SENSIBLE SAFEGUARDS - Key Persons
Job Titles:
- Litigation Group Director, Public Citizen
- Senior Member of the Administrative Conference of the United States
Allison M. Zieve joined Public Citizen Litigation Group in August 1994. In 2009, she became the Group's director and director of our Supreme Court Assistance Project. She also serves as General Counsel of Public Citizen.
Allison's litigation practice addresses public health (such drug safety, food labeling, and tobacco issues), consumer safety and consumer financial protection, open government, federal preemption, class action standards, and First Amendment issues. Many of her cases have involved issues related to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, as well as the U.S. Department of Transportation, the U.S. Department of Justice, and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, among other agencies. Allison has argued five cases before the United States Supreme Court and many more in the federal appellate and district courts.
Allison serves as a senior member of the Administrative Conference of the United States and as a member of the American Law Institute, and she has served as a board member and board chair of the Food and Drug Law Institute. She has taught as an adjunct professor at Yale Law School, Georgetown University School of Law, and American University's Washington College of Law. In addition, since its inception, Allison has judged the American Constitution Society's Richard D. Cudahy Writing Competition on Regulatory and Administrative Law. She has written articles for N.Y.U.'s Annual Survey of American Law, Duke Law School's Law & Contemporary Problems, TRIAL Magazine, various BNA legal publications, Internal Medicine News and Regulatory Affairs Journal (UK).
Allison is admitted to the District of Columbia Bar and is admitted to practice before numerous federal courts. She graduated from Brown University and Yale Law School.
Job Titles:
- Counsel With the Policy & Legislation
- Senior Legislative Counsel, Earthjustice
Brielle Green is a senior legislative counsel with the Policy & Legislation team in Washington, D.C. She covers access to courts, judicial nominations and regulatory (APA) issues.
Prior to Earthjustice, Brielle worked at Advocates for Environmental Human Rights based in New Orleans, where she coordinated and participated in advocacy of the UN Human Rights Council for the Universal Periodic Review on Environmental and Climate Change Justice in Geneva, Switzerland. Brielle previously was a Legal Fellow for the Campaign for Community Change where she researched campaign finance, housing and health care issues. She has also worked as a contract lawyer for Arnold & Porter in Washington, D.C.
Brielle is a 2011 graduate of William and Mary School of Law and received a B.A. in Political Science from Spelman College in Atlanta. Brielle has a long-standing passion for environmental justice that was in no small way spurred by her attending an environmental magnet elementary school in Minneapolis, MN.
Job Titles:
- Senior Fellow at the Century Foundation
Carolyn Fast is a senior fellow at The Century Foundation where she works on higher education policy with a focus on institutional accountability and consumer protections. Before joining The Century Foundation, Carolyn was special counsel in the Consumer Frauds and Protection Bureau of the New York Attorney General's Office. In that role, Carolyn investigated and brought enforcement actions against predatory for-profit colleges and student loan lenders and servicers, securing millions of dollars in restitution for students and student loan borrowers. Prior to joining the Attorney General's Office, Carolyn clerked for Judge Victor Marrero in the Southern District of New York. Carolyn received her undergraduate degree from Harvard and her law degree from Columbia Law School.
Cheyenne Hunt-Majer is a progressive advocate and attorney specializing in the issues at the intersection of democratic erosion, technology policy, and human rights. She currently serves as a Big Tech Accountability Advocate with Public Citizen. She has drafted legislation and led campaigns to hold tech giants accountable for their role in undermining democratic norms, promoting misinformation, inciting violence, and exploiting user privacy.
While attending law school at The University of California Irvine, she studied under and worked with David Kaye, the Former United Nations Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Expression, to advocate for international human rights standards as the base line for content moderation policies and the use of A.I. technology. As a law clerk for Senator Amy Klobuchar, she gained expertise in legislative affairs, appropriations, and the nominations process. Her work spanned across a wide variety of issues areas including social media policy, civil rights, reproductive justice, and democracy reform.
She earned Dual Degrees in Political Science and Public Policy from the University of Denver and serves as a board member for The Women of Global Change, and international non-profit organization dedicated to empowering women and their families in a sustainable manner.
