach and Associate Clinical Professor of Law
B.A., Communication Studies, 1988, University of California, Santa Barbara; J.D., 1992,
University of San Francisco; Member, California State Bar
As Director of Southwestern's Street Law Clinic and Community Outreach, Laura Dym
Cohen brings her extensive experience helping abused and neglected foster children
and their families at the Los Angeles County Children's Court to the classroom.
Professor Cohen created the Street Law clinical program at Southwestern in 2006 based
on the curriculum from Street Law Inc. for Youth in Transition. Law students enrolled
in the clinic teach law-related critical life skills to teens throughout Los Angeles.
Professor Cohen received national recognition when she was named 2007 Street Law
Educator of the Year. She also has twice been honored with an Excellence in Teaching
Award from Southwestern.
Doug Colbert, Professor of Law, University of Maryland School of Law
AB, 1968, SUNY at Buffalo
JD, 1972, Rutgers (Newark) Law School
Professor Colbert joined the faculty in 1994 after directing the criminal justice clinic and
teaching civil rights at Hofstra Law School and visiting at Northeastern and Utah Law
Schools. In addition to teaching the Access to Justice criminal defense clinic, Professor
Colbert also teaches Criminal Law, Constitutional Law, Evidence, and Race and
Criminal Justice seminar. He has written extensively about indigents’ right to counsel,
bail reform, the Thirteenth Amendment, race discrimination in jury selection,
affirmative action, police misconduct, politically sensitive trials, and legal scholarship.
Professor Colbert was the lead counsel in the Napanoch prison rebellion and represents
plaintiffs in civil rights litigation. Prior to entering teaching, he was a senior trial
attorney in the criminal defense division of the NYC Legal Aid Society. Professor
Colbert’s recent scholarly activities have focused on reforming states’ pretrial release
systems and guaranteeing counsel at the bail stage. He founded and directed the
Lawyers at Bail Project, which represented 4,000 indigent defendants at bail hearings.
Currently, he serves on the Board of Directors of the Public Justice Center and the
Maryland Criminal Defense Attorneys Association. He is a past chair of the Maryland
State Bar Association’s Section on Correctional Reform.
David Cromwell, UW Law, 3L
David is one day away from being a UW Law graduate, with a concentration in
intellectual property. He graduated from Harvard in 2006, where he studied
history. Between Harvard and UW he was a member of the U.S. National Swim Team,
eventually winding down his career in Spain, where he also received a masters from la
Universidad Camilo Jose Cela. Currently, he works part-time in the emerging
companies and clean technology sections of a law firm here in Seattle.
Ishbel Dickens, Executive Director, National Manufactured Home Owners
Association
Ishbel Dickens came to MHOAA with more than 20 years of experience in
manufactured housing issues. She began her career collecting signatures to prevent a
100 space manufactured home community in N. Seattle from being sold and developed
into a big box store. While that attempt was unsuccessful, Ishbel has gone on to win
many victories for manufactured homeowners.
Ishbel has written grants to support her work, first as a community organizer with the
Tenants Union in Seattle and more recently as a staff attorney at Columbia Legal
Services. She specifically went to law school to become an even stronger advocate for
people who own their homes but not the land under them.
Ishbel has traveled extensively throughout Washington state and around the country
meeting with manufactured home owners, educating them about their rights under the
law and helping them form home owners’ associations with a view to preserving their
manufactured housing communities. She has helped home owner associations purchase
their communities as resident-owned co-operatives and is also involved in policy
changes at the local, state and national levels.
Ishbel has spoken at numerous conferences around the country on issues facing
manufactured home owners and offered a range of possible solutions. She had an article
published in the April 2007 issue of the Clearinghouse Review. In 2007 she was
awarded a WSHFC Friend of Housing award and in 2009 she received the first ever
Housing Hero of the Decade award at the 2009 Housing and Homelessness Advocacy
Day. Earlier in 2010, she completed the Achieving Excellence Program at Harvard’s
Kennedy School through which she worked to expand manufactured housing
community preservation and policy efforts in Washington.
