GOULD - Key Persons
Job Titles:
- Director of Annual Giving and Parent Relations
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- Associate Director of Admissions
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- Assistant Director of Annual Giving
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- Associate Dean of Communications Strategy and Digital Media
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- Associate Director of Admissions
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- BK Capital ( Lifetime Member )
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- Chairman in Law at the University of Southern California Gould School of Law
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- Senior Director of Development
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- Adjunct Professor of Classics and Law
- Professor at USC
Claudia Moatti specializes in the study of Roman History, Roman Administration, and Human Mobility. She has a joint appointment as Adjunct Professor of Classics and Law at USC and Professor in the Department of History at the Université of Paris 8. In 2011, she received a courtesy appointment at USC Gould School of Law.
Moatti has been a full professor at USC since 2004. From 2007-2011, she worked as both a Professor of the Practice in the department of Classics at USC and as a history Professor in Paris. In Fall 2010, Moatti was a guest lecturer in LAW 599: Law and Slavery from Ancient to Modern Times and also worked with Prof. Ariela Gross to introduce a new course titled, "Slavery and Law in Ancient and Modern times." Previously, Moatti was an Assistant in Latin at the University of the Maine, a Lecturer at the Ecole Normale d'Instituteurs, of Auteuil, an Associate in Ancient History at the University of Paris 1, and a Professor in Roman History at the University of Paris 8.
Moatti is currently working on four books: Respublica Politique et cosmopolitique I, L'Empire romain en mouvement. Politique et cosmopolitique II, Libertas as a legal category in the Roman World, and an English translation of La Raison de Rome. She is a member of the Editorial Board of Social and Education History based in Barcelona, the Association Internationale d'Epigraphie Grecque et Latine, the British Epigraphy Society, and a member of the Sterring Committe of the Center of Law, History and Culture. Moatti also serves as the Director of the Mediterranean Center in the University of Paris 8. Moatti has traveled extensively and spoken at conferences in England, British Columbia, Portugal, France, and Italy. Moatti earned her PhD in History and her HDR in History at the University of Paris-Sorbonne.
Job Titles:
- Associate Dean
- Associate Dean and Dean of Admissions
- Associate Dean of Admissions and Financial Aid
David Kirschner is the associate dean for admissions and financial aid at the USC Gould School of Law. As dean of admissions, Kirschner is responsible for setting and implementing strategic goals and targets for each admissions cycle along with the day-to-day operations to ensure that the goals are met. Kirschner is a leader in the law school admissions community and frequent presenter at both regional and national meetings and conferences. He currently serves on the Board of Trustees of the Law School Admission Council (LSAC) and as Chair of LSAC's Emerging Markets & Innovation Committee. Kirschner recently completed a term as Chair of the Association of America Law Schools (AALS) Section on PreLegal Education and Admission to Law School.
Kirschner earned his BA in film production, cum laude, from the USC and his JD, cum laude, from California Western School of Law.
While in law school, Kirschner served as a leader in a number of student organizations as well as a judicial extern to the Honorable Barbara L. Major, Magistrate Judge, in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of California. Kirschner began his career in law school admissions as an alumni recruiter at California Western School of Law before becoming assistant and then associate director of admissions at Loyola Law School, Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles.
Job Titles:
- Associate Dean and Chief Programs Officer
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- Associate
- Director
- Associate Dean, Director of the Law Library, and Adjunct Professor of Law
- Associate Dean, John Stauffer Law Library Director and Adjunct Professor of Law
Diana Jaque is an associate dean and director of the law library. Her expertise spans the areas of collection development and acquisitions, with a strong focus in legal information pricing and vendor relations. At USC, Jaque became the law library's collection development/acquisitions librarian in July 1999, the head of collection development and acquisitions in 2002, adjunct assistant professor of law in 2013, and the associate dean and director of the law library in 2020. She served as the president of the Southern California Association of Law Libraries in 2003-04, and was later elected to chair the Council of Chapter Presidents for the American Association of Law Libraries. In addition, she has chaired the AALL Annual Meeting program committee, the AALL price index committee, and the AALL committee on relations with information vendors. In the latter capacity, she met regularly with legal publishers and resolved member complaints regarding price structuring and illegal bundling.
