Board of Directors

President

Jeff Schimelfenig is the Washington, DC based National Director of Project Management for Kelly Law Registry, a business unit of Kelly Services. He consults law firms and corporate general counsel clients on e-discovery project management and staffing alternatives for data intensive litigation and government investigations. Previously, Jeff was a general practice sole practitioner for over 15 years in Northeastern Pennsylvania with focus on small business and individual clients. He also had numerous years of business experience owning and managing small businesses. He is a graduate of the American University Washington College of Law and of the University of Scranton. He is an active member of the Pennsylvania and the District of Columbia Bars. Jeff is a member of GAYLAW in Washington, DC, including a past Board Member.

President-Elect

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 the LGBT Bar since 2006. He graduated from the University of Miami School of Law after attending Harvard College for undergraduate studies in Economics.

Past President

O. Kim Byrd is a native of Florida and currently resides in Palm Harbor, Florida. Kim received his Bachelor’s degree in Business Administration from the University of Florida and his Juris Doctorate from New York Law School. He is admitted to practice in New York, New Jersey and Florida. In 2001, Kim established Byrd Legal Counsel, PA, as a general practice law firm that strives to meet the legal needs of Tampa Bay’s LGBT community. Kim practices primarily in the areas of traditional and alternative family law, estate planning, and criminal defense. He is a member of the Central Florida Gay and Lesbian Law Association, a cooperating attorney with NCLR and Lambda Legal and a volunteer lawyer with Bay Area Legal Services, Inc.

Secretary

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 has worked as an associate with Clifford Chance US LLP in the firm’s litigation department.  He joined the LGBT Bar in 2003 as a law student and began serving on the board in 2008 and chairs the board’s law student division subcommittee.

Treasurer

 Nicole Dogwill is an established litigator and firm leader in Winston & Strawn’s San Francisco office. She works with both established and start-up companies, as well as their directors and officers, on how best to compete aggressively in the marketplace while keeping their assets and intellectual property secure. She advises on competition and trade secret matters, and defends companies and their officers and directors in complex litigation involving antitrust, unfair competition/business practices, fraud, fiduciary duty, and related contract and tort claims. In addition to her practice, Nicole maintains a leadership role within the firm, having founded and chairing the firm’s Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Affinity Group. She is also committed to giving back to the community through civic involvement and representation in pro bono matters.

Development Committee Chair

Brad Evan Rosen is an associate in the New York office of Quinn, Emanuel, Urquhart and Sullivan, and a Lecturer in Computer Science at Yale University. He received his B.S and M.S. from Yale University in 2004, and his J.D. from Harvard Law School in 2008. While at Harvard, Brad was a 3-year board member of Lambda, serving as a 1L Representative, Communications Director and Treasurer. He also served on the Dean’s Committee for Solomon Amendment Amelioration, and helped launch HLS Lambda’s GALLA (now HaLLA) Conference. He spearheaded the release of a unified statement from a coalition of law school LGBT groups following the Supreme Court’s deicison in Rumsfeld v. FAIR.

ABA Delegate

John T. Hendricks is a civil litigator with his own full service business-oriented firm, the Law Offices of John T. Hendricks, in San Francisco, California.  Mr. Hendricks’ practice focuses on advising, counseling, and defending management in employment litigation, including Fortune 500 companies, health care, and public entity clients, in State and Federal courts throughout California. He also regularly handles commercial and construction litigation, and provides general legal counseling for businesses. The National Institute for Trial Advocacy (NITA) conferred Mr. Hendricks the NITA Advocate designation in 2007.  Mr. Hendricks actively supports various community and professional organizations, including the AIDS Legal Referral Panel (ALRP), the American Inns of Court, the Bar Association of San Francisco (BASF), the Bay Area Lawyers for Individual Freedom (BALIF), and the San Francisco AIDS Foundation. He contributed to the groundbreaking Report of the BASF Equality Subcommittee on LGBT Issues published in 2007. Mr. Hendricks also has served in various director and leadership capacities in several of these organizations and was president of the National LGBT Bar Foundation in 2009-2010.  Mr. Hendricks earned a Bachelor of Arts in Political Science from the University of California, Los Angeles and earned a Juris Doctorate from the University of San Francisco School of Law, where he received the John L. Brennan Award for trial advocacy.

