Fostering Affirmative, Broad-Based Advocacy

John Bouman was named president of the Shriver Center effective January 1, 2007. He also remains the Shriver Center's director of advocacy, his position since 1996. He joined the Shriver Center in May 1996 after twenty-one years at the Legal Assistance Foundation of Metropolitan Chicago, where he supervised public benefits issues and policy advocacy from 1985. Prior to that, he provided multi-issue direct representation in several Chicago neighborhoods for nine years and held a position as a specialist in the foundation's Elderly Law Project.

He has won numerous awards for his career and accomplishments in antipoverty legal and advocacy work. He is recognized for being one of the most effective and thoughtful public-benefit advocates in the country. He was a leader in the design and implementation of positive aspects of Illinois's new welfare law in 1997. Recently he led the successful statewide effort to create the FamilyCare program to provide health care insurance to up to 300,000 working poor parents of minor children, and he was a leader in the successful advocacy to create All Kids, the first state program of universal coverage for children. Bouman is lead counsel in Memisovski v. Maram, a successful case establishing substantial reforms in children's health care in Illinois. He is a founding and current member of the steering committee of the National Transitional Jobs Network. He is 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.

Courses Taught

• Affirmative Litigation
• Fostering Affirmative, Broad-Based Advocacy

Joel Ferber is the managing attorney of the Health and Welfare unit of Legal Services of Eastern Missouri, where he has conducted extensive policy analysis and advocacy regarding welfare reform, Medicaid, managed care, the Food Stamp Program, and low income health care issues. Joel has litigated Medicaid and other public benefits cases in the United States District Courts and the United States Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit. He was also one of the lead attorneys representing Missouri consumer groups in the settlement of a lawsuit involving the reorganization of Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Missouri: a settlement that established the Missouri Foundation for Health, the largest health care foundation in the state of Missouri. Joel has been a presenter at numerous state and national conferences dealing with Medicaid, public benefits, and low-income health issues, and has written extensively on these and other subjects in Clearinghouse Review, the St. Louis University Law Journal and elsewhere. Joel is a graduate of John Hopkins University and New York University School of Law.

Courses Taught

• Fostering Affirmative, Broad-Based Advocacy

Bill Kennedy is the Managing Attorney/Deputy Director of Legal Services of Northern California (“LSNC”) in Sacramento, a position he has held since 1990. In his 36th year of practice, his legal work has focused primarily on housing and civil rights. In the 1980’s Bill was lead counsel on a number of successful civil rights challenges to discriminatory police practices of the Border Patrol. He and his colleague have brought several actions that focus on the nexus between land use and civil rights. He has also developed a vibrant economic development practice that addresses the “asset gap” between White America and Racial/ethnic communities. Projects include:

• Pioneering the “virtual development” model, projects have created single-family homes for purchase by more than 500 families earning as little as $17,000 per year.
• Placed over 1000 families on welfare into jobs averaging $9.50 per hour with benefits.
• Incorporated dozens of job cooperatives using the Limited Liability Corporation model in which there is no Employer/Employee relationship.
• Opening 9 child care centers in low income communities of color which cater to employees working in retail and service sector.
• Making Individual Development Accounts (IDA’s) available for education, home purchase or small business start up.
• Supporting Earned Income Tax Credit campaigns to finance projects for low-income neighborhoods suffering from disinvestment.
• Launching the Race Equity Project that integrates newly developing Cognitive Science into civil rights law.

Bill believes that the attorneys should never be a crutch upon which communities depend but a partner in making a community’s dreams manifest. He has been counsel to the Sacramento Valley Organizing Community, ACORN, the Mutual Assistance Network of Del Paso Heights and Asian Resources.

Courses Taught

• Fostering Affirmative, Broad-Based Advocacy

Abigail Turner is the Litigation Director at Legal Aid Justice Center in Central Virginia. She serves as counsel and consults in complex litigation and other initiatives. She partners with Justice Center staff in planning strategy using administrative advocacy, media and partnering with the low-income community. Abigail recently played a major leadership role in the Justice Center’s strategic planning initiative. Her expertise includes litigating complex poverty law and civil rights cases; representing clients in policy advocacy; and training lawyers.

She worked as Litigation Director in trying and supervising complex litigation in New Hampshire with New Hampshire Legal Assistance and then at Mid-Minnesota Legal Assistance in Minneapolis. She practiced plaintiffs civil rights law with the Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights Under Law in her first lawyer job and then with the Legal Services Corporation of Alabama for 11 years. A graduate of George Washington University Law School, she also has an MA degree in economics. In 2006 she was awarded the Hennepin County Pro Bono Publico Public Sector Award for her work in Minnesota organizing legal services for Katrina refugees.

Courses Taught

• Fostering Affirmative, Broad-Based Advocacy