Job Titles:
- Government Affairs Lobbyist, Public Citizen
Craig Holman, Ph.D., serves as Public Citizen's Capitol Hill lobbyist on ethics, lobbying and campaign finance rules. Craig is an expert on campaign finance reform, governmental ethics, lobbying practices and the impact of money in politics. Previously, Craig was senior policy analyst at the Brennan Center for Justice, New York University School of Law. Craig worked closely with reform organizations and the Democratic congressional caucus of the 110th Congress in drafting and promoting the "Honest Leadership and Open Government Act," the new federal lobbying and ethics reform legislation signed into law on Sept. 14, 2007. As a consequence of this legislation, Craig is also working with European nongovernmental organizations and members of the European Commission and Parliament in developing a lobbyist registration system for the European Union.
Craig has assisted in drafting campaign finance reform legislation, including pay-to-play legislation, and has conducted numerous research projects on the initiative process and the impact of money in politics. He has been called upon to assist as a researcher and/or expert witness defending in court the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002 (BCRA) as well as the campaign finance reform laws of Alaska, Arkansas, California and Colorado. He has authored and co-authored several studies on campaign finance and the initiative process, including four major works entitled BUYING TIME 2000: TELEVISION ADVERTISING IN THE 2000 FEDERAL ELECTIONS (2001); THE PRICE OF JUSTICE: A CASE STUDY IN JUDICIAL CAMPAIGN FINANCING (1995); TO GOVERN OURSELVES: BALLOT INITIATIVES IN THE LOS ANGELES AREA (1992), and DEMOCRACY BY INITIATIVE (1992).
Job Titles:
- Attorney
- Director of Immigration Law and Policy Research, Economic Policy Institute
Daniel Costa is an attorney who first joined the Economic Policy Institute in 2010 and was EPI's director of immigration law and policy research from 2013 to early 2018; he returned to this role in 2019 after serving as the California Attorney General's senior advisor on immigration and labor. Costa's areas of research include a wide range of labor migration issues, including governance of temporary labor migration programs, migration for both professional occupations and lower-wage jobs, worksite enforcement, and immigrant workers' rights, as well as farm labor, global multilateral processes related to migration, and refugee and asylum issues.
Costa has testified on immigration before the U.S. Congress and state governments, been quoted and cited by many major news outlets, and appeared on radio and television news. His commentaries have appeared in publications like The New York Times, Roll Call, Fortune, La Opinión, and others, and he was named one of "20 Immigration Experts to Follow on Twitter" by ABC News. Costa is currently a visiting scholar at the Global Migration Center at the University of California-Davis, and was previously a visiting scholar at U.C. Davis, School of Law (2019-2020) and an affiliated scholar with the University of California-Merced (2015-2017). He is also the proud son of immigrants and fluent in Spanish and Portuguese.
Prior to his tenure at EPI, Costa worked on developing the legal and normative framework for disaster response and humanitarian relief operations with the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies in Geneva, Switzerland, and completed the International Law Seminar with the UN International Law Commission. He was also a policy analyst at the Great Valley Center, a former University of California think tank, where he managed an immigrant integration program.
Job Titles:
- Climate Program Managing Director, Public Citizen
- Managing Director of Public Citizen 's Climate Program
David Arkush is the managing director of Public Citizen's Climate Program and a fellow at the Roosevelt Institute. He is an expert on the climate crisis, financial regulation, regulatory law and policy, and consumer and worker protection. He has broad experience building coalitions and advocating for the public interest, having lobbied extensively before Congress and regulatory agencies and litigated complex cases in the federal courts. He was recently instrumental in developing within the U.S. Climate Action Network a comprehensive, widely supported platform of strong, equitable climate policies, the Vision for Equitable Climate Action.
Before running the Climate Program, David spent five years directing Public Citizen's Congress Watch division, where he led strategic research and advocacy campaigns and played key roles in the passage of laws including the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act of 2010 and the Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act of 2008. A TIME magazine profile of David notes that he has "advocated for consumer protection, advised breaking up the largest, too-big-to-fail banks and addressed other industry-structure issues, while investigating the financial sector's myriad ties to the government."
David has also taught Administrative Law and Legislation at the University of Richmond School of Law. He graduated with honors from Harvard Law School, where he served as managing editor of the Harvard Civil Rights-Civil Liberties Law Review, and with honors from Washington University in St. Louis, where he was elected to Phi Beta Kappa.
