Joan Boles is the deputy director of Bay Area Legal Services. In 1982 she received her J.D. from The John Marshall Law School in Chicago, Illinois, prior to which she volunteered with Mother Teresa and the Missionaries of Charity in London, England, working with homeless women, and in the South Bronx, New York, working with children. Joan has been with BALS for over 20 years advocating on behalf of low-income clients. She opened BALS’ Wimauma Office at the Beth-El Farmworker Mission in 1994 and worked on various projects including domestic violence and migrant/farmworker women; naturalization; affordable housing; and environmental justice. Joan has been in her present position since 2000 and is also the project director of the ChildNet Domestic Violence Collaborative and of the L. David Shear Children’s Law Center.
John Bouman is president of the Sargent Shriver National Center on Poverty Law, where he also remains the director of advocacy – his original position since 1996. He joined the Center in May 1996 after twenty-one years at the Legal Assistance Foundation of Chicago, where he supervised public benefits advocacy from 1985. Recently, John led the successful statewide effort to create the FamilyCare program to provide health insurance to up to 300,000 working poor parents of minor children. He is a founding and current member of the steering committee of the National Transitional Jobs Network, as well as a frequent lecturer and trainer on a variety of social policy, advocacy, and lawyering subjects. He is a 1975 graduate of Valparaiso University School of Law and member of the Chicago Council of Lawyers and the Chicago Bar Association.
John Little. Before attending law school, John Little served as a Peace Corps volunteer in West Africa and worked as a longshoreman in New York, having first received his B.A. degree from the University of Alabama in 1969. He received his J.D. degree from Gonzaga University School of Law in 1978. Upon graduation he was awarded a two year "Reggie" community lawyering fellowship through Howard University and was assigned to work with a small legal services program in north Alabama. In 1985 he began his present employment as a community development specialist attorney with Legal Services of Greater Miami, where he is responsible for providing free legal assistance to nonprofit corporations engaged in housing, economic and community development activities in ethnically diverse low-income neighborhoods. John has extensive experience in the legal aspects of small business, real estate development and affordable housing.
Raine Thompson A former staff attorney with ACLU of Mississippi, Raine Thompson now works in the public benefits office at Southeast Louisiana Legal Services/New Orleans Legal Assistance. She is an Equal Justice Works Katrina legal fellow, and a graduate of the University of Iowa College of Law. A member of various community groups and forums, Raine helps to educate victims of Hurricane Katrina about their rights, as they continue to recover from the disaster. She has trained attorneys, law students, and advocates locally and nationwide on FEMA disaster assistance and the appeals process, as well as local attorneys and advocates on the Louisiana Road Home program policies and appeals. As well as serving as a faculty member for Basic Lawyering Skills, Raine has also participated in CLAE’s Community Lawyering and Structural Racism training programs.
Carol S. Miller is a University of Florida College of Law graduate from 1980. After four years in private practice, Carol joined Jacksonville Area Legal Aid, Inc. (JALA). Her interest in community development arose from spending six years volunteering on the board of Springfield Neighborhood Housing Services. During the two years she was president, SNHS saved seven houses from demolition and rehabilitated them for sale to low-income residents. Her time on the board led to joining the Florida Legal Services Community Economic Development Workgroup, a state-wide network of attorneys and paralegals. Carol chaired this group from June 1993 to February 1996 and is still active with its successor umbrella group. In 1989, JALA agreed that Carol could add to her caseload community groups producing affordable housing. Carol also served on the Mayor's Economic Development Trust Fund Advisory Committee for the Northwest Quadrant of Jacksonville from June 1991 to October 1994.
In 1997, JALA allowed Carol to begin Jacksonville's Community Counsel Center, which recruits volunteer attorneys to represent client groups on a project by project basis. In 1998, Jacksonville Area Legal Aid received a grant from CDBG funds for Carol to spend 50% of her work-hours representing neighborhood associations primarily composed of residents with low-incomes. Since 2004, Carol has worked full-time with the Community Counsel Center of JALA and represents about 17 non-profit organizations (know as community development corporations) working to revitalize low-income neighborhoods.
Reilly Morse is a senior attorney at the Biloxi office of the Mississippi Center for Justice, where he works on affordable housing policy and community development. As a solo attorney, he served as a Municipal Court Prosecutor and Judge for the City of Gulfport, and spent ten years in environmental public interest litigation.
Prior to 196 he belonged to two Gulf Coast business law firms. In 2006, he was awarded the first Equal Justice Works Katrina Legal fellowship. He received the 2006 Edwin Wolf Award for Public Interest Law from the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law and the 2008 Hugh White Award from the Episcopal Network for Economic Justice. He has testified five times before Congressional committees about federal disaster recovery programs.
He is a co-founder of the Steps Coalition, Secretary for the Gulf Coast Renaissance Corporation, and an adviser to many social justice non-profits in coastal Mississippi. He is a graduate of Millsaps College and the University of Mississippi Law School. His publications include “Mitigating Disaster: Lessons from Mississippi,” 77 Miss. L. J. 101 (2008) (co-authored with Karen A. Lash) and “Environmental Justice Through the Eye of Hurricane Katrina,” Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies (2008). His most recent report written for the Steps Coalition, "Hurricane Katrina: Has Mississippi Fallen Further Behind?" was the subject a September 21, 2009, New York Times editorial.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/21/opinion/21mon1.html?_r=2&emc=eta1
He is married with two daughters and resides in Gulfport, Mississippi.