Ezra Ishmael Corral

Associate Director/ Legal Director*

*pending admission to the NY Bar

BA, Cornell University
JD, Columbia Law School

Ezra Ishmael Corral is a graduate of Columbia Law School where he served as Executive Managing editor of the Columbia Journal of Gender and Law as well as Online and Consulting Editor of the Columbia Journal of Race and Law.  Ezra’s studies at Columbia focused on intellectual property law with a heavy emphasis upon patent and copyright law and the intersections between intellectual property regimes in the United States and constitutional jurisprudence.  From 2012–2013 Ezra is a graduate fellow at the Center for Intersectionality and Social Policy Studies at Columbia Law School.  Upon admission to the NY bar, Ezra will serve as AAPF’s legal counsel in addition to his duties as Associate Director.

During his 1L summer Ezra worked as a law clerk at the Immigrant Legal Resource Center in San Francisco, CA and during his 2L summer he worked in the International Law department at Oxford University Press in New York City working on a monograph focused on the impact of foreign sovereign investment before and after the Great Recession.

Lisa Gissendaner

Scheduling Coordinator

Emerson Baishline

Legal Intern

Kimberly West-Faulcon

Fellow

BA, Duke University, summa cum laude, Phi Beta Kappa
JD, Yale Law School

Professor Kimberly West-Faulcon teaches Constitutional Law I, Constitutional Law II, Intelligence, Testing and the Law and Employment Discrimination Law at Loyola Law School–Los Angeles. She researches the legal implications of theories of intelligence and fair and proper use of standardized tests, antidiscrimination and constitutional law. Her work seeks to expose the theoretical and legal implications of modern research from the fields of psychology, statistics and psychometrics and bridge science and law to offer new insights into the study of intelligence.   Her academic articles, which have been the subject of scholarly responses, news articles and opinion commentary, appear in highly regarded law journals, including theJournal of Constitutional Law, University of Pennsylvania Law Review, UCLA Law Review, Wake Forest Law Review and the Yale Law Journal.

Professor West-Faulcon graduated from Yale Law School where she was a senior editor of the Yale Law Journal.  After law school, she clerked for the Honorable Stephen R. Reinhardt on the Ninth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals and was one of twenty-five law students selected annually from across the nation by the law firm Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom, LLP to pursue a social justice legal project in the organization of her choice.  Beginning as a Skadden Fellow in the New York office of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc (“LDF”) in 1996, she went on to direct the Los Angeles office of the LDF from 1998 until 2005 as Western Regional Counsel and Director.  Professor West-Faulcon obtained her undergraduate degree Phi Beta Kappa from Duke University, where she graduated summa cumlaude, receiving numerous academic honors including the Duke University Faculty Scholar Award and the University Rankin Award for Constitutional Law.  While an undergraduate, she studied the Political Economy and Economic History of Great Britain at Oxford University in Oxford, England.

Professor West-Faulcon’s scholarship and teaching are grounded in her cutting edge career as a civil rights attorney and litigator, where her work focused on the legal standard for proper use of standardized tests in elementary, secondary and higher education.  Her cases include representation of African-American, Latino and Caucasian elementary and high school students in a legal challenge to a high stakes testing policy in Johnston County, North Carolina and African-American and Latino students asserting their interest in the test-based admissions policy of selective examination high schools in Boston, Massachusetts.  On the higher education level, Professor West-Faulcon sued UC Berkeley for discrimination in admissions on behalf of African-American, Latino and Filipino students after the elimination of race-based affirmative action on the theory that the institution’s overreliance on the SAT violated the U.S. Constitution and federal civil rights law. In addition to these testing-related education cases, she also litigated employment discrimination issues.  Professor West-Faulcon challenged discriminatory hiring and promotional practices as lead counsel for the African-American plaintiff classes in a successful multi-million dollar lawsuit against the clothing retailer Abercrombie & Fitch and represented African-American police officers in enforcement of the terms of a consent decree addressing race discrimination claims by African-American, Latino and Asian-American police officers challenging the promotion practices of the Los Angeles Police Department.

Featured in a 2011 exhibit at the Simon Wiesenthal Museum of Tolerance in Los Angeles as a “Southern California Freedom’s Sister,” Professor West-Faulcon’s significant accomplishments have also been praised in the company of other successful lawyers and professionals.  In addition to her selection as a “Southern California Super Lawyer” in 2004, 2005, and 2006 and a “Rising Star Lawyer Under 40” in 2004 by Los Angeles Magazine, she was recognized In 1999 by the Los Angeles Daily Journal as one of the top lawyers under the age of 40 “making their mark in the legal world” and in the 1999 millennial issue of Ebony magazine as one of Ebony’s “Ten for Tomorrow” (along with Jesse Jackson, Jr., Lauryn Hill, Serena Williams, and Sean Combs) “who will almost certainly redefine their fields in the next millennium.”  Professor West-Faulcon has also been featured, quoted and interviewed extensively by national media such as CNN, The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, The Chronicle of Higher Education and NPR and provided legal commentary in national media publications across the nation.

