Executive Board and Staff

has been committed to the struggle for workplace justice for over 15 years. Garrett started as a paralegal at an employee-side employment law firm from 2007 to 2010 and then attended CUNY Law (‘13), where he was part of the school’s workers’ rights clinic, held several workers’ rights internships, and was active in the school’s NLG student organization and Labor Coalition. Garrett is a partner at Kessler Matura, P.C., where he represents employees subjected to discrimination, harassment, and wage theft in individual and in class actions. Garrett has been a member of NLG-NYC since 2011. He has primarily been involved with the Labor & Employment Committee, which he has co-chaired since 2013. In this capacity, he has worked to build the Guild’s presence in the NY-area labor movement by hosting social events for law students and recent graduates, organizing uniquely pro-worker CLEs, and supporting workplace campaigns through letter writing, picketing, and trainings. He has served on the Chapter’s Executive Committee since 2023.

(she/her) is a staff attorney at the New York Legal Assistance Group in the Evelyn Frank Legal Resources Program representing low income seniors and people with disabilities who are being denied long-term care services through Medicaid. Prior to working at NYLAG, she was an attorney at the Legal Aid Society in the NY Family Unity Project. She graduated from CUNY School of Law in 2020. Prior to law school she worked at IFCO/Pastors for Peace advocating for the end of the US embargo on Cuba as a program coordinator.

is a standup comedian and a NLG legal observer. She’s held several leadership positions with the Guild including co-chair of the NYC Mass Defense Committee where she’s helped shape the future and relationship of NYC in a more open and honest way. She combines her passion for social justice with her comedic pursuits often bringing lawyers from the Guild and other spaces to comedy shows to talk about the work they do. One major collaboration she fostered was with the Lady Parts Justice to talk about legal observing at abortion clinics in Queens. Erica graduated from American University in Washington, D.C., with a MA in Strategic Communications in 2019. She’s also the Founder and Chief Storytelling Officer at Sir Carter Carter (Majer News), a news site focused on comedy, entertainment, culture, and news. When Erica’s not working on Sir Carter Carter (Majer News) or writing pilots, sketches, and standup routines, she looks for ways to develop her craft. Venturing out into the world, trying new foods, reading books, and playing games give her life during the pandemic.

is a Staff Attorney for the Children’s Law Center, where he represents children in Family and Supreme Court. Stephen has previously served as a public defender with Queens Defenders and as a Court Attorney in Kings County Criminal Court. He joined the Guild in 2020 as a law student at Pace Law School. Stephen has been a member of the NLG-NYC Executive Committee since 2021. Stephen is a recipient of Pace Law School’s Winifred Sobie Pasternack Civil Liberties Award. He was a Legal Observer Coordinator for NLG-Hudson Valley Mass Defense and was active in the creation of the Hudson Valley Satellite Chapter.

Tamara received her Master’s degree from New York University and her JD from the University of Virginia. A lifelong learner, she is returning now for a PhD. Tamara has been a member of the NLG-NYC Chapter for ten years. She is Chair of the NYC Animal Rights committee and a member of the Guild’s Executive Committee. As a long-time Legal Observer, Tamara has watched many different protests and causes but, most consistently at animal rights actions. Tamara has successfully represented animal rescue groups, pro bono. She is a donor and member of numerous animal rights groups, as well as a dog and cat rescuer. As an employment attorney, Tamara champions women in the workplace under Title VII, the FMLA and the ADEA. Her special focus is sexual harassment and retaliation claims. She is currently with Pedowitz, Meister, LLP.”

Isabel is a 3L law student at New York Law School focusing on constitutional and civil rights law. They serve on the executive board of the NYLS chapter of NLG; and frequently legal observers. They are an author for LGBT Law Notes; and work as an advocate at the Free to Be Youth Legal Clinic; providing legal services to unhoused LGBT youth.

Aaron has been a member of the National Lawyers Guild since college, over forty years ago, and helped revive the dormant national committee which is now known as the Disability Justice Committee. Aaron also sits on the steering committee of the national Military Law Task Force. He has lived and practiced in New York City all of his professional life, and has strong friendships with members of National Conference of Black Lawyers, including its first National Director, who had him do legal research for his law firm beginning when he was in the City College Urban Legal Studies program, better known to many NLG members as “Haywood’s program.”

Elba has worked as a New York attorney for over twenty-five years. Early in her career, Elba worked as a litigator and appellate attorney in two private firms. Subsequently, she served as special counsel to the Puerto Rican Legal Defense and Education Fund (currently LatinoJusticePRLDEF) and managed a solo practice. She also served as a Law Clerk to SDNY Judge Analisa Torres and Judge Laura Johnson and served as a court attorney-referee to Surrogate Judge Margarita Lopez-Torres. Elba is a past president of the Puerto Rican Bar Association and recipient of the PRBA’s 2011 Excellence in Advocacy Women’s Award. She is also a past deputy regional president of the Hispanic National Bar Association. A two-term past president of the NLG-NYC, she currently serves on the executive committee, the editorial board of the NYC Chapter Newsletter and the Mass Defense Committee. Elba received her B.A. from Cornell University and J.D. from Howard University School of Law.

