Leadership

Robert K. Johnson, Esq., Chair is of counsel to the law firm of Munger, Tolles & Olson in Los Angeles and was co-managing partner for six years. He also worked for the United States Department of Justice Antitrust Division as a Special Assistant to the Assistant Attorney General and as an associate for Cleary, Gottlieb, Steen & Hamilton. Johnson is an active member of the American, California and Los Angeles County Bar Associations and a past member of the Board of Trustees of the Los Angeles County Bar Association where he served as Chair of its Taxation Section and Chair of its Employee Benefits Committee, receiving its Dana Latham Memorial Award in 1999. Johnson also served as Chair of the Taxation Section of the State Bar of California and received its V. Judson Klein Award in 1997. He is a Fellow of the American College of Tax Counsel and the American College of Employee Benefits Counsel. Johnson is currently listed in The Best Lawyers in America under Employee Benefits Law and Tax Law. He is a graduate of Harvard University and Stanford Law School where he served as an officer of the Stanford Law Review. Johnson also currently serves on the Board of Directors and as Secretary of the Housing Rights Center, which is California’s largest nonprofit organization dedicated to security fair housing.

Barrett S. Litt, Esq., Vice Chair, is a founding partner of Litt & Stormer, Litt & Marquez, Litt & Associates, and now Litt, Estuar & Kitson, LLP in Los Angeles, CA. He began his career as a criminal defense attorney, and worked on the Pentagon Papers and Chicago Conspiracy trials. He has spent most of his career litigating civil rights and constitutional cases in the civil arena. Many of the civil rights cases he has tried and settled involved multi-million dollar awards. In 2003, Litt was lead counsel in the McClure v. City of Long Beach trial, a Fair Housing Act case that resulted in a unanimous verdict and an award of $22,500,000.00 after seven months of trial, the largest Fair Housing Act verdict in the country. Litt has been recognized frequently for his public interest and civil rights work with the UCLA School of Law naming him as its public interest 1995 alumnus of the year. He was also named a “Super Lawyer” in Civil Rights/First Amendment and Class Action/Mass Tort actions for the years 2005, 2006, 2007,2008, 2009 and 2010. Litt is a graduate of the University of California at Los Angeles School of Law.

Teresa A. Bryce Bazemore oversees the strategic planning, business development, policy issues and administrative activities of the Radian Guaranty Inc. in Philadelphia, PA, the Radian Group’s mortgage insurance business line. In past positions, she has served as General Counsel for Nexstar Financial Corporation and, prior to that, Bank of America Mortgage. She has served on the Consumer Advisory Council of the Federal Reserve and the Fannie Mae National Advisory Council among many other appointments and has been honored most recently by the Mortgage Bankers Association with its Distinguished Service Award. She received her law degree from Columbia University and is a graduate of the University of Virginia.

Carroll L. Estes, Ph.D., is Professor of Sociology at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF). She is the founding and first Director of the Institute for Health & Aging (1979-1998) and the former chair of the Department of Social and Behavioral Sciences (1981-1992), School of Nursing, UCSF. Dr. Estes is a member of the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences. She is currently President of National Committee to Preserve Social Security and Medicare and past President of three national organizations in aging: The Gerontological Society of America (GSA), the American Society on Aging (ASA), and the Association for Gerontology in Higher Education (AGHE). She was national vice-president of the Older Women’s League (OWL). She has served as consultant to US Commissioners of Social Security and to US Senate and House Committees on Aging, as well as a member of multiple federal commissions and advisory boards and private foundations. A prolific writer, she has authored and co-authored 8 books and more than 150 scientific articles and book chapters. Dr. Estes has co-edited 14 books, including The Nation’s Health (with Philip R. Lee) and Health Policy (with Charlene Harrington). She received her PhD in Sociology from the University of California, San Diego, her MA from Southern Methodist University and BA from Stanford University.

David H. Fry is a litigation attorney with Munger, Tolles & Olson of San Francisco, CA. He has frequently represented major national corporations in high level cases, however his pro bono work helped the NSCLC and others in the well-known Martinez vs. Astrue case. This case obtained $500 million for thousands of people who were wrongfully denied government benefits such as Social Security and Supplement Income Security (SSI). His firm received the National Law Journal’s 2009 Pro Bono Award for work on that case and, in 2010, he received personal recognition for pro bono work from California Lawyer magazine and the Wiley W. Manuel award from the State Bar of California. Fry is a graduate of Pomona College and received his law degree from Yale Law School.

Sen. Fred Harris is professor emeritus of political science at the University of New Mexico, where he still directs the UNM Fred Harris Congressional Internship Program. He was twice elected to the U.S Senate from Oklahoma (1964-1973) and was chair of the Democratic National Committee (1969-70). A champion for Native American rights and those of working Americans, Sen. Harris has produced eighteen books on politics, government and issues, including “Locked in the Poorhouse: Cities, Race and Poverty in the U.S.”, as well as three novels. Known in the Senate for his ability to understand and work with opposing factions, he focused on improving the welfare system and increasing job opportunities for poor and unskilled workers. He holds a BA degree and a JD degree “with distinction,” both from the University of Oklahoma.

