Cristóbal Joshua Alex, Director

Josh is the Campaign Director. He is responsible for rolling out strategic campaigns in national and international forums, building alliances, and overseeing media and communication efforts. Josh joined the campaign after practicing civil rights law with MacDonald Hoague & Bayless, the leading civil rights firm in the Northwest. During that time Josh focused his practice on police and governmental misconduct, including important cases dealing with prisoner rights, police shootings, discrimination, and the constitutionality of various state laws.

Josh was the student body president at the University of Washington School of Law, and led rallies and marches opposing Anti-Affirmative Action initiatives. He helped organize successful legislative campaigns to give undocumented students access to higher education, and fund an unprecedented $40 million in farm-worker housing. Following law school Josh served as the youngest president in the history of the Latina/o Bar Association, and brought attention to standardized testing systems that disproportionately impact people of color, and led voter registration drives. While serving as chair of the Diversity Committee, Josh developed the Pathways to Law mentorship program that pairs community college students of color with attorneys of color -- the first of its kind in the country. Josh also co-founded and chaired the Farm Worker Justice Project and the Latino Political Action Committee.

Josh has received the Outstanding Young Lawyer Award, El Centro de la Raza's Leadership Award, was a recipient of the Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund Scholarship and is consistently named "rising star" in the area of constitutional law by Washington Law and Politics. He is admitted to the United States District Court in the Western and Eastern Districts of Washington, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals and the Supreme Court of the United States, and was recently appointed chair of the Civil Rights Division of the Hispanic National Bar Association.

Tanene Allison, Media Campaign Coordinator

Tanene Allison is the Media Campaign Coordinator. She is responsible for developing and delivering campaign messages; collecting and disseminating research among partnering organizations; serving as staff for a committee of media experts; and organizing outreach to media.

Tanene joins the Campaign after working at MTV, where she was a coordinator of Think MTV, MTV'S on-air, online and grassroots pro-social campaign. Prior to her work at MTV, Tanene worked as an organizer, educator and advisor on a range of social justice issues, including equal access to health care, homeless policies, and lesbian and gay rights.

Tanene completed her Masters in Public Policy at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government. While at Harvard, Tanene edited the Harvard Journal of African American Public Policy, and was awarded a Point Foundation Uncommon Legacies Scholarship. Tanene's undergraduate studies were at San Francisco State University, where she graduated with a BA in Political Science, and was awarded the David Jenkins Award for student leadership and political activism.

Tanene has received a Women's World Leaders Fellowship to study in South Africa, as well as Certificates of Recognition given by the US Congress, California State Assembly, Mayor's Office of San Francisco and Governor's Office of California. She has published several articles, including "Confronting the Myth of Choice: Homelessness and Jones v. City of Los Angeles," in The Harvard Civil Rights, Civil Liberties Law Review, and "The Displacement of Black Families and Communities: San Francisco as a Case Study in Political Response: An Interview with N'Tanya Lee," in the Harvard Journal of African American Public Policy. Tanene also is a published poet and a huge fan of music and art aiding in the work of social justice.

Carey Alexander, Web Coordinator

Carey is the Web Coordinator. He is responsible for developing and maintaining the campaign's web presence, which currently includes the campaign website, the blog Our Rights, Our Future, and the campaign's Facebook group.

Carey joins the campaign as the weekend editor of Gawker Media's consumer-advocacy blog, Consumerist.com, where he chronicles tales of corporate excess and explains the consumer impact of government actions. Carey was previously the Policy Advisor to Bronx Borough President Adolfo Carrion, for whom he analyzed citywide budget issues, worked to revitalize public housing, and developed a long-term sustainable energy plan for New York City.

As a student, Carey interned with the Nassau County Legal Aid Society and the offices of Congressman Gary Ackerman and Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton. He graduated with a BA in Government from Skidmore College and participated in the Fellowship for Emerging Leaders in Public Service at NYU's Wagner Graduate School of Public Service.

Genevieve Gazón, Campaign Administrator

Genevieve wears two hats. She is the Executive Assistant to the General Counsel at New York Lawyers for the Public Interest and the administrator for the National Campaign to Restore Civil Rights. In addition to taking care of the day to day clerical needs of the General Counsel, Genevieve supervises the two legal assistants on staff to ensure that the administrative needs of NYLPI's program staff and the National Campaign to Restore Civil Rights are met. She not only keeps mailing lists, files and outreach materials in order, but with the support and encouragement of her colleagues in the Campaign, is an active participant in the weekly meetings and monthly conference calls.

Her trajectory has been rather unorthodox. She attended New York University's Tisch School of the Arts, where she pursued a Theatre Arts Degree. Shortly after leaving NYU, she switched gears and became a musician. She is a published songwriter and is the band leader/vocalist of an acid jazz band called Heavy Merge. In addition to her musical career, she worked for various record labels and her final stop in the corporate sector was as the Sr. Director for International Production at Atlantic Records. Genevieve tired of the music industry when she began to realize how much money and energy it wasted on things that were of little importance.

With a desire to effect change and contribute to the greater good, she has happily ended up at the Campaign and its partner organization, the New York Lawyers for the Public Interest, where she continues to be amazed and inspired every day by the energy and accomplishments of the people around her.

Marianne Engelman Lado, General Counsel

Marianne is General Counsel to New York Lawyers for the Public Interest (NYLPI), where she oversees the litigation and advocacy program, including impact litigation, administrative advocacy, direct representation, community organizing and outreach, and intake. The docket encompasses cases and advocacy on issues of disability rights, environmental justice, and access to health care.

Marianne has also played a role in the development of the National Campaign to Restore Civil Rights, a nationwide effort to address the rollback of civil rights by the courts.

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."