Delegates

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

Vacant

Representative to the ABA’s AIDS Coordinating Committee

Richard A. Wilson is a Partner with the law firm of Grund & Leavitt, P.C. Prior to joining Grund & Leavitt, Mr. Wilson had his own firm for a number of years. Mr. Wilson has practiced exclusively in the field of family and matrimonial law for over eighteen years, with special emphasis on negotiation, litigation and appellate practice in dissolution and related matters, including custody and visitation, complex valuation and division of marital and non-marital assets and interests, pre- and post-nuptial agreements, and domestic violence. Mr. Wilson’s practice has particular concentration in the area of same-sex domestic relations law, where he has long and uniquely distinguished himself, with particular emphasis on nontraditional family law and the rights and interests of persons in same-sex relationships, including marriage and its equivalents, dissolution, custody, visitation and access to children, parentage, and domestic partnerships, and recognition of such relationships from one jurisdiction to the other. Mr. Wilson has frequently spoken and lectured on these issues both in the US and Canada. He is currently an Adjunct Professor at IIT/Chicago-Kent College of Law.

Delegates to the ABA’s Young Lawyers Division

Kenny Cantrell is an Attorney-Advisor with the Social Security Administration’s Office of Disability Adjudication and Review. He is a Graduate of Fisk University, Nashville, Tennessee (B.A., Honors in History), the University of Alabama School of Law (J.D.) and Emory University School of Law (LL.M).  He serves as the National LGBT Bar Association’s National Affiliate Representative to the ABA Young Lawyers Division. He sits on the executive board for the Stonewall Bar Association, Atlanta, GA and is a member of the Atlanta International Arbitration Society, legislative committee. Prior to law school, Kenny served in the 218^th Military Intelligence Battalion, Nashville, Tennessee and he was the Assistant Director of Operations for Atlanta Habitat for Humanity Restore.

ABA Law Student Representatives

ABA Law Student Division Chair

Blake Johnson is a student at Vermont Law School, and serves as Co-Chair of the Vermont Law LGBT Alliance and SBA Senator. Before law school he worked for 7 years in politics in Colorado, Kansas, and DC. He originally trained in fundraising, field, and communications work, attending the Human Rights Campaign College. His interest in civil rights and the environment grew through work with Governor Kathleen Sebelius, and recently with U.S. Senator Michael Bennet, Assistant Undersecretary Will Shafroth, and a variety of state and local affairs. His early work with the Nebraska AIDS project and The Nature Conservancy educated and ignited a commitment to civil rights and natural resources conservation, leading to politics and study at Vermont Law School. Blake remains involved with the HRC in Colorado. He holds a BS in Health Administration and Policy and certificate in Spanish from Creighton University.

ABA Law Student Competitions Chair

Ashley E. McGovern is a student at Cornell Law School. She received her B.A. from Cornell University, magna cum laude, where she double majored in Government and Feminist, Gender & Sexuality Studies and received the Philo Sherman Bennett Prize for her senior honors thesis, entitled: “Deprivation of Life and Liberty: Gender Ascription and the Unintelligible Transgender Citizen.” In college, she received recognition for her various roles as a campus organizer and activist and interned at the ACLU LGBT & AIDS Project and the Children’s Defense Fund. After college, she served with AmeriCorps as a teacher and tutor of low-income adults and youth in Sunset Park, Brooklyn. While in New York City, she was a member of the Young Leaders Council at the LGBT Community Center, a Fellow with the New Leaders Council, and a volunteer with the LGBT Project at New York Legal Assistance Group (NYLAG). At Cornell Law, she is an associate member of the Cornell Journal of Law and Public Policy and serves on a number of public interest focused committees and organizations. She is also the President of Cornell’s LGBT law student organization and recently completed a summer clerkship with the National Center for Lesbian Rights in San Francisco as an Arent Fox LLP Public Interest Fellow.

Affiliate Representatives

At-Large Board Members

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.