ABA Committee

The ABA committee is comprised of the National LGBT Bar Association’s delegates and liaisons to various entities within the American Bar Association, including the:

  • ABA House of Delegates
  • Commission on Women in the Profession
  • AIDS Coordinating Committee
  • Young Lawyers Division
  • Council of the Young Lawyers Division
  • Law Student Division

Members of the ABA Committee

Chair

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.
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 218th Military Intelligence Battalion, Nashville, Tennessee and he was the Assistant Director of Operations for Atlanta Habitat for Humanity Restore.
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.
Malcolm “Skip” Harsch works for the American Bar Association as an Associate Director in the Center for Continuing Legal Education.  He designs and implements distance-learning courses for ABA Members and other legal professionals. His areas of focus are mainly the Intellectual Property, Education, and Labor & Employment sectors. Skip is a native of Illinois with strong ties to the Midwest. Skip received his bachelor of science from the University of Iowa and his JD from DePaul University College of law. While at DePaul, Skip began his association and non-profit crusade as a summer intern for lambda Legal. In addition to his service for the Lesbian and Gay Bar Association of Chicago, Skip is a Director for the Chicago Bar Association Young Lawyers Section and YLS liaison to the CBA LGBT Committee. He is also the President of the Board for Lights Out Theatre Company, a company of multi-disciplined artists dedicated to serving Chicago audiences with fresh and provocative theatrical productions.
Lousene Hoppe

 
Ashley 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.
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.
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.
Mario Sullivan is an associate at the Law Offices of Peter Anthony Johnson, P.C. He counsels clients on a wide range of issues relating to real estate, evictions, business formation, and estate planning. Mario is a member of the Chicago Bar Association (CBA), the Illinois State Bar Association and the American Bar Association (ABA). In addition, he is a member of the National LGBT Bar Association, the Lesbian and Gay Bar Association of Chicago (LAGBAC) and the American Constitution Society (ACS). Mario serves as the LGBT Bar’s National Representative to the ABA Young Lawyers Division (YLD), Committee Member for the ABA YLD Diversity Team, Board Member and Chair of the Program Committee for LAGBAC, Chair of the CBA Committee on the Legal Rights of Lesbians and Gay Men and Board Member and Programming Committee Member of the ACS Chicago Lawyer Chapter. Mario graduated from the Illinois State University in 2000 and obtained his J.D. from The John Marshall Law School in 2005.
Richard 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.
  Alan Boudreau is a solo practitioner at the Law Office of Alan H. Boudreau LLC in Chicago, concentrating his practice on providing high quality family law, estate planning and other legal services to the LGBT community, their friends and allies. He is licensed to practice law in Illinois and Missouri. Prior to starting his own firm, Alan was an associate at Schiff Hardin LLP’s Chicago office practicing general litigation and product liability. He has also served as a Public Interest Law Initiative Fellow at the AIDS Legal Council of Chicago (ALCC) and a Pride Law Fellow at the San Francisco Human Rights Commission. Alan graduated from the University of California, Davis School of Law (King Hall) where he served as a board member and chair of the board of the King Hall Legal Foundation (KHLF) and a leader in the Lambda Law Students Association. Prior to attending law school, Alan lived in San Francisco and worked for more than a decade in the software industry on development teams that created consumer products and products for the financial services industry. He received his undergraduate degree from Harvard University in psychology and spent a year studying at the University of Bristol, U.K. In addition to being a board member of the National LGBT Bar Association, Alan serves on event committees for the AIDS Legal Council of Chicago and is an active member of the American Bar Association, Illinois State Bar Association and Chicago Bar Association.