Professor Jennifer Fan, UW Law
A.B. 1995, with distinction, Stanford University
J.D. 1998, University of Pennsylvania
Jennifer Fan is a lecturer and Managing Director for the Entrepreneurial Law Clinic. She
joined the clinical faculty in 2010. Before joining the faculty, she was a senior associate
in the corporate securities group at Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati. Professor Fan
was also the inaugural director of the Pro Bono Program of the John and Terry Levin
Center for Public Service and Public Interest Law at Stanford Law School. Previously,
she served as the Vice President and Director of Legal Affairs of the Asian Pacific Fund,
a community foundation serving the Asian American community in the Bay Area.
Professor Fan is admitted to practice in California, New York and Washington.
Professor Fan currently serves on the Board of the ACLU of Washington and is an
active volunteer for her alma mater, Stanford University.
Michael Geoghegan, Columbia Legal Services
Michael is a legal aid attorney with Columbia Legal Services (CLS). His areas of
practice include community economic development, labor and employment, and access
to healthcare. Michael came to CLS as a Berkeley Law Foundation Fellow. He served
as a Gates Public Interest Law Scholar at the University of Washington Law School,
graduating in 2010. Prior to law school, Michael worked in Oregon as a labor organizer
and director of community organizing campaigns. Michael’s current legal work focuses
on the crossover between community organizing and legal advocacy. He gives priority
to issues affecting communities targeted by racism and the rights of undocumented
immigrants.
Bookda Gheisar, Global Washington
Bookda Gheisar is Executive Director of Global Washington. She joined Global
Washington in the summer of 2008. Bookda has lived in Seattle since 1986 and has 22
years of experience working in the non-profit sector in the state of Washington.Before
coming to Global Washington, Bookda was Executive Director of the Social Justice Fund
(2000-2008), where her work was dedicated to addressing the root causes of social,
economic, and environmental inequities through strategic grantmaking efforts to
community-based organizations in the Northwest. Before this, Bookda was the
Executive Director of Cross Cultural Health Care Program (1993-2000) whose mission is
to help ensure underserved communities full access to quality health care that is
culturally and linguistically appropriate.
Between 1995 and 2000 Bookda taught at University of Washington School of Social
Work, Antioch University, and Bastyr University as adjunct faculty.
In 2007 Bookda received the Bill Grace Leadership Legacy Award from The Center for
Ethical Leadership. In 2006, she was recognized by the YWCA and ACT Theater of
Seattle in the list of “Seattle Women to Celebrate”, as well as being recognized by
Seattle Weekly News, Best of Seattle Edition: Best Grassroots Philanthropist.
Cole Hoover, UW Bothell and Director of Global Brigades Institute
Cole Hoover is the director of the Global Brigades Institutes, where he currently works
to create meaningful opportunities to learn about and engage with relevant issues and
opportunities in global development. Cole is also a co-founder and board member of
Lumana a microfinance and social investment organization working in rural Africa.
Cole is a member of the board of directors for the Young Professionals International
Network (a subset of the World Affairs Council), and a “Global Shaper” an initiative of
the World Economic Forum. Cole has taught social enterprise courses at the University
of Washington Bothell and guest lectured around the world on international
development.
Jet City Improv/Wing-It Productions
For twenty years, we have been bringing our unique form of audience participation
comedy to Seattle every Friday and Saturday night. Wing-It Productions is an
interactive, creative training and entertainment company hired by many of the world’s
most successful corporations. Our workshops are engaging, interactive, meaningful and
entertaining. We showcase and analyze the elements that make improvisation
successful, then provide empowering applications. Our approach gives everyone a
memorable experience laughing as much as learning.