Jaque earned a BA in music and her MA in music history and literature from USC. She then completed her master of library and information science at San Jose State University in 1999, and her JD at Loyola Law School in 2009. Since completing law school, Jaque has chaired the local law library association's internship program and introduced numerous high school students to law librarianship as a career. Jaque co-authored Gerontology and the Law: A Selected Annotated Bibliography: 1999-2001 Update in the Southern California Law Review as well as publications in Law Library Journal and AALL Spectrum. She serves on the resource council for the Los Angeles Education Partnership and is a board member of the George A.V. Dunning Foundation. Jaque currently serves as president of USC's Women in Management organization. She teaches LLM Legal Research and First Year Legal Research, and looks forward to building on the law library's strong tradition of excellent service to the law school community.
Job Titles:
- Counsel for Akerman LLP
- Vice Dean for Administration and Professor
- Vice Dean for Administration, and Professor of the Practice of Law
Donald Scotten is vice dean for administration and professor of the practice of law. Scotten specializes in business organizational law and business entity governance, and teaches Business Organizations, Mergers & Acquisitions, and Introduction to the U.S. Legal System.
Scotten currently serves as of counsel for Akerman LLP. Previously, Scotten was first vice president and senior counsel for Countrywide Home Loans, Inc., and was a senior associate at Howrey LLP.
Scotten received a BA, cum laude, in Economics and Communications from the University of Pennsylvania; a JD, Order of the Coif, from the College of William & Mary Law School; and an Executive LLM in Taxation from New York University.
Job Titles:
- Associate
- Associate Dean
- Associate Dean for Student Affairs, Diversity, Equity and Inclusion, and Dean of Students for the JD Program
- Dean of Students
Dr. Nickey Woods is the associate dean for student affairs, diversity, inclusion and belonging, and dean of students for the JD program. She joined USC Gould School of Law in 2021 as the inaugural assistant dean of diversity, equity and inclusion.
Her professional expertise includes diversity, equity and inclusion; universal design for learning (UDL), student resilience and retention; learning and motivation; and disability advocacy. Woods previously served as a director in student affairs at UCLA and as an assistant dean in UCLA's Graduate Division.
A first-generation college student, she earned a bachelor's degree in psychology at UCLA, where she was an honor roll, all-conference member of the women's basketball team. She earned a master's degree in education with an emphasis in cross-cultural teaching at National University and a doctorate in educational leadership, with a concentration in educational psychology, at the USC Rossier School of Education.
Job Titles:
- Senior Director of Development
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- Director of Legal Writing and Advocacy at USC Gould School of Law
- Vice Dean for Curriculum, Professor of Lawyering Skills, and Director of Legal Writing and Advocacy Program
Elizabeth Ann Carroll is the director of Legal Writing and Advocacy at USC Gould School of Law. Prior to being named director of the program, Carroll taught Legal Writing and Advocacy at USC as an adjunct professor from 2009-2012. She was appointed associate vice dean for curriculum in 2016 and then vice dean for curriculum in 2018.
While teaching at USC, she also served as a staff attorney assigned to United States Magistrate Judge Jay Gandhi. Before that, she was a law clerk for United States Magistrate Judge Carolyn Turchin from 2005-2008. During her time at the U.S. District Court, she developed an expertise in federal habeas corpus, civil rights, and Social Security appeals.
Carroll's experience also includes a decade of practice as a civil litigator in Los Angeles in the areas of business, insurance coverage litigation, and the defense of mass tort actions. From 1996-2001, she was an associate at Howrey LLP and was promoted to partner in 2002. She was named "Pro Bono Partner of the Year" for the Los Angeles office in 2003. Before joining Howrey, she was an associate at Brobeck, Phleger & Harrison.
She received her BS in Psychology with highest honors from the UC Davis. She received her JD from Boalt Hall School of Law at UC Berkeley.
