GOULD - Key Persons
Job Titles:
- Member of the Graduate & International Programs Staff
- Senior Student Services Advisor
- Student Services Advisor
Job Titles:
- Law Librarian, Research Services, Outreach, and Engagement
Job Titles:
- Associate Dean
- Associate Dean for Academic Services
Akita Mungaray is the associate dean of academic services at the USC Gould School of Law. She previously served as Gould's assistant dean for student affairs, diversity, inclusion, and belonging, and assistant dean of students for the JD program.
Mungaray is an advocate for holistic student support, diversity and inclusion initiatives, and student wellness and success. She previously served as the director of student affairs at the University of La Verne College of Law. Her professional background encompasses more than 15 years of experience overseeing law school student affairs, career development and externships units, as well as hospitality management.
In her prior law school leadership roles, Mungaray implemented and supported both academic and personal support initiatives - from orientation to commencement. She also developed co-curricular events, advised student organizations, in addition to creating diversity and wellness pathways and programming.
Mungaray earned her JD from the University of La Verne College of Law, and her bachelor's degree in mass communications from Jackson State University, where she was a member of their NCAA Division 1 women's golf team.
Job Titles:
- University Professor Emeritus
Alexander Capron, a globally recognized expert in health policy and medical ethics, taught Public Health Law, Torts, and Law and Bioethics at the Law School from 1985 to 2023. He also taught at the Keck School of Medicine of USC and co-founded the Pacific Center for Health Policy and Ethics, a campus-wide interdisciplinary research and education center. From 2002 to 2006 he served as Director of Ethics, Trade, Human Rights, and Health Law at the World Health Organization in Geneva.
Capron's publications include Ethical Issues in Governing Biobanks: Global Perspectives (with others, Ashgate, 2008), Law, Science and Medicine 2nd ed. (with others, Foundation Press, 1996), Treatise on Health Care Law (with others, Matthew Bender, 1991), and Genetics, Ethics and Human Values (edited with Z. Bankowski, Geneva: CIOMS, 1991).
Capron received a BA from Swarthmore College and an LLB from Yale University, where he was an officer of the Yale Law Journal. He was appointed by President Bill Clinton to the National Bioethics Advisory Commission, and served as President of the International Association of Bioethics. Capron is a trustee of The Century Foundation, an officer of Public Responsibility in Medicine and Research, and an elected member of the Institute of Medicine (National Academy of Sciences) and of the American Law Institute.
Job Titles:
- Member of the Graduate & International Programs Staff
- Student Services Advisor
- Student Services Advisor I
Job Titles:
- Director of Annual Giving and Parent Relations
Job Titles:
- Member of the Graduate & International Programs Staff
- Assistant Director of Career Services
- Career and Academic Student Advisor
Job Titles:
- Law Librarian, Research Services, Indigenous Law and Policy, and Adjunct Assistant Professor of Law
Amber Kennedy Madole is the Law Librarian for Research Services and Indigenous Law and Policy and an Adjunct Assistant Professor of Law at the USC Gould School of Law. In these roles, she teaches legal research courses and assists faculty and students with their research endeavors.
At USC Law, Madole serves as the Faculty Advisor to the Native American Law Students Association (NALLSA), studies tribal law issues, and coordinates lectures on Indigenous Law and Policy with the Center for Law, History, and Culture (CHLC).
Madole earned both her J.D. and MLIS degrees from UCLA and her undergraduate degree from Georgetown University. While at UCLA School of Law, she served as an editor of the Indigenous Peoples' Journal of Law, Culture & Resistance.
She is active in several national organizations, including AALL's Native Peoples Law Caucus (NPLC), where she currently serves as chair, and AALL's Spectrum Article of the Year Jury. She is also a member of the Southern California Association of Law Libraries (SCALL), where she has served on the executive board, chaired the Speakers Committee for the annual SCALL Institute, and currently chairs the Grants Committee.
Dedicated to the study of Indigenous law and policy issues, Madole is the author of California Tribal Law in Henke's California Law Guide. Her joint proposal advocating for the inclusion of tribal codes in the Bluebook was adopted as Bluebook Rule 22, "The Law of Tribal Nations," in the 22 nd edition. This rule provides long-overdue guidance on citing tribal constitutions, cases, and codes, and U.S. treaties with Tribal Nations.