Jen Marlow
Jen Marlow (Lawyer) co-founded Three Degrees, a multidisciplinary climate justice
project, and is an Affiliate Professor at the University of Washington School of Law in
Seattle. Jen graduated from Middlebury College in 2002 with a degree in environmental
studies and literature, and earned her J.D. from the University of Washington School of
Law in 2010. Jen is a member of the Washington State Bar, and actively partners with
organizations seeking to leverage climate justice solutions, including Our Children’s
Trust, Facing Climate Change, and the Re-Locate Project. Prior to law school, Jen
worked as an editor at the award-winning Orion magazine and as a writer and editor at
the Northwest think tank, Ecotrust.
Michele Storms, Assistant Dean for Public Service Law, UW Law
Storms serves as the Assistant Dean for Public Service Law and is Executive Director of
the William H. Gates Public Service Law Program at the University of Washington
School of Law. Her previous position was as a statewide advocacy coordinator at both
the Northwest Justice Project and Columbia Legal Services where she coordinated civil
legal aid advocacy in the areas of family law, youth and education, housing, elder law,
Native American and right to counsel issues. Ms. Storms started her legal career as a
staff attorney at Evergreen Legal Services in 1988 with a focus on family law, custody
and domestic violence. She later served as a faculty member at the University of
Washington School of Law in the clinical law program for eight years where she
founded the Child Advocacy Clinic. Storms served on the Washington State Access to
Justice Board for six years and is currently a Management Information Exchange board
member and is the elected secretary of that body. Over the years Storms has provided
training and has written on topics such as leadership and diversity and has served as a
facilitator for meetings and retreats for non profit organizations.
Adrian Tirtanati, Bayview/Hunter’s Point Community Legal
Executive Director/Co-Founder at Bayview/Hunter's Point Community Legal
Adrian Tirtanadi went to law school with the express purpose of starting a legal service
non-profit in Bayview/Hunters Point, and spent several years preparing for its launch.
Formerly a project administrator at a non-profit in Maryland, Adrian graduated
Magnum Cum Laude from USF law and Summa Cum Laude from the University of
Maryland. Adrian brings an undying passion for the poor and hopes to one day close
the justice gap in Bayview/Hunters Point.
Mary Whisner
Reference Librarian, Gallagher Law Library, Univ. of Washington School of Law
Mary Whisner has worked in the Reference Department of the Marian Gould Gallagher
Law Library since 1988. As a reference librarian, she helps people use the library and
databases, performs research for faculty and staff, and gives presentations on research
topics. She contributes to several blogs, including Gallagher Blogs, the Legal
Scholarship Blog, and Trial Ad (and other) Notes. Since spring 1999, she has written the
"Practicing Reference" column for Law Library Journal. A collection of columns was
published as a book (Practicing Reference: Thoughts for Librarians and Other Legal
Researchers) in 2006. She is a co-author of the Washington Legal Researcher's Deskbook, 3d
(2002).
Ms. Whisner has a B.A. from the University of Washington, a J.D. from Harvard Law
School, where she was the editor in chief of the Harvard Women's Law Journal, and an
M.L.I.S. from Louisiana State University. After law school, she clerked Judge Stephanie
K. Seymour of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit. She served in the
Appellate Court Branch of the National Labor Relations Board and then received a
Women's Law and Public Policy Fellowship to work at the Lawyers Committee for Civil
Rights Under Law.
Ms. Whisner is a member of Law Librarians of Puget Sound, the American Association
of Law Libraries, the Washington State Bar Association (inactive), and Phi Beta Kappa.
In 2009 she received the University of Washington's Distinguished Librarian Award.
She volunteers with the Youth Tutoring Program and plays in the Ballard Sedentary
Sousa Band.
Steve Whitney, The Bullitt Foundation
Since 2000, Steve Whitney has served the Seattle-based Bullitt Foundation as a Program
Officer, most of that time responsible for grants and other activities in the areas of
aquatic and terrestrial conservation. More recently, with a shift in the Foundation’s
focus to issues of urban sustainability, Steve has narrowed the scope of his work to the
protection of natural capital and ecosystem services in the major metropolitan regions
of the Pacific Northwest and Alaska.