Job Titles:
- Dean
- Dean and Carl Mason Franklin Chair in Law
- Dean and Carl Mason Franklin Chair in Law, USC Gould School of Law
Franita Tolson is Dean and Carl Mason Franklin Chair in Law at the University of Southern California Gould School of Law. She also holds a courtesy faculty appointment in the Political Science and International Relations Department at the USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences.
Her scholarship and teaching focus on the areas of election law, constitutional law, legal history, and employment discrimination. She has written on a wide range of topics including partisan gerrymandering, political parties, the Elections Clause, the Voting Rights Act of 1965, and the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments.
Her research has appeared or will appear in leading law reviews including the Yale Law Journal, Harvard Law Review, Stanford Law Review, California Law Review, University of Pennsylvania Law Review, and Vanderbilt Law Review. Tolson is one of the coauthors of the leading election law casebook, The Law of Democracy (Foundation Press, 6th ed., 2022). Her forthcoming book, In Congress We Trust?: Enforcing Voting Rights from the Founding to the Jim Crow Era, will be published by Cambridge University Press.
As a nationally recognized expert in election law, Tolson has written for or appeared as a commentator for various mass media outlets including The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, the Wall Street Journal, Reuters and Bloomberg Law. She has testified before Congress numerous times on voting rights issues. She has also authored a legal analysis for an amendment to the U.S. Constitution, introduced by Senator Elizabeth Warren and Senator Richard Durbin, that would explicitly protect the right to vote. During the fall of 2020, Tolson worked as an election law analyst for CNN. She currently co-hosts an election themed podcast, Free and Fair with Franita and Foley, with Ned Foley of The Ohio State University Moritz College of Law.
At USC Gould, Tolson had previously served as the interim dean (since 2023) and held the George T. and Harriet E. Pfleger Chair in Law. Before that, she was the law school's vice dean for faculty and academic affairs from 2019 to 2022.
Prior to joining USC, Tolson was the Betty T. Ferguson Professor of Voting Rights at Florida State University College of Law and a visiting assistant professor at Northwestern University School of Law. Before entering academia, she clerked for the Honorable Ann Claire Williams of the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit and the Honorable Ruben Castillo of the Northern District of Illinois.
Tolson is a graduate of the University of Chicago Law School, where she was the Walter V. Schaefer Visiting Professor of Law during the Spring 2021 academic quarter.
Job Titles:
- Professor of English and Gender Studies at USC 's College of Letters
- Professor of English, Comparative Literature, Gender Studies and Law
Hilary Schor is a professor of English and gender studies at USC's College of Letters, Arts and Sciences, with joint appointments in the department of comparative literature and the law school. She also is a member and past director of the USC Center for Law, History and Culture. Her scholarship focuses on narrative theory; law, property and the nature of subjectivity in literature; and popular culture and film.
Schor has taught at USC since 1986. She is an active faculty participant in the UC Dickens Project, where she regularly leads graduate seminars and organizes conferences on such topics as "Victorian Soundings," "Victoria Redressed: Feminism and Nineteenth-Century Studies," and "Victorian Terror." Her books include Scheherezade in the Marketplace: Elizabeth Gaskell and the Victorian No vel (Oxford, 1992) and Dickens and the Daughter of the Hou se (Cambridge, 1999). She also has written essays in companions to numerous books on Dickens, Jane Austen, Victorian novels and Victorian literature and culture. Her current research centers on women and realism.
She received her BA in British and American literature from Scripps College and her MA and PhD from Stanford University, where she specialized in Victorian literature and culture, drawing on work in intellectual history, feminist studies and the history of the novel. She has received numerous fellowships and awards, including a 2002 Zumberge Faculty Research Fellowship from USC; a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship; a Stanford Humanities Center Fellowship; and a Graves Foundation Fellowship.
