Naoma Nagahawatte, Director

Naoma Nagahawatte directs the National Campaign to Restore Civil Rights (NCRCR). Utilizing media and coalition advocacy initiatives, she guides NCRCR in its work towards the restoration of civil rights in the United States.

Prior to joining NCRCR, Naoma helped form the New York City Office of the Muslim Public Affairs Council. She incepted and instituted advocacy and media campaigns to combat post-911 backlash against Muslim Americans, while creating initiatives to further facilitate Muslim participation in US civic life. She also helped create the Muslim American Civil Liberties Coalition (MACLC), a network of civil liberties groups united in advocating on behalf of Muslims in the New York area. Prior to that, she campaigned for racial justice as the Deputy Director of the State Organizing and Policy Project for the Drug Policy Alliance. There, Naoma worked in Connecticut, Alabama, and New York - lobbying and organizing communities towards parole/probation reform and an end to the Rockefeller Drug Laws. As an international human rights advocate, she managed the Stop Violence Against Women in Darfur Project, and the Convention for the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) initiative for Amnesty International USA (AIUSA). While at AIUSA, Naoma lobbied the Sudanese Ambassador to the UN, and members of Congress, to end violence against refugees and internally displaced persons in Darfur. In addition, Naoma sat on the Working Group on Ratification of the U.N. Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) - engaged in outreach and education towards CEDAW ratification.

As a Public Interest Law Foundation grantee, Naoma has worked as a anti-domestic violence advocate in New York City. She has also analyzed policy for the Citizen's Union of the City of New York, the Demos Institute, and the New York City Charter Revision Commission.

Tricia Perry, Web Coordinator

Having graduated from a previous run as a National Campaign to Restore Civil Rights (NCRCR) Media Intern, Tricia Perry has re-emerged as NCRCR's Web Coordinator. Prior to her return, Tricia spent fourteen months in Rio de Janeiro as a Fulbright scholar, studying the discrimination experienced by people living with HIV/AIDS in Brazil. She is currently in the process of producing a multimedia human rights education curriculum based on her research. She also continues her translation work for Rio-based AIDS NGO Pela Vidda, acting as a linguistic and cultural liaison between the organization and its international funders.

Tricia has worked as a new media researcher and blogger on issues of health care, racial justice and immigration for The Opportunity Agenda, a partner organization of the Campaign dedicated to building the national will to expand opportunity in America. She continues to work with New York Cares as a civics exam tutor for Arab-American women applying for US citizenship. She also spent a number of years working as a paralegal in immigration and litigation.

Tricia holds a M.A. degree in Media Studies from New School University, and a B.A. in Spanish and Anthropology from Smith College. During her undergraduate career, she spent a year studying at the University of Costa Rica and worked as a STRIDE scholar/research assistant to Professor Jay Garfield of the Department of Philosophy, editing and co-authoring work in human rights, Buddhist philosophy, and cognitive science.

Marianne Engelman Lado, Executive Sponsor

Marianne has been involved in the National Campaign to Restore Civil Rights since its inception. She is currently a Visiting Assistant Professor at Seton Hall University School of Law. From 1999 to 2009, she served as General Counsel to New York Lawyers for the Public Interest (NYLPI), where she oversaw the litigation and advocacy program, including impact litigation, administrative advocacy, direct representation, community organizing and outreach, and intake. The docket encompassed cases and advocacy on issues of disability rights, environmental justice, and access to health care.

Marianne was previously a staff attorney at the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund (LDF), where she worked on litigation and advocacy within LDF's Poverty & Justice Program, representing clients attempting to break barriers of access to health care and quality education. In this capacity Marianne was responsible for developing a health care docket aimed at addressing the scarcity of health resources in medically underserved communities; discriminatory practices by the health care industry, including nursing homes, and also managed care organizations; lack of access to reproductive health services; and related issues of environmental justice. She also organized the legal effort in the late 1990s to save the public hospitals in New York City. The education docket included case development, trial, and appellate work at the state and federal level to guarantee equal educational opportunity across racial and class lines.

Marianne has taught graduate and undergraduate level courses in public administration, health policy, and education law at Baruch College. She holds a B.A. in government from Cornell University, a J.D. from the University of California at Berkeley, and an M.A. in Politics from Princeton University. Her publications include "Unfinished Agenda: The Need for Civil Rights Litigation to Address Continuing Patterns of Race Discrimination and Inequalities in Access to Health Care," "Breaking the Barriers of Access to Health Care: A Discussion of the Role of Civil Rights Litigation and the Relationship Between Burdens of Proof and the Experience of Denial," "Evaluating Systems for Delivering Legal Services to the Poor: Conceptual and Methodological Considerations" (co-authored with Gregg G. Van Ryzin) and "A Question of Justice: African-American Legal Perspectives on the 1883 Civil Rights Cases."