Anastasia Doherty is a Trial Attorney with the Boston Area Office of the EEOC. She represents the EEOC in prosecuting employment discrimination claims brought under federal law. Anastasia attended Northeastern University School of Law and previously worked as an associate at a plaintiff-side firm, where she represented workers asserting wage-and-hour and discrimination claims against their employers.

Maureen St. Cyr is the Executive Director at Massachusetts Fair Housing Center. Prior to joining MFHC, Maureen was the Coordinating Attorney for fair housing work at Community Legal Aid in Worcester, Massachusetts, where she represented clients with housing discrimination claims in state housing and superior court, federal court, and before administrative agencies. She also played a central role in developing the agency’s fair housing mission, guiding strategy, mentoring staff members, and served as a face of the fair housing project throughout the community. Maureen is a graduate of the University of Pennsylvania Law School and clerked for the Vermont Superior Court.

Pamela Heller joined the CT Fair Housing Center in 2011. As staff attorney and co-director of fair housing enforcement, Ms. Heller advocates for clients and litigates cases involving housing discrimination and other tenants’ rights’ issues at all stages of the legal process. She is a graduate of University of Connecticut School of Law (JD ’08), University of Connecticut School of Social Work (MSW ’08), and Stanford University (B.A. Comparative Studies in Race and Ethnicity ’02). Ms. Heller completed clerkships for Connecticut Superior Court and Connecticut Appellate Court prior to joining the Center. Ms. Heller also has experience adjunct teaching and is a board member of the University of Hartford Paralegal Studies program.

Nan Sibley (She/Her) serves as the Community Engagement Coordinator for the Resilience Hub in Northampton, MA. In this role, she focuses on supporting houseless individuals and those facing the risk of eviction or other destabilizing events. Drawing from her rich and multifaceted lived experience, Nan brings a unique perspective that extends beyond the label of survivor, allowing her to deeply understand the nuances of building trust and fostering connection within the community. Central to Nan’s work is her commitment to transformative community building, an ethos that permeates her interactions with individuals navigating challenging circumstances. Beyond merely addressing immediate needs, Nan strives to create an environment that fosters lasting change and empowerment. Nan is actively involved in the Re-imagining Interim Housing Project, a testament to her dedication to redefining the current systems in place. This commitment is rooted in her valued connections with community members, as she collaborates with them to navigate and challenge the existing structures, ensuring that the solutions proposed are grounded in the lived experiences of those they aim to support. Nan’s multifaceted approach, informed by her intricate understanding of resilience, positions her as a compassionate and effective advocate for positive community transformation.

A graduate of Smith College, Ms. Cuerda began her legal career as a paralegal at Western Mass. Legal Services in 1990. Working there for 20 years, she represented individuals in SSI, TAFDC, food stamp and unemployment hearings. During that time, she began to advocate for migrant and seasonable farmworkers and became involved in organizing and supporting undocumented immigrants with local community organizations. She began working at the CT Fair Housing Center in 2010, focusing on casework, running the Center’s test program, and supporting community organizing.

Meredith Ryan runs her own complex criminal defense practice and serves as Vice President for Hampden County Lawyers for Justice, the local nonprofit that manages bar advocates. As an adjunct professor, she teaches a criminal defense trial skills class at WNEU Law that certifies students to become bar advocates upon bar passage that has been replicated around the state. She is one of the two defense attorneys who were named petitioners in Graham v. Hampden County District Attorney’s Office.

Rafael started working as a staff attorney at the Public Defender’s Office in Holyoke, MA after graduating from Western New England University School of Law in 2023. During law school, Rafael worked with three bar advocates doing adult criminal and care and protection cases, and both the Holyoke and Springfield Public Defender Offices. He also did pro bono work with the ACLU of Massachusetts, the Mass Fair Housing Center, and with the Center for Social Justice Consumer Debt Initiative and Legal Kiosk Project. Before going back to law school , Rafael worked as an educator, a carpenter, a luthier, and at a falafel restaurant.

Maddy joined Community Legal Aid after a decade in a law firm she co-founded specializing in the zealous defense, at trial and on appeal, of parents and children facing the overwhelming power of the Department of Children and Families. Maddy also holds a Master of Social Work degree. Immediately after law school, she served as a law clerk to the justices of the Massachusetts Superior Court. In 2021, she received New England Innocence Project’s “Arc of Justice Award” for her work in freeing and exonerating James Watson who served forty years for a wrongful murder conviction.

Matthew Doherty has nearly 30 years of leadership experience in both the private and public sectors, focused on ending homelessness and the creation and integration of housing, services programs, and economic opportunities. Through his consulting practice, Matthew now provides expert guidance to national, state, and local organizations seeking effective solutions to housing needs and homelessness. Matthew previously served, from 2015 to 2019, as the Executive Director for the United States Interagency Council on Homelessness (USICH), the federal agency charged with coordinating the federal response to homelessness and with creating national public-private partnerships to end homelessness across the nation, having served in other roles at USICH starting in 2012. Matthew also previously held leadership positions at the Corporation for Supportive Housing, the San Diego Housing Commission, the King County Housing Authority in Washington State, and other organizations. Matthew has a Bachelor of Arts degree from Oberlin College and a Master of Public Administration degree from the University of Washington.

Upon graduation, Professor Freeman clerked for Federal District Judge Michael A. Ponsor (D. MA). He was an associate at Lesser, Newman, Souweine and Nasser, in Northampton, MA, where he litigated employment, civil rights, and personal injury claims and was subsequently of-counsel with Attorney Wendy Sibbison focusing on appellate litigation and criminal defense. Since 1999, he has been affiliated faculty at the Labor Relations and Research Center, University of Massachusetts, teaching labor and employment law courses. Professor Freeman has also been adjunct faculty in the Soial Thought and Political Economy Program at the University of Massachusetts and in the Government Department at Smith College. By appointment of Governor Deval Patrick, Professor Freeman served from 2009 until 2016 as a member of the Commonwealth Employment Relations Board, an appellate agency body that oversees public sector labor relations in Massachusetts. Professor Freeman’s writings appear in the Employee Rights and Employment Policy Journal, The Journal of Labor and Society and Labor Notes. He currently sits on the editorial board of The Journal of Labor and Society and previously served on the editorial board of The Second Draft, a publication of the Legal Writing Institute. Professor Freeman has written extensively on precarious employment and has testified three times before U.S. Senate and House committees on issues related to precarious employment and labor law and lectured on this topic at universities in India, China and Hong Kong