Job Titles:
- Federal Consumer Program Senior Director, U.S. PIRG
Ed oversees U.S. PIRG's federal consumer program, helping to lead national efforts to improve consumer credit reporting laws, identity theft protections, product safety regulations and more. Ed is co-founder and continuing leader of the coalition, Americans For Financial Reform, which fought for the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act of 2010, including as its centerpiece the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. He was awarded the Consumer Federation of America's Esther Peterson Consumer Service Award in 2006, Privacy International's Brandeis Award in 2003, and numerous annual "Top Lobbyist" awards from The Hill and other outlets. Ed lives in Virginia, and on weekends he enjoys biking with friends on the many local bicycle trails.
Emily Peterson-Cassin is an attorney who has worked in ERISA litigation and in indigent representation.
Job Titles:
- Director of Consumer Protection for the Consumer Federation of America
- Director of Consumer Protection, Consumer Federation of America
Erin Witte is the Director of Consumer Protection for the Consumer Federation of America. Erin leads CFA's advocacy efforts in consumer protection, including advocating for consumer protections in Congress and at regulatory agencies, communicating policy positions to the press and the public, organizing meetings with stakeholders on consumer protection issues, and providing educational tools for consumers to help them navigate marketplace challenges.
Erin has over a decade of experience fighting for consumers as a consumer protection attorney. Prior to joining the CFA, Erin was an Assistant Attorney General for the Commonwealth of Virginia, where she litigated consumer protection cases in Virginia state and federal courts. Erin handled matters involving various abusive, predatory and fraudulent business practices, and was able to provide relief to tens of thousands of consumers. Erin also worked in private practice at Surovell Isaacs & Levy in Fairfax, VA (formerly Surovell Isaacs Petersen & Levy), where she represented individual consumer clients against used car dealers, abusive debt collectors, insurance companies, predatory lenders, subprime auto lenders, and medical providers.
Erin also has a public service history of volunteer work with various legal aid organizations, the Fairfax County Office of the Public Defender, and the Mid-Atlantic Innocence Project. She also has presented at various continuing legal education conferences, providing training and instruction to other attorneys about consumer protection laws.
Erin is a graduate of the George Mason University School of Law in Arlington, VA, and she received her B.A. from Rowan University in Glassboro, N.J. Erin and her family live in Northern Virginia.
Job Titles:
- Economist With the Economic Policy Institute 's Program
Kyle K. Moore is an economist with the Economic Policy Institute's Program on Race, Ethnicity, and the Economy. He studies economic inequality in the frameworks of stratification economics, political economy, and public health. Prior to joining EPI, Moore was a senior policy analyst with the Joint Economic Committee's Democratic Staff, where he authored reports on economic policy issues centered on race, class, age, and gender disparities for use by Members of Congress and the public.
Moore's research focuses on the intersection between racial economic disparities and health inequity across the life course, with particular focus on "upstream" structural causes of morbidity and mortality differences across race. In 2019 Moore was a Dissertation Scholar at the Washington Center for Equitable Growth. Prior to this he worked as a doctoral fellow and research associate with the Retirement Equity Lab at the Schwartz Center for Economic Policy Analysis. He is currently a PhD candidate at The New School for Social Research.
Job Titles:
- Staff Attorney
- Staff Attorney, National Consumer Law Center
Kyra Taylor is a staff attorney, focusing on student loans. Prior to joining NCLC, Kyra was a staff attorney at Harvard Law's Legal Services Center, where she worked in the Project on Predatory Student Lending. Kyra also litigated consumer class actions as a public interest fellow at the Washington DC plaintiffs' firm Tycko & Zavareei LLP and Public Justice. Prior to becoming a lawyer, Kyra was an elementary school teacher in Baton Rouge, Louisiana and East Harlem, New York. She is a graduate of University of California, Berkeley School of Law and Temple University.
Job Titles:
- Director of Public Citizen 's Global Trade Watch
- Global Trade Watch Director, Public Citizen
Melinda St. Louis is the director of Public Citizen's Global Trade Watch. Since working alongside labor unions and farmer organizations in Nicaragua fighting for fair trade policies more than two decades ago, St. Louis has developed deep expertise in trade and globalization issues and fought for progressive alternatives to corporate globalization that benefit people and the planet. She provides expert analysis of technical trade agreement provisions and implications for domestic policymaking to Congress and high-level government officials, the press, and civil society partners in the U.S. and around the globe and has helped lead successful campaigns to stop the corporate agenda of the Trans-Pacific Partnership, advance official discussions at the World Trade Organization about financial regulation, and support governments exiting from harmful investment treaties. She is a committed coalition builder, nurturing numerous global South-North coalitions, as well as broad and deep coalitions across the U.S., working cross-culturally to build trust, plan together, and implement coordinated strategic actions to challenge corporate power.
