Board: Board of Directors

Kaisa Goodman (she/her) is a law student at Stanford Law School (JD candidate 2026), where she serves as Co-president of ACS, Managing Editor for the Journal of Civil Rights & Civil Liberties, and a public interest leader with the Levin Center for Public Service. Her summer internships with the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of California and the union-side labor law firm McCracken, Stemerman & Holsberry reflect her academic interests in constitutional law, labor law, government, and alternative dispute resolution.

Prior to law school, Kaisa spent a decade in Bloomington, Indiana working and volunteering extensively in local government, politics, and community organizing. She worked for three years with the City of Bloomington, serving as the City’s Public Engagement Director, Mayor’s Chief of Staff, and Special Projects Manager for Economic and Sustainable Development. Prior to that, she managed Mayor John Hamilton’s re-election campaign and served as the inaugural Executive Director of the Monroe County Democratic Party. An experienced campaign manager and independent political consultant, she currently serves as Treasurer for Palo Alto Vice Mayor Vicki Veenker. Kaisa is an ACS Next-Generation Leader and an alumna of Hoosier Women Forward, the Democratic women’s leadership development program in Indiana.

Kaisa’s career is rooted in organized labor—even as a child, she attended the annual Eugene V. Debs dinner in Terre Haute, and she has served on the board of the Debs Foundation since 2014. While an employee at a grocery store co-op in Bloomington, she was a leader in the employees’ successful efforts to unionize and later served as a union steward. Kaisa helped negotiate their initial contract using Interest Based Bargaining, a collaborative and issue-focused approach to negotiations, after becoming certified by the Federal Medication and Conciliation Service in “Interest Based Problem Solving.”

Kaisa, a native Hoosier, is a graduate of Indiana University in Environmental & Sustainability Studies and Political & Civic Engagement.

 

 

 

Nicole Devereaux (she/her) has spent nearly 20 years helping people engage in their most important conversations. As a certified Conversational Intelligence® coach, Nicole facilitated innovative conversations around diversity, equity and inclusion practices at public interest organizations, including the New York City Department of Health and the National Housing Trust in Washington, D.C.

Nicole was also an anti-bias trainer with AmazeWorks. In that role, she led conversations in K-12 schools about identity, differences, stereotypes, and taking action against bias-based mistreatment. Formerly, Nicole served at a women’s crisis center in Minneapolis. Initially hired to launch a material assistance program, she was inspired by conversations with clients to co-create an education program to support their parenting journeys, mental health, job readiness, and financial freedom. Nicole is also a Restorative Circle Keeper and Nonviolent Communication practitioner. She has planted non-denominational churches in Minneapolis, MN, and Brooklyn, NY, where she provided pro bono lay counseling and conflict resolution, and welcomed hundreds of neighbors around her table.

For her 40th birthday, Nicole fundraised $40,000. She donated the funds to nonprofits serving refugees, female entrepreneurs, and survivors of sex trafficking. Nicole spent two years living in a motorhome and traveling across the U.S. with her husband, two daughters, and dog before entering law school on a full tuition Public Interest/Public Service scholarship. She is interested in abolishing the prison industrial complex, protecting the civil liberties of marginalized populations, and advocating for the environment.

Gregory (Greg) Rose is the Founder, Secretary and Chief Scientist of Deckard Technologies, Inc., a company that helps local governments equitably enforce real estate related regulations. He holds a B.Sc. (honours) in Computer Science, and was awarded the University Medal in 1977 from the University of New South Wales, Australia.

Previously Greg was a Senior Vice President of Qualcomm Technologies, in charge of Product Security and Cryptography. He worked on cryptographic security and authentication for third-generation mobile phones and other technologies and managed other diverse research groups. He is inventor of over 100 patents for cryptographic methods and has successfully cryptanalyzed widely deployed ciphers.

Greg is a current board member, treasurer and past chair of the ACLU Foundation of San Diego and Imperial Counties, with experience on a number of other non- and for-profit boards.

Ralph Sutton is an industry pioneer whose strategic and operational experience make him among the most trusted funding professionals in the industry. He co-founded Validity in 2018 with the express goal of providing fair, sustainable, and innovative funding to clients in the U.S.  

Ralph’s exceptional wealth of experience includes an 18-year career as a trial attorney, and the co-founding of Credit Suisse’s Litigation Risk Strategies Group, one of the first dispute funding entities in the U.S. Ralph then launched Bentham U.S. (now called Omni Bridgeway), running its operations from 2011-17 as chief investment officer, during which time Bentham expanded to Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Houston from its New York base.  

Ralph is a champion of increased access to civil justice, and has lectured on funding and its role in reducing legal inequality at Harvard, Stanford, and other premier law schools. In 2016, he helped establish a new Civil Justice Research Institute at the University of California, Irvine School of Law. 

Ralph graduated from Columbia University and received his J.D. from the New York University School of Law. He served as a law clerk to U.S. District Court Judge G. Thomas Eisele for two years.