Michelle Karshan has worked on Haiti issues for the past thirty years in a variety of contexts, including as a New York City radio journalist, a US-based solidarity activist, and based in Haiti’s National Palace from 1995 to 2004 where Karshan served as the Foreign Press Liaison for Presidents Jean-Bertrand Aristide, President Rene Preval and Aristide again during his second term. In 1981 Karshan graduated from the Paralegal Institute in NY, NY; serves as an expert witness in immigration court since 2001; and served as Adjunct Law Professor at Georgetown University Law Center (2008-2009). Co-founder and Vice President (2005-2023) of Health through Walls (HtW), a not-for-profit health care program in resource poor countries, Karshan served as its Haiti Coordinator (2009-2011) implementing a large-scale infectious disease screening and prevention program inside Haiti’s National Penitentiary and other prisons, and was tasked with interfacing with governments and NGOs, and incorporated attorneys to advocate for detainees. Karshan served as Program Director of HtW Project ECHO (2022-2023) providing an international prison health care zoom platform program focused on HIV for prison health care staff and peer educator training for detained persons in three languages in a dozen countries internationally. Drawing on a vast background working with persons with criminal court cases, detainees, and their families, in 1996 Karshan founded Alternative Chance/Chans Altenativ, a self-help, reentry/advocacy program for persons deported to Haiti due to a criminal conviction and serves as its Executive Director. Alternative Chance is a co-petitioner before the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR). Karshan sat on the Advisory Board of Boston College’s Center for Human Rights and International Justice and its Post Deportation Human Rights Project.; co-authored several human rights reports; is widely cited in articles, reports and court decisions; and has presented at key forums on deportation and Haiti. Following the 2010 earthquake, at the request of attorney Jayne Fleming of Reed Smith, Karshan coordinated a campaign to develop new protocols for media covering gender-based sexual violence in Haiti.

Joel is the co-chair of the NLG Environmental Justice Committee (local and national), executive director of the New York Environmental Law & Justice Project and the Environmental Initiative for Haiti. Co-counsel in Benzman v. Whitman and EPA, in which the judge held Whitman’s statement that the air was safe in lower Manhattan after 9/11 to be egregious. Joel represents tenants, community gardens, public parks, indigenous people, workers’ groups on EJ issues from lower Manhattan to the Gulf Coast to Haiti.

(he / him) is an attorney in private practice and a 2011 CUNY Law grad. Prior to law school he worked for a lefty publishing collective for 14 years, producing books on radical politics, history and theory. After graduating law school, he worked for several years as the Chapter’s Mass Defense Coordinator, served as co-chair of the Mass Defense Committee (starting again in 2026), and is a frequent legal observer who enjoys pairing up with first-time LOs for on-the-ground training. He served on the NYC Chapter Executive Committee from 2012-2015 and from 2024 to the present.

Daniel is a retired Criminal Defense/Civil Rights Attorney. In 1967 he began practicing law and since 1968 has been a member of the NYC-NLG Chapter. From 1974-2001, he was an attorney member of the Attica Brothers legal team who sued Gov. Rockefeller and other state officials for the barbaric consequences of the 1971 Attica Massacre. Danny is a past president of the Chapter.

works at Bronx Legal Services in the Universal Access to Counsel (UAC) unit, working on eviction prevention and housing justice to help ensure Bronx tenants can access the legal representation they need to remain in their homes. He is a graduate of the Elisabeth Haub School of Law at Pace University, where he earned his JD with an Advanced Certificate in Environmental Law, and of Bard College’s Center for Environmental Policy, where he earned an MS in Environmental Policy. He joined the National Lawyers Guild in his first semester of law school, and has remained active since, both as an Executive Board member of the Pace Law chapter until his graduation, and on the Executive Committee of the New York City chapter.

is an attorney advisor at the Office of the Pardon Attorney. Before that he was public defender in the Bronx for six years. He earned his J.D. from the City University of New York (CUNY) School of Law, with a concentration in Social Justice, Equality & Civil Rights. While at CUNY Law, he interned with organizations that served vulnerable populations, including those with criminal records, the LGBTQQ community, homeless and displaced youth, and undocumented immigrants.

is a staff attorney at the Drivers Resource Center of the Metropolitan Taxicab Board of Trade, where he represents taxi drivers in administrative hearings and assists drivers with civil and criminal legal issues. Andrew is a recent graduate of the City University of New York School of Law, where he joined the NLG as a member of the CUNY chapter and through it became a Legal Observer. He has been an active legal observer since the first anniversary of Occupy Wall Street in 2012, and has organized capacity building and training projects within the program. He worked with the chapter’s Mass Defense Committee to oppose the creation of the NYPD’s anti-protest Strategic Response Group in 2015. Prior to law school, he was a foreclosure prevention counselor in the Hudson Valley and helped found Nobody Leaves Mid-Hudson, a grassroots, multi-issue community organization based in Poughkeepsie.