She is available to discuss the impact of trade and investment agreements on wide-ranging domestic issues, including medicine pricing, financial deregulation, human rights, workers' rights, environmental protection, and food safety. Prior to her current position at Public Citizen, she designed and led the organization's Medicare for All campaign and directed international campaigning at Global Trade Watch. Before joining Public Citizen, she was policy director at the Jubilee USA Network, leading faith-based efforts to cancel debt and reform international financial institutions, and executive director of Witness for Peace, where she led efforts to reform U.S. economic, military and immigration policy toward Latin America. She earned an M.P.P. in international policy and development from Georgetown University and a B.A. in international politics and Spanish at Penn State University, where she graduated at the top of her class.
She has appeared or been quoted in dozens of U.S. and international television, radio, and print media outlets.
Job Titles:
- Director of Investor Protection at the Consumer Federation of America
- Director of Investor Protection, Consumer Federation of America
Micah Hauptman is the director of investor protection at the Consumer Federation of America (CFA), a nonprofit association of nearly 300 national, state, and local pro-consumer organizations. Hauptman leads CFA's investor protection work through conducting research and engaging in advocacy on investor protection issues, focusing primarily on the regulation of investment advisers, investment companies, and broker-dealers, particularly as they relate to the provision of retail investment products and services. He is also focused on restoring an appropriate balance between public and private securities markets in order to promote investor protection, market integrity, and efficiency. Prior to re-joining CFA, Hauptman served as counsel to Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) Commissioner Caroline A. Crenshaw, where he focused on investment management issues, examinations of investment advisers, investment companies, broker-dealers, and regulatory implementation of Regulation Best Interest. Previously, Hauptman served as CFA's Financial Services Counsel for nearly seven years. Hauptman also worked at Public Citizen on a broad range of banking and tax issues and started his career as a prosecutor for the Los Angeles City Attorney's office.
Micah graduated from the University of California at Los Angeles in 2005, magna cum laude, and graduated from the University of the Pacific McGeorge School of Law in 2009, with distinction.
Job Titles:
- Policy Director and Deputy Program Director for the Center for Science
- Policy Director and Deputy Program Director for the Center for Science and Democracy, Union of Concerned Scientist
Michell McIntyre is the policy director and deputy program director for the Center for Science and Democracy at the Union of Concerned Scientists. In her role, she coordinates the Center's policy strategies, and helps align UCS research, supporter and member engagement, and government affairs for the greatest impact on advancing science-based policymaking.
Prior to joining UCS, Ms. McIntyre worked for Earthjustice, leading their campaign on equal access to justice and directing a team of lobbyists and litigators. Ms. McIntyre has also served as manager for the Coalition for Sensible Safeguards with Public Citizen, working to get quality science-based public protections passed and fighting off attacks on the US regulatory system, and as the Outreach Director for Labor and Workers Rights with the National Consumers League. Before entering the nonprofit sector, Michell was a political consultant for various progressive candidates and organizations including Sierra Club, Women's Voices Women Vote, American Federation of Teachers, and the AFL-CIO.
Job Titles:
- Consumer Campaign Director, U.S. PIRG
Mike directs U.S. PIRG's national campaign to protect consumers on Wall Street and in the financial marketplace by defending the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, and works for stronger privacy protections and corporate accountability in the wake of the Equifax data breach. Mike lives in Washington, D.C. and holds a B.A. from the University of Texas, Austin.
Rachel Curley is a democracy advocate for Public Citizen's Congress Watch division, where her main focus is to call for companies to disclose information about how much money they spend to influence our politics, as well as to support Public Citizen's democracy work with federal legislation. Prior to joining Public Citizen she was the program coordinator for Doctors for America (DFA). Rachel led the charge on several of DFA's major campaigns, including expanding Medicaid in the states, raising awareness for the impact of King v. Burwell, and advocating for lifting the N.R.A.-backed Congressional ban on CDC gun violence research. Rachel graduated from Indiana University Bloomington with a bachelor's degree in political science and philosophy.