Monique W. Morris

Fellow

Monique W. Morris is a 2012 Soros Justice Fellow and a lecturer for Saint Mary’s College of California in the Leadership Studies Graduate Program. Morris is also the CEO of MWM Consulting Group, LLC, a research and technical assistance firm that advances concepts of fairness, diversity and inclusion. She is the former Vice President for Economic Programs and Executive Director of the Financial Freedom Centers for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and has nearly 20 years of professional and volunteer experience as a scholar advocate in the areas of civil rights and social justice. Prior to joining the NAACP, Morris was the Director of Research and Senior Research Fellow at the Thelton E. Henderson Center for Social Justice at the University of California, Berkeley School of Law. She has also served as Director of the Discrimination Research Center, as senior research staff with the National Council on Crime and Delinquency, and as a consultant for the Corrections Standards Authority, the Contra Costa County Probation Department, and a number of nonprofit community based organizations.

Morris is the author of Too Beautiful for Words and several articles, book chapters, and other publications on social justice issues. She is the author of the paper, Countering Discrimination in Mortgage Lending: An NAACP Guide to Fair Lending, and the principal author of the NAACP’s 2009 white paper, Year One: Toward Safe Communities, Good Schools, and a Fair Chance for All Americans, which was featured in the New York Times. Her paper, Discrimination and Lending in America: A Summary of the Disparate Impact of Subprime Lending on African Americans (NAACP), was featured for Congressman Al Green’s (D-TX) brain trust at the 2009 Congressional Black Caucus and was the focus of her presentation to the National Conference of Black Mayor’s 35th Annual Convention. Additionally, Morris’ 2008 study, A Higher Hurdle: Barriers to Employment for Formerly Incarcerated Women (UC Berkeley School of Law), which is one of the first testing studies to examine the impact of a criminal record or period of incarceration on the employment outcomes of women, was referenced in a special report commissioned by Congressman Danny K. Davis (D-IL).

Morris has led research on language access at public health care facilities, equal access to employment, and the impact of anti-affirmative action legislation on people of color and women in public contracting. Her groundbreaking work on affirmative action and public contracting has led to public and private sector policy improvements to support the inclusion of businesses owned by people of color and women of all racial groups.

Morris is also a leader in facilitating community response strategies designed to reduce the disproportionate representation of youth of color in the juvenile justice system. For over 15 years, she led efforts to examine and respond to racial disparities in the justice system. She has worked in partnership with state and county agencies, academic institutions and communities throughout the nation to develop comprehensive approaches and training curricula to eliminate ethnic and gender disparities in the justice system. Her work has informed the design and development of improved culturally-competent and gender-responsive continua of services for youth.

Morris is a member of the Advisory Collective for the new Human Rights and Social Movements Program for the Harvard Kennedy School’s Carr Center for Human Rights Policy; a member of the California State Subcommittee on Reducing Disproportionate Minority Contact; and a Board member for the Center for Young Women’s Development, a nonprofit organization based in San Francisco, CA, which provides intensive intervention and rehabilitative services for young women who have been involved in the justice system. She is also a proud member of Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, Inc.

Júlia Neiva

Global Affirmative Action Praxis Project – Brazil Coordinator

 Julia Mello Neiva, a native from Sao Paulo, Brazil, has been in the U.S. since 2006. She attended  Law School (1999-2003) at the Pontifical Catholic University of Sao Paulo, and has worked with human rights for over 7 years.

In May 2007, she received her LL.M. degree from Columbia Law School, where she was also granted a Human Rights Fellowship. In 2006, she received the title of Specialist in Human Rights, after concluding the Lato Sensu Post-graduation Degree, Specialization Course in Human Rights, at the Law School, University of São Paulo

Over the past three years, she has been working on gender and race discrimination topics as well as in social, economic and cultural projects. She has spoken and also facilitated working groups on human and women’s rights in Brazil, in the US, and in other countries of the Global South. She has worked at the Center for Reproductive Rights, in the Promotoras Populares Legais (a street law project that capacitates women to counsel other women victims of violence about their rights), conducted a research for the UNFPA-NY, among other projects. Since September 2006, Ms. Neiva is working for the São Tomé and Príncipe Advisory Project (a partnership between Columbia University’s Earth Institute and Human Rights Clinic) – a project to assist the government of that country in implementing laws establishing oversight and transparency in managing its oil revenues.

Currently, she coordinates the GAAPP (Global Affirmative Action Praxis Project) – Brazil at the African American Policy Forum (AAPF).