Ann has practiced law for 25 years on behalf of union members, specializing in divorce, housing and consumer law. She is a writer and activist who’s been involved in feminist, labor, anti-nuclear, death penalty, and anti-imperialist causes over the years. She was the chapter’s unpaid coordinator during our financial crisis of the mid-90’s.

worked in the NLG National Office Collective, held leadership roles in several national NLG projects including the Puerto Rico Legal Project, was on the board of the NLG’s Grand Jury Project and co-chaired the national NLG’s International Committee during a prolific period of growth. He was the N.O. staff member who coordinated the filing of the national NLG’s lawsuit against the FBI, in which the Guild was represented by Rabinowitz, Boudin, Standard, Krinsky & Lieberman. He is a past president of the Chapter, and is currently a member of the NYC Mass Defense Committee. Franklin’s Chapter work in recent years includes organizing CLE’s in 2022 and 2023 on the SFFA v. Harvard and University of North Carolina diversity cases then pending in the U.S. Supreme Court (co-presented with the Society of American Law Teachers); the October 2024 CLE “Defending Protesters in Criminal Court”; in early 2025 organizing the CLE “The Presidential Inauguration and the Unfolding Legal Era-Social Justice Advocacy in an Age of Revenge” (co-sponsored by CUNY Law School, the Society of American Law Teachers and the New York Civil Liberties Union); and organizing the October 2025 CLE “Defending Protesters in Federal Court” (with program co-organizers Sarah Kunstler and Susan Howard). He will be resuming work on getting an extensive collection of hard-copy chapter dinner journals digitized, as well as digitizing several decades of back issues of the chapter’s long-form newspaper, Blind Justice. He has kept the Chapter Executive Committee updated when counsel fees awards appear on public court dockets, so the Chapter can seek to collect donation pledges made by Chapter members. Franklin also secured the meeting and dormitory facilities when the Chapter hosted the national NLG Convention in 2016. He is Secretary of the board of The NLG-NYC Chapter Foundation Inc. Franklin recently retired as a Distinguished Lecturer at CUNY School of Law, where he also directed the evening program from 2017 through the summer of 2023. (With a Legal Aid Support Staff shop steward, he arranged for SEIU-1199’s Education Fund to provide substantial tuition support for LAS support staff to attend CUNY Law’s evening program.) His work led to the revival in 2023 of CUNY Law’s Haywood Burns Chair in Civil Rights, originated by Dean Emerita Kristin Booth Glen in 1997. He was one of the award recipients at the Society of American Law Teachers’ 50th Anniversary celebration in January 2024 in recognition of his work on SALT’s advocacy in the SFFA cases. He spent a decade in private practice, was a Staff Attorney at the Center for Constitutional Rights, became CCR’s Treasurer at a time of fiscal stress and served on its board for 18 years. He is one of the class counsel in Handschu v. Special Services Division, coming into the case when he was a law student at Marty Stolar’s law collective.

(She/They) is a licensed master social worker and future attorney whose work bridges trauma-informed practice, community organizing, and public-centered legal advocacy. A J.D. candidate at CUNY School of Law (expected December 2025), she previously served as Student Government President and a Staff Editor of the CUNY Law Review, and currently works as a Student Attorney in the Equality & Justice Clinic at Main Street Legal Services Inc., a Graduate Consultant with the Center for Public Research, and volunteers with Islip Forward, working to keep communities safe during heightened ICE presence and food insecurity. She found the NLG community her first year. Prior to law school, Sarah served as a social worker at various homeless shelters and held leadership positions including executive board member of Zero Overdose and board member of the NY-603 Continuum of Care, alongside earlier public service as a Legislative Aide in the Suffolk County Legislature and longstanding grassroots advocacy focused on educational equity, public health, and community-led governance. She is co-author of The Unbefriended: New Yorkers’ Quiet Death of Liberty Under Guardianship, advancing statewide guardianship reform, and a contributing author to In Pursuit of Six Lakes Park, a white paper examining environmental justice and community-driven land use planning in central Connecticut. A first-generation college graduate and longtime caregiver for her disabled family members, Sarah holds a B.S.W. and M.S.W. (Summa Cum Laude) from Stony Brook University and an A.A.S. in Human Services from Suffolk County Community College, and is committed to advancing justice-oriented legal work that centers vulnerable communities and strengthens public accountability.