Job Titles:
- Financial Services Outreach Manager
Rachel Gittleman is the Financial Services Outreach Manager for the Consumer Federation of America. In this role, Rachel leads CFA's advocacy and outreach on high-cost lending, payday loans, and other banking and credit issues. She has successfully led legislative and regulatory campaigns, as well as CFA's High Cost Lending Summit and Advocacy Weeks. Rachel represents CFA on behalf of consumers before the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, the Federal Reserve, as well as other federal and state financial regulators, Congress, and state legislatures.
Prior to joining CFA, she worked as the Political Outreach Manager for the American Association for Justice, where she engaged with their membership on a variety of access to justice and consumer protection legislative issues and oversaw the organization's voter protection efforts. Rachel brings her diverse policy and campaign experience to CFA, as she previously worked for campaigns for every level of government in New Jersey and Congresswoman Bonnie Watson Coleman's (NJ-12) office. She earned her B.A. in Religious Studies from the University of Chicago.
Job Titles:
- Public Citizen ( Co - Chair )
Expertise: regulatory process and legislation, financial safeguards, big tech, global trade
Job Titles:
- CEO of the Consumer Federation of America
- CEO, Consumer Federation of America
- Consumer Federation of America ( Co - Chair )
Susan Weinstock, is the CEO of the Consumer Federation of America. Previously, she was vice president of financial resilience programming at AARP, responsible for the overall strategic direction of AARP programs and education competencies to improve the financial security of persons age 50 and older.
Prior to AARP, Susan worked at the U.S. Department of the Treasury. As the director of the office of consumer policy, she focused on emerging trends and the growing use of technology and data in the provision of consumer financial products and services.
Previously, she directed The Pew Charitable Trusts' Consumer Banking Project, which advocates for policies that protect American consumers and their money. As the lead on Pew's efforts to improve the safety and transparency of consumer banking products, she directed a team of researchers who identified current practices and consumer needs to inform and promote policy solutions.
Prior to Pew, Susan was the financial reform campaign director at the Consumer Federation of America, leading media, coalition, public education, and grassroots efforts to promote consumer financial protection in the Dodd-Frank Act. She has more than 20 years of advocacy, communications, research, grassroots and legislative experience working to protect consumers.
Job Titles:
- Director of Food Policy at the Consumer Federation of America
- Director of Food Policy, Consumer Federation of America
- Member of the D.C
Thomas Gremillion is the Director of Food Policy at the Consumer Federation of America. He oversees the research, analysis, advocacy and media outreach for the group's food policy activities, and monitors food safety activities at USDA, FDA and in Congress, where he advocates for strong food safety protections for consumers. He also coordinates the Safe Food Coalition, a group of consumer, trade union, and foodborne illness victim organizations dedicated to reducing foodborne illness by improving government food inspection programs.
Prior to joining CFA in 2015, Gremillion practiced environmental law at Georgetown University Law Center's Institute for Public Representation, where he represented community groups and advocacy organizations in litigation against polluters and government regulators. He also served as an associate attorney at the Southern Environmental Law Center in Chapel Hill, NC, where he specialized in transportation and land use issues.
A graduate of Harvard Law School, Gremillion is a member of the D.C. and North Carolina bars. He graduated magna cum laude from the University of South Carolina with a B.S. in mathematics, and served as a Rotary Ambassadorial Scholar in Quito, Ecuador, where he received an M.A. in International Relations from La Universidad Andina Simón Bolívar.
Job Titles:
- Director of the Economic Policy Institute 's Program
Valerie Rawlston Wilson is director of the Economic Policy Institute's Program on Race, Ethnicity, and the Economy (PREE), a nationally recognized source for expert reports and policy analyses on the economic condition of America's people of color. Prior to joining EPI, Wilson was an economist and vice president of research at the National Urban League Washington Bureau, where she was responsible for planning and directing the bureau's research agenda. She has written extensively on various issues impacting economic inequality in the United States-including employment and training, income and wealth disparities, access to higher education, and social insurance-and has also appeared in print, television, and radio media. In 2010, through the State Department's Bureau of International Information Programs, she was selected to deliver the keynote address at an event on Minority Economic Empowerment at the Nobel Peace Center in Oslo, Norway. In 2011, Wilson served on a National Academies Panel on Measuring and Collecting Pay Information from U.S. Employers by Gender, Race, and National Origin.