Job Titles:
- Associate Dean of Finance and Strategic Planning
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- Emmis Communications ( Lifetime Member )
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- Reed Smith ( Lifetime Member )
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- Assistant Director of Admissions
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- Director of Strategic Communications
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- Co - Founder of California Pizza Kitchen
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- Director of Communications & Media Relations
- for Journalist and Media Inquiries Please Contact
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- Director of Undergraduate Programs
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- Director, DEI and the C. David Molina First Generation Professionals Program
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- Assistant Dean of Development
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- Director of Human Resources and Personnel Management
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- Director of Financial Aid
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- Senior Associate Director of Stewardship & Development Operations
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- Allied Professionals Insurance Company
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- Director of Academic Operations
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- Assistant Dean of Graduate and International Programs
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- Associate Director of Financial Aid
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- Director of Alumni Relations
- Executive Director of Alumni Relations
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- Nathan and Lilly Shapell Chair in Law
Nomi M. Stolzenberg joined the USC Gould School of Law faculty in 1988. Her research spans a range of interdisciplinary interests, including law and religion, law and liberalism, law and psychoanalysis, and law and literature. A strong proponent of multidisciplinary research and teaching, she helped establish and co-directs the USC Center for Law, History and Culture, which involves scholars and students from throughout USC's campus.
Stolzenberg's scholarly publications include the frequently cited "He Drew a Circle that Shut Me Out': Assimilation, Indoctrination, and the Paradox of a Liberal Education" (Harvard Law Review), "The Profanity of Law" (in Law and the Sacred, Stanford University Press) and "Righting the Relationship Between Race and Religion in Law" (Oxford Journal of Legal Studies). With David N. Myers, she has just published AMERICAN SHTETL: THE MAKING OF KIRYAS JOEL, A HASIDIC VILLAGE IN UPSTATE NEW YORK (Princeton University Press, 2022), a book-length exploration of the Satmar community which established its own municipality and school district, the constitutionality of which were challenged in multiple lawsuits. Her most recent works focus on issues of religious accommodation and political theology and she is currently at work on developing a theory of "faith-based discrimination."
A summa cum laude graduate of Yale University and a magna cum laude graduate of Harvard Law School, Stolzenberg was an editor on the Harvard Law Review and clerked for Judge John J. Gibbons of the U.S. Court of Appeals, Third Circuit, prior to joining USC Gould. She is a member of the Casden Center's Advisory Board, the Radcliffe Accelerator Group on Religion and Racism, the Progressive Property Roundtable, and the editorial board of the Journal of Law, Culture, and the Humanities. She teaches First Amendment Law and the Religion Clauses of the First Amendment, and in the past has taught courses on Property Law, Family Law, Feminist Legal Theory, and Law and Literature. She also teaches a course to undergraduates on "Concepts of Law."
Job Titles:
- Director of Career Services
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- Associate Dean
- Chief Information Officer
- Associate Dean of Information Technology
- Member of the USC Council
Raymond Flores oversees information technology and computing services for USC Gould School of Law. He specializes in technology strategy with a focus on integrating technology into the educational environment to transform teaching and learning.
Flores holds a BS in Computer Information Systems from California State Polytechnic University Pomona, an MBA in Technology Strategy from the USC Marshall School of Business, and a Doctor of Education in Educational Leadership from the USC Rossier School of Education. He is also a Microsoft Certified Systems Engineer (MCSE) and an Apple Certified Support Professional (ACSP). Prior to joining USC Gould in 2004, Flores served as a computer specialist with DRT Inc.; senior distributed systems engineer for Northrop Grumman Corp.; network manager for Children's Hospital Los Angeles; and director of technology infrastructure at USC Marshall.
Flores is a member of the USC Council on Technology and Security Strategy; the Law School Information Technology Advisory Committee; the USC Blackboard Steering Committee; the USC Network Users Group; the USC Distance Learning Network; the Mobile Media Institute; and the National Society of Hispanic MBAs.
Job Titles:
- the Rader Family Trustee Chair in Law
Rebecca Latham Brown is a nationally recognized constitutional law theorist who joined USC Gould School of Law in August 2008. Brown's scholarship focuses on judicial review and its relationship to individual liberty under the U.S. Constitution. She was named The Rader Family Trustee Chair in Law in 2015.