Madole's article "Law Librarians for Indigenous-Inclusive Citation" received the 2024 AALL Spectrum Article of the Year Award.
In 2024, she co-authored "Integrating Tribal Law into the Legal Research and Writing Curriculum: Benefits, Challenges, and Strategies," published in Perspectives. The piece received both the 2025 ALL-SIS Outstanding Article Award and the 2025 Paul Gatz RIPS-SIS Publication Award from AALL.
In 2025, Madole received the Early Career Teaching and Public Service Award from the AALS Indian Nations and Indigenous Peoples Section.
She is a citizen of the Fort Sill Chiricahua Warm Springs Apache Tribe and a member of the State Bar of California.
Job Titles:
- Associate Director of Admissions
Job Titles:
- Member of the Graduate & International Programs Staff
- Senior Associate Director and Adjunct Assistant Professor of Law
Job Titles:
- Member of the Graduate & International Programs Staff
- Senior Instructional Designer
Job Titles:
- Member of the Graduate & International Programs Staff
- Director of Special Projects and Adjunct Assistant Professor of Law
Job Titles:
- Director of Admissions
- Member of the Graduate & International Programs Staff
Job Titles:
- Expert
- Harold Medill Heimbaugh Professor of Law
Aya Gruber is an expert on criminal law and procedure, violence against women and critical theory. Before joining the USC Gould School of Law faculty, Gruber taught at the University of Colorado Law School, where she was the Ira C. Rothgerber Professor of Constitutional Law and Criminal Justice.
Prior to joining Colorado Law in 2010, Gruber was a professor at the University of Iowa School of Law and a founding faculty member at Florida International University Law School. In 2012, the Colorado Law students honored her with the Outstanding New Faculty Member Award. She also delivered the annual Austin W. Scott, Jr. Lecture in 2013 and was awarded the Gilbert Goldstein Fellowship for scholarship in 2015 at Colorado Law. Gruber received the Jules Milstein Award, given to the best Colorado Law faculty work of scholarship in 2017 and 2020. In 2017, Gruber was a visiting professor at Harvard Law School, where she taught first-year criminal law and a seminar on feminism and crime control.
Gruber received her BA in philosophy from University of California, Berkeley, summa cum laude and her law degree magna cum laude from Harvard Law School, where she was an editor on the Harvard Women's Law Journal and Harvard International Law Journal and the founder of the Interracial Law Students' Association. After law school, Gruber clerked for U.S. District Court judge James L. King in Miami, Fla., and then served as a felony trial attorney with the Public Defender Service in Washington, D.C., and the Federal Public Defender in Miami.
Gruber teaches and writes in the areas of criminal law and procedure, critical theory, feminism and comparative/international law. Much of her scholarship focuses on feminist efforts to strengthen carceral responses to crimes against women. Her widely taught and cited articles combine insights from practicing as a public defender with extensive research to articulate a feminist critique of authoritarian laws on violence against women. They appear in leading journals including Stanford Law Review, California Law Review and Northwestern Law Review. Her latest article, "Sex Exceptionalism in Criminal Law" (Stanford, 2023) explores why the law treats sex crimes as categorically different from other crimes.
In 2020, Gruber released her debut monograph The Feminist War On Crime: The Unexpected Role of Women's Liberation in Mass Incarceration (UC Press), which PEN America called "an exciting and brave book that tackles the cause and effect between gender-based violence, mass incarceration, and a broken legal system." The book details how feminists, in their quest to secure women's protection from domestic violence and rape, became soldiers in the war on crime and sketches a path to opposing gender violence without exacerbating American mass incarceration. She is writing a new book tentatively titled The Crime of Sex (Basic Books, forthcoming) that explores the American fascination with criminalizing sexual behavior. In addition to her writing on gender and crime, Gruber has written a book on comparative criminal procedure, articles on treaty law and human rights, and articles on criminal procedure and privacy. Her scholarship has been covered in diverse publications, including the New York Times, Slate, The Guardian, Reason Magazine, the Harvard Law Review and the Michigan Law Review.
Gruber was elected to membership in the American Law Institute in 2016 and has been an adviser to the ALI Model Penal Code sexual assault project since 2012. A frequent public speaker on criminal justice, Gruber has appeared on PBS, Fox News, ABC, CBS' 48 hours, and is quoted in various news outlets, including the New Yorker, Slate and the New York Times. In 2023, she was featured in the MSNBC film The Recall: Reframed, which critically examines the recall of Judge Aaron Persky who presided over the infamous Brock Turner case.