Prior to joining the Bullitt Foundation, he spent fourteen years on the staff of The
Wilderness Society, first as director of its National Parks Program in Washington D.C.,
and later as Northwest Regional Director and Deputy Vice President for Regional
Conservation. His early career included time as a coastal land planning and
development consultant in Florida and Washington State, and as a congressional aide to
then Representative Leon Panetta of California. He has served on the City of Alexandria,
Virginia’s Environmental Policy Commission; on the governing boards of the
Washington Environmental Council, Earth Share of Washington, Earth Ministry, and
Cascade Youth Symphony; and on the Advisory Council for the Washington
Environmental Alliance for Voter Education. He is active in the philanthropic
community, especially through the Consultative Group on Biological Diversity (a
national association of environmental foundations), where he recently completed a sixyear board term – three as board president. Steve holds a Bachelor of Science degree
from Utah State University’s College of Natural Resources, and a Master’s degree in
Architecture and Urban Planning from the University of California, Los Angeles.
Sherri Wolson, Social Venture Partners
Sherri is an attorney, with experience in the fields of antitrust, telecommunications and
appellate litigation. After working in Washington, D.C. for the Department of Justice
and in private practice, she decided to take a break from practicing law and focus on the
nonprofit sector. Sherri is a partner and board member at Social Venture Partners and
serves on the Child Care Resources board. In addition, Sherri has served on the boards
of the ACLU of Washington, Passages Northwest and the Program for Early Parent
Support (PEPS). She is a graduate of Stanford University and Stanford Law School.
Sherri lives in Seattle with her husband, Neil Black, and their daughter.
Hon. Mary Yu, King County Superior Court Judge
Judge Mary I. Yu was appointed judge by Governor Locke in April 2000. Prior to her
appointment, she served as Deputy Chief of Staff to King County Prosecutor Norm
Maleng and Director of the Peace and Social Justice Office for the Archdiocese of
Chicago.
A frequent speaker for legal education seminars, Judge Yu is also active in a variety of
community and professional activities which include service on:
the Board of Directors of FareStart, an organization devoted to assisting homeless
individuals develop job skills in the culinary industry;
 the Board of Advisers of the Leadership Institute of the Washington State Bar
Association (co-chair for 2009);
 the State of Washington Minority and Justice Commission; and
 the Board of Directors, Future of the Law Institute, King County Bar Association; an
organized effort to mentor young people from diverse backgrounds to consider the
legal profession as a career.
Judge Yu was appointed Dean for the 2009 Judicial College and Distinguished Jurist in
Residence at Seattle University School of Law (2008 -2009 academic year). She is the
Washington State Superior Court Judges Association representative to the Judicial
Division of the American Bar Association; member of the Superior Court Judge's
Association Civil Law and Procedure (chair from 2005-2008); and Past-President of the
Judge Dwyer American Inn of Court, Seattle Chapter.
Judge Yu was recognized as the 2005 "Judge of the Year" by the American Board of Trial
Advocates, Washington Chapter (ABOTA). She was also the recipient of the 2008
President's Award, Washington Women Lawyers; the 2006 "Model of Excellence"
Award, the Latina/o Bar Association of Washington; and the 2005 Reah Whitehead
Public Leadership Award, Seattle University School of Law.

Special Thanks to all Small Group Facilitators:
Sara Ainsworth, UW School of Law
Aline Carton-Listfjeld, UW School of Law
Laura Cohen, Southwestern Law School
Jennifer Fan, UW School of Law
Tanya Karwaki, UW School of Law
Leeor Neta, Golden Gate University School of Law
Deborah Maranville, UW School of Law
Deborah Moss-West, Santa Clara Law
Esther Park, UW School of Law
Andrea Ramos, Southwestern Law School
Mary Whisner, UW School of Law
Todd Wildermuth, UW School of Law