Brown received her BA from St. John's College (Annapolis, MD) and her JD, magna cum laude, from Georgetown University Law Center, where she was an editor of the Georgetown Law Journal. She clerked for U.S. Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall and U.S. Court of Appeals Chief Judge Spottswood W. Robinson III. Brown also worked in the Office of Legal Counsel in the U.S. Department of Justice and practiced with Onek, Klein & Farr in Washington, D.C. From 1988 to 2008, she was a professor at Vanderbilt University Law School, where she held the Allen Chair in Law from 2003 until her departure.
Brown recently published "How Constitutional Theory Found Its Soul: The Contributions of Ronald Dworkin," in Exploring Law's Empire (Hershovitz ed., Oxford University Press 2006), "The Logic of Majority Rule" (Pennsylvania Journal of Constitutional Law 2006) and "Confessions of a Flawed Liberal" (The Good Society 2005). She serves as co-chair of the American Constitution Society's Constitution in the 21st Century Project.
Job Titles:
- Associate Dean
- Associate Dean of Career Services
Robin Apodaca is the associate dean of career services. With more than 18 years of industry experience, Apodaca has extensive knowledge of law school career and professional development. Prior to joining the USC Gould School of Law, she provided career planning assistance to law students at Southwestern Law School, the University of La Verne College of Law and the Chapman University Fowler School of Law. In addition to her leadership positions at several law school career services offices, she is also an active member of the National Association of Law Placement where she is an elected member of the Regional Leadership Council. Though born in Germany, Apodaca has spent the majority of her life in sunny Southern California and holds a BA from California State University, Fullerton.
Job Titles:
- Associate Dean of Development, Alumni / Relations and Continuing Legal Education
- Associate Dean of Development, Alumni Relations and Continuing Legal Education and Chief Development Officer
Robin Maness oversees the development and alumni relations team for the USC Gould School of Law. She leads all fundraising and alumni engagement efforts and is responsible for the school's strategic goals and priorities through individual, corporate and foundation giving. Maness also oversees the continuing legal education programs at Gould.
Prior to joining USC Gould, Maness served over 10 years at Southern Methodist University in a variety of roles most recently as the Executive Director of Principal Gifts overseeing all fundraising efforts of the schools and units. In addition, she held key positions planning and producing events for the Disneyland Resort and Walt Disney Studios as well as lead development roles for Anaheim Memorial Hospital, Opera Pacific, and Chapman University.
Maness holds a BA in Communications with a minor in Music and an MS in Human Resources Management from Chapman University.
Job Titles:
- Clarity Partners ( Lifetime Member )
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- Administrative Judge of New York County, Criminal Term
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- Vice Dean for Faculty and Academic Affairs, and Judge Edward J. and Ruey L. Guirado Chair in Law and Psychology
Thomas D. Lyon's goal is to identify the most productive means of questioning children about abuse and violence. He is the Judge Edward J. and Ruey L. Guirado Chair in Law and Psychology at the University of Southern California Gould School of Law. He teaches Evidence and the Child Interviewing Practicum. Lyon directs the USC Child Interviewing Lab, which conducts research and forensic interviews with children who have been victims of maltreatment or who have witnessed violence.
Lyon is past-president of the American Psychological Association's Section on Child Maltreatment (Division 37) and a former member of the Board of Directors of the American Professional Society on the Abuse of Children. He has published more than 100 papers in law reviews, psychology journals and books; has authored or co-authored more than 150 research presentations at psychology and law conferences; and has conducted more than 280 trainings with judges, attorneys, law professors, social workers, psychologists and reporters. His work has been supported by the National Institutes of Health, the National Science Foundation, the United States Department of Justice, the National Center on Child Abuse and Neglect, the California Endowment, and the Haynes Foundation.
A magna cum laude graduate of Dartmouth College and Harvard Law School, Lyon received his PhD. in developmental psychology from Stanford University. He was an attorney for the Children's Services Division of the Los Angeles County Counsel and a research associate at Harbor-UCLA Medical Center prior to joining USC Law in 1995.
Job Titles:
- Senior Director of Development and Continuing Legal Education