Phyllis J. Holmen, Esq. is executive director of Georgia Legal Services Program of Atlanta, GA, a position she has held since June 1990. GLSP provides civil legal services to low-income Georgians who live outside the metro Atlanta area, through 12 locations throughout the state. Ms. Holmen began her legal career with GLSP in 1974. She is a member of the State Bar of Georgia Board of Governors Executive Committee and is active with several State Bar committees. She served on the Governor’s Judicial Nominating Commission, the Supreme Court’s Indigent Defense Commission, its Blue Ribbon Commission on the Judiciary, and the Administrative Office of the Court’s Committee on Pro Se Litigants. She is an active member of the Georgia Association of Women Lawyers and formerly served on the President’s Task Force on Access to Civil Justice, and the Standing Committee on Legal Aid and Indigent Defendants (SCLAID) of the American Bar Association. She is a current or former member of many national and community boards and organizations, including the National Legal Aid and Defender Association; the national Poverty and Race Research Action Council; CHRIS Homes; the Women’s Policy Group; Leadership Atlanta; and the ACLU of Georgia. Ms. Holmen is a graduate of the University of Illinois College of Law.

Michael J. Kelly, Ph.D. Esq. has served on NSCLC’s Board of Directors since 2000, including two years as chair and was interim Executive Director of NSCLC prior to the rehiring of Executive Director Paul Nathanson. In his career, Kelly was Dean of the University of Maryland School of Law as well as University Vice President and Chief Operating Officer of Georgetown University. He was also a visiting scholar at the Sloan School of Management at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), and a senior fellow at the Zicklin Center for Business Ethics Research at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. He serves on the boards of the Union Theological Seminary in New York City and CareFirst Inc., the nonprofit Blue Cross/Blue Shield Company serving the Maryland and Washington, DC metropolitan area. He is a Princeton University graduate with a Ph.D. from King’s College, Cambridge University and earned his law degree from Yale University.

Hannah Lieberman, Esq. is executive director of Neighborhood Legal Services Program in Washington, DC. She formerly was principal at Lieberman Consulting LLC,  in Bethesda, MD. Before that, she was the deputy executive director of the Legal Aid Bureau, Inc. where she oversaw advocacy work of this statewide, multi-office, 130+ attorney legal services program. Prior to joining Legal Aid, Ms. Lieberman served as the Litigation Coordinator/Director of Advocacy of Community Legal Services in Arizona and a litigation partner at the Washington, D.C. law firm of Shaw, Pittman, Potts & Trowbridge. In 2005, Ms. Lieberman received the Benjamin L. Cardin Distinguished Service Award from the Maryland Legal Services Corporation. She is a graduate of Yale University and the University of Pennsylvania Law School.

Edward D. Spurgeon, Esq. has been Executive Director of the Borchard Foundation Center on Law and Aging in Salt Lake City, UT since 1998. He also has been both a practicing lawyer, including a partner at Paul, Hastings, Janofsky and Walker in Los Angeles, and a legal educator at the University of Utah, the University of Georgia and Pacific McGeorge School of Law. At the latter, Spurgeon was a Distinguished Visiting Professor and holder of the Gordon D. Schaber Chair in Health Law and Policy. He also served a combined total of 12 years as the Dean of the University of Utah and University of Georgia law schools, and was a visiting law professor at both Stanford and New York University law schools. Since 1991, he has been a Commissioner and Special Advisor to the ABA Commission on Law and Aging, and he co-founded Utah Legal Services’ Senior Lawyer Volunteer Project. Spurgeon is a graduate of Princeton University, received his law degree from Stanford University Law School, and a Master of Laws degree from New York University Law School. He currently is Professor of Law and Dean Emeritus at both the University of Utah and the University of Georgia.

E. Percil Stanford, Ph.D. recently served as AARP’s Regional Director for the West Region and as an interim director of the National AARP State Affairs Department. He was named its Chief Diversity Officer in December 2005. In his long career, he worked at the U.S. Department of Human Services Administration on Aging where he helped establish the first University-based education and training programs. Stanford served as the Director for the National Institute on Minority Aging, which he founded, and directed several other national programs under the umbrella of the University Center on Aging at San Diego State University where he continues to serve as Professor Emeritus. He is a prolific author of several books on a wide range of topics related to aging. An active leader in numerous professional organizations, he is past president of the American Society on Aging. Stanford has been appointed to several commissions and task forces, including the White House Conference on Aging Planning Council. He received his Ph.D in Sociology with an emphasis in Gerontology from Iowa State University.

Ms. Tanden is Chief Operating Officer for the Center for American Progress (CAP). She most recently served as Senior Advisor for health reform at the Department of Health and Human Services and also was part of President Obama’s health reform team. Prior to that, Tanden was the Director of Domestic Policy for the Obama-Biden presidential campaign and formerly served as policy director for the Hillary Clinton presidential campaign and earlier as Legislative Director for Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-NY). A frequent guest on national television news program, Tanden is a graduate of Yale Law School.

Stu Zimring, Esq. is in private practice in Hollywood, California, specializing in elder law, estate and life planning, special needs trusts and probate, conservatorship and trust litigation. He is certified as a specialist in estate planning, probate and trust law by the Board of Certification of the State Bar of California, and is co-author (together with Donna Bashaw, CELA) of Tax, Estate & Financial Planning for the Elderly – California Guide and (together with Prof. Rebecca Morgan and Bradley Frigon) Fundamentals of Special Needs Trusts.“ Zimring is a member of the Matthew-Bender/Lexis-Nexis Elder Law Editorial Board. He is admitted to practice in California, the U.S. District Court, Central and Northern Districts of California and the U.S. Supreme Court. A fellow of both the National Academy of Elder Law Attorneys (NAELA) and the American College of Trust and Estate Counselors (ACTEC), he is also a member of the Special Needs Alliance, a Past President of NAELA, and a Charter Member of NAELA’s Council of Advanced Practicioners. He also serves on the boards of directors of a number of non-profit organizations including the Organization for the Needs of the Elderly (ONEgeneration), of which he is also a Past President. He graduated from the UCLA School of Law in 1971 with a J.D. degree.