Detailed Speaker Bios:
Zainab A. Chaudhry received her J.D. in 1998 from Albany Law School, where she graduated summa cum laude. After graduation, she worked for several years as a judicial law clerk for the New York State Court of Appeals and the Hon. Richard C. Wesley. Zainab later served as an Assistant Solicitor General with the Office of the New York State Attorney General, Appeals Bureau for nearly 12 years. During that time, Zainab argued numerous appeals before the New York State Court of Appeals, the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, and all four departments of New York's Appellate Division. Zainab also filed numerous amicus briefs in the United States Supreme Court on behalf of New York State, including several amicus briefs in the Muslim Travel Ban litigation. In 2019, Zainab returned to the New York State Court of Appeals as Principal Court Attorney, joining the leadership team supervising new law clerks on the Court's Central Legal Research Staff.
Carmen Iguina Gonzalez is a Senior Staff Attorney at the ACLU Immigrants’ Rights Project based in Washington, D.C. Carmen served as a law clerk for Justice Sonia Sotomayor of the U.S. Supreme Court. Prior to that, she was a staff attorney at the ACLU of Southern California. Carmen was counsel in the first case that established a right to appointed legal representation for any group of immigrants facing deportation, Franco v. Holder, which required the federal government to provide legal representation to immigrants with mental disabilities. She was also counsel in J.E.F.M. v. Holder, a nationwide class action lawsuit seeking to require the government to provide children with legal representation in their deportation hearings, and in Alfaro Garcia v. Holder, a nationwide class action lawsuit filed on behalf of thousands of immigrants fleeing persecution who had faced months of detention while awaiting reasonable fear determinations. Carmen was part of the Franco team that received the 2014 Jack Wasserman Memorial Award from the American Immigration Lawyers Association and was named a 2016 California Lawyer of the Year. She previously held clerkships with Judge Kiyo A. Matsumoto on the United States Court District Court for the Eastern District of New York and Judge Stephen R. Reinhardt on the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. She was most recently an Associate in the Issues and Appeals practice group of Jones Day.
Carmen graduated magna cum laude from Harvard University and New York University School of Law, where she was a Root-Tilden-Kern Scholar, and was an Equal Justice Works Fellow.
Shilpa Satoskar is a Supervising Attorney in the Appellate Division of the Public Defender Service for the District of Columbia, where she has been practicing since 2005. She received her J.D., cum laude, from Harvard Law School and her B.A., with highest distinction, from the University of Michigan. After law school, she clerked for Judge Ann Aldrich of the United States District Court for the Northern District of Ohio, worked as an associate in the D.C. office of Jenner and Block, and then spent several years as a civil rights litigator in Chicago and Washington, D.C.
Tiffany R. Wright co-directs Howard University School of Law’s Civil Rights Clinic. Tiffany’s work focuses primarily on civil rights cases in appellate courts. She was one of the lead attorneys in Taylor v. Riojas, where the U.S. Supreme Court summarily reversed the grant of qualified immunity to prison guards who subjected an inmate to inhumane conditions. Taylor is one of the few times in history—and the first time in at least 16 years—that the Court summarily reversed a grant of qualified immunity for law enforcement officers.Tiffany was also lead counsel and presented oral argument in the Second Circuit Court of Appeals in Uniformed Fire Officers' Association v. DeBlasio, where she defeated police unions’ effort to prevent public disclosure of police misconduct records following the repeal of a New York law that had kept such records secret for decades.
Tiffany served as a law clerk to Justice Sonia Sotomayor of the U.S. Supreme Court, Judge David S. Tatel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, and Judge Royce C. Lamberth of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. Tiffany serves on the Board of Directors for The Appellate Project, an organization dedicated to increasing diversity in appellate practice. She also serves on the Supreme Court & Appellate Program Advisory Board of the MacArthur Justice Center.
