Zoraima Pelaez is a class of 2022 law student at the The University of Texas School of Law. Pelaez currently serves on the student advisory board and is the managing editor of the Texas Journal on Civil Liberties & Civil Rights. She is chief of staff of the Texas Law chapter of the American Constitution Society (ACS) and an ACS Next Generation Leader. As a 2L, she served as president of the ACS chapter, co-president of the Texas Law chapter of If/When/How: Lawyering for Reproductive Justice, and a board member of the Public Interest Law Association.
Zoraima has volunteered for several pro bono projects, including Pro Bono in January, the Women in Immigration Detention Assistance Project, and the Parole Project. She launched and manages a reproductive rights pro bono project that assists Jane’s Due Process with legal, policy, and educational research initiatives. She has participated in the Civil Rights Clinic and the Supreme Court Clinic.
The summer after her 1L year, Zoraima worked with the ACLU Reproductive Freedom Project in New York City providing litigation support. The summer after her 2L year, she will work with the ACLU of Texas focusing on voting rights and reproductive rights impact litigation. Before coming to law school, she was the outreach and advocacy manager for the Texas Freedom Network, where she managed community advocacy and grassroots lobbying efforts at the Texas Legislature and State Board of Education.
Gabriella Barbosa is the Managing Director of Policy at The Children’s Partnership, where she leads the development and implementation of a multi-issue area advocacy agenda focused on improving and protecting the health and well-being of children through public policy, research, and community engagement; and supervises the policy, government relations, and community engagement teams.
Gabriella has a decade of experience using various advocacy strategies to achieve a more just and equitable society for children through public policies that improve the conditions in which children live, learn, develop, and play. She previously served as the Public Policy Director for a local elected official and a non-profit advocacy organization, where she developed and utilized a policy-making approach that shifts power to community members as the drivers of systemic change for themselves, their families, and their communities. She began her legal career as an Equal Justice Works Fellow in the Children’s Rights Project at Public Counsel, where she designed and implemented an advocacy project that improved the academic outcomes of immigrant students and students from immigrant families using direct legal representation, impact litigation, policy advocacy, and community education.
Gabriella currently serves as co-chair of the ACS Los Angeles Lawyer Chapter. She was also previously a public school teacher in Southeast Los Angeles. Gabriella received a B.A. in Political Science and Human Rights from Columbia University and a law degree from Columbia Law School. She is a proud daughter of immigrants.
Roscoe Jones, Jr. is Partner and Co-Chair of the Public Policy Practice Group at Gibson Dunn & Crutcher LLP, where he helps clients navigate complex public policy matters and congressional investigations.
Previously, he was chief of staff to a member of Congress, legislative director to Senator Dianne Feinstein, senior counsel to Senator Cory Booker, and senior counsel to Senator Patrick Leahy on the Senate Judiciary Committee. He served as special counsel to the Tom Perez, the then-Assistant Attorney General of Civil Rights at the U.S. Department of Justice, appellate attorney in the Civil Rights Division, and assistant U.S. attorney in the Western District of Washington. He graduated from Stanford University and the University of Virginia Law School.
He clerked on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit for Judge Carl E. Stewart and U.S. District Court of Maryland for Judge Alexander Williams, Jr. He teaches at the Yale Law School and University of Michigan Law School and previously taught at the Harvard Kennedy School, Georgetown University Law Center, George Washington University Law School, and University of Washington Law and Evans Schools. A Stennis Fellow, Wasserstein Fellow, and Murnaghan Fellow, he has been published in the ACS’s Harvard Law & Policy Review.
David Adeleye is a law student at the Indiana University Maurer of Law and public policy professional with expertise in working on social, domestic, and international policy issues throughout the public and private sectors. David served in multiple advisory roles within the Obama Administration at the White House and Department of Homeland Security. An established achiever and leader in public policy, David inspires change and encourages practical reform for the most pressing policy concerns of today at all levels of government.
Russ Feingold is the President of the American Constitution Society. He served as a United States Senator from Wisconsin from 1993 to 2011 and a Wisconsin State Senator from 1983 to 1993. From 2013 to 2015, he served as the United States Special Envoy to the Great Lakes Region of Africa and the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
During his 18 years in the United States Senate, Russ was ranked 6th in the Senate for bipartisan voting. He is a recipient of the John F. Kennedy Profile in Courage Award and cosponsored the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act (McCain-Feingold Act), the only major piece of campaign finance reform legislation passed into law in decades. Russ was the only Senator to vote against the initial enactment of the USA PATRIOT Act during the first vote on the legislation and was well-known for his opposition to the Iraq War and as the Senate's leading opponent of the death penalty. He served on the Judiciary, Foreign Relations, Budget, and Intelligence Committees. Russ was Chairman or Ranking Member of the Constitution Subcommittee.
For the better part of the last 10 years and in addition to his congressional and diplomatic career, Russ has taught extensively at various American law schools including Stanford Law School, Yale Law School, Marquette University Law School, and Harvard Law School. In this capacity, he has played a significant mentoring role to law students, preparing him for his role as President of the American Constitution Society. He has also taught foreign policy to graduate and undergraduate students at Stanford University, University of Wisconsin, Yale University, Lawrence University, and American University.
Russ is the Honorary Ambassador for the Campaign for Nature which is a global effort calling on policymakers to commit to address the growing biodiversity crisis. The Campaign seeks a science-driven, ambitious new deal for nature at the 15th meeting of the Conference of the Parties to the UN Convention on Biological Diversity in Kunming, China, in 2021.
He is the author of While America Sleeps: A Wake-Up Call for the Post-9/11 Era and contributes regularly to various publications such as The New York Times, The Washington Post, and The Guardian. He appears frequently on MSNBC and CNN. Russ holds a B.A. from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, a B.A. and an M.A. from the University of Oxford (as a Rhodes Scholar), and a J.D. from Harvard Law School, all degrees awarded with honors.
