Board of Directors

President

Jason S. Gibson is a senior counsel with Holland & Knight LLP in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. He is a member of the firm’s Real Estate Section. His practice focuses in the areas of retail, office and industrial leasing. Mr. Gibson routinely represents national and regional retail and office landlords. He also has experience representing national retail tenants leasing in-line and outparcel spaces. He works with the firm’s National Retail Specialty Team and has significant experience with rooftop and tower leases for antennae and other communications equipment. In addition to leases, Mr. Gibson has prepared and negotiated construction work letters, subordination non-disturbance and attornment agreements, promissory notes, bills of sale and other ancillary lease documents. He also advises landlord clients with respect to the declarations and restrictive covenants, tenant-in-common agreements, asset management agreements and other documentation affecting the management and ownership of their property. Additionally, Mr. Gibson has advised clients regarding various disputes between landlords and tenants, as well as disputes among tenants.

President-Elect | Treasurer

Nicole Dogwill is an established litigation partner at Shartsis Friese LLP in San Francisco. She advises and defends leading established and start-up companies, as well as their directors and officers, in complex and class action litigation involving breach of fiduciary duty, securities, fraud, antitrust, unfair competition/business practices, and related contract and tort claims. She has significant experience handling shareholder derivative and direct litigation against directors and officers.  Prior to Shartsis Friese LLP, she was a litigation partner at Winston & Strawn LLP, where she established the firm’s first LGBT affinity group.  Nicole is a 1998 graduate of the Michigan State University College of Law, and a 1994 graduate of the University of Michigan.  She is committed to giving back to the community through civic involvement and representation in pro bono matters.  Nicole lives in San Francisco with her partner and their children.

Past President

Jeff Schimelfenig previously served as the Board President and Chair of the Development Committee. Jeff also chaired the host committee for the 24th Annual Lavender Law Conference held in Washington, DC.  Jeff is an active member of GAYLAW Washington DC, where he also served on the board. He is a graduate of the American University Washington College of Law and of the University of Scranton. Jeff is an active member of the Pennsylvania and the District of Columbia Bars.

Secretary

Eduardo Juarez is a Senior Trial Attorney with the San Antonio Field Office of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission where he litigates individual, class and systemic lawsuits under the federal civil rights statutes prohibiting employment discrimination. In August 2011, he worked on detail as Special Assistant to EEOC Commissioner Chai Feldblum, the first out lesbian EEOC Commissioner. Before his employment with the EEOC, Mr. Juarez was a Trial Attorney with the Public Defender Service for the District of Columbia and began his legal career as an Associate with the law firm of Sidley & Austin in Chicago, Illinois. Eduardo received his B.A. from the University of Notre Dame and his law degree from the University of Michigan. He is active in various LGBT political and professional organizations and is the immediate past Chair of the LGBT Law Section for the State Bar of Texas.

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 decision 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.  John’s 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 John the NITA Advocate designation in 2007.  John 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. John 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.  John 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

Mark Johnson Roberts holds a bachelor’s degree from Reed College, a J.D. from the Boalt Hall School of Law, and an LL.M. in Transnational Law from the Willamette University College of Law.  Mr. Johnson Roberts clerked for the United States District Court and for the Oregon Court of Appeals.  He practices family law at the Portland law firm of Gevurtz, Menashe, Larson & Howe, P.C.  Mark is Oregon’s elected State Delegate to the American Bar Association. He is past president of the Oregon State Bar, past president of the National LGBT Bar Association, and past chair of Oregon’s State Professional Responsibility Board.  Mr. Johnson Roberts is a Fellow of the American Academy of Matrimonial Lawyers and is a frequent writer and lecturer on topics of interest to appellate and family law practitioners.

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

Casey Payton is a student at Howard University School of Law. She is the President of Howard Law’s LGBT student organization, OUTLaw, and a member of the Huver I. Brown Trial Advocacy Moot Court Team. Before law school she was Congresswoman Barbara Lee’s district scheduler in Oakland, California. Casey volunteered as a precinct captain for Oakland City Councilmember At-Large Rebecca Kaplan, and as a crisis counselor for Alameda County’s 24-hour suicide hotline. Her early work as a data collection assistant for the California Black Health Network ignited her interest in advocating for underserved populations in Oakland. She received her B.A. from the University of California, Berkeley, where she majored in Latin American Studies.

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, a partner of Singer & Fedun, LLC, has been in the private practice of law in New Jersey for over 41 years. His practice concentrates on the creation and protection of non-traditional families and as counselor to non-profit organizations. He has served as the General Counsel for the National LGBT Bar Association since its founding in the 1980’s and serves as General Counsel to the American Academy of Adoption Attorneys, the ACLU-NJ, the New Jersey Sierra Club and the New Jersey Association for Justice. Bill is the founder and Director of the LGBT Family Law Institute, an organization for attorneys who specialize in LGBT family law. He is the legal advisor to Family By Design, the community of parenting partnerships. http://www.familybydesign.com/  He is a fellow of the American Academy of Assisted Reproductive Technology Attorneys and a member of the National Family Law Advisory Council of the National Center for Lesbian Rights. In 2012, Bill was awarded the Bill of Rights Award from the American Civil Liberties Union – New Jersey, the first ever Lifetime Achievement Award from the Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and Transgender Section of the New Jersey State Bar Association and the Presidential Award from the New Jersey Association for Justice, Inc.