Job Titles:
- Member of the Graduate & International Programs Staff
- Senior Student Services Advisor
- Student Services Advisor
Job Titles:
- Assistant Director of Annual Giving
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- Associate Dean of Communications Strategy and Digital Media
Job Titles:
- Senior Associate Director of Admissions and Pipeline Programs
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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
Job Titles:
- Senior Director of Development
Job Titles:
- Member of the Graduate & International Programs Staff
- Admissions and Academic Advisor
- Senior Admissions and Academic Advisor
Job Titles:
- 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 Director of Alumni Relations and Communications
Job Titles:
- Associate Dean
- Associate Dean of Admissions and Financial Aid
- Associate Dean of Admissions, Financial Aid, and Innovation
David Kirschner is the associate dean of admissions, financial aid, and innovation at the University of Southern California, Gould School of Law. Kirschner earned his BA in film production cum laude from the University of Southern California and his JD cum laude from California Western School of Law. 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 his current position at USC, Kirschner is responsible for the setting and implementation of strategic goals and targets for each admission cycle. Throughout his career, Kirschner has been at the forefront of using technology and data to refine enrollment management practices and craft more effective recruitment and outreach strategies. Kirschner has extensive experience with the Law School Admission Council (LSAC) and other professional organizations related to legal education. Currently, Kirschner chairs LSAC's New Admissions Professionals Workshop and led a re-imagining of the program (2023-2025). Kirschner previously served consecutive terms on the LSAC Board of Trustees as the inaugural Chair of LSAC's Emerging Markets & Innovation Committee (2019-2023). He has also served on LSAC's Services and Programs Committee, Test Development & Research, and Finance & Legal Affairs Committee. Kirschner has also served on the Information Support Division Advisory Group and assisting in planning the first ever UNITE preconference in 2022.
Outside of LSAC, Kirschner currently serves on the AI Advisory Council for Ruffalo Noel Levitz (RNL); the Advisory Board for the J. Serra High School Law Magnet; and the Alumni Association Board of Directors for California Western School of Law. Previously, Kirschner served as chair of the American Association of Law Schools (AALS) Section on PreLegal Education and Admission to Law School and has been a member of American Bar Association (ABA) accreditation site visit teams. He also co-teaches a summer seminar to incoming law students entitled "Lawyers and Leadership" with Professor Robert Rasmussen.
Job Titles:
- Member of the Graduate & International Programs Staff
- Associate Dean and Chief Programs Officer
Job Titles:
- Law Librarian, Research Services, Litigation and the Practice of Law and Adjunct Assistant Professor of Law
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
- Dean of Students
Dr. Nickey Woods is the associate dean for student life and community engagement, and dean of students for the JD Program at the USC Gould School of Law.
Her professional expertise encompasses building community and belonging in organizations of higher education, initiatives to promote student well-being, and learning and motivation. Dr. Woods previously served as a director in student affairs at UCLA and as an assistant dean in UCLA's Graduate Division.
She is also the faculty advisor for Gould's Sports Law Society and has developed professional development initiatives for student-athletes and moderated high-profile panels featuring sports executives and professional athletes. She has a growing presence in sports media and event hosting, leveraging her background as a former athlete to advocate for the advancement of women's sports.
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.
Nickey Woods: Associate Dean for Student Life and Community Engagement, and Dean of Students for the JD Program
Job Titles:
- Senior Director of Development
Job Titles:
- Chairman in Law and History, and Director, Center of Law & Social Science ( CLASS )
Job Titles:
- 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 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. In addition, Tolson worked as an election law analyst for CNN in 2020 and NBC in 2024. 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:
- Member of the Graduate & International Programs Staff
- Instructional Designer
- Learning Systems Specialist
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- Member of the Graduate & International Programs Staff
- Student Services Advisor
- Student Services Assistant
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- Harold Medill Heimbaugh Professor of Law
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- 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:
- Member of the Graduate & International Programs Staff
- Student Services Assistant
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- Emmis Communications ( Lifetime Member )
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- Vice Dean for Faculty and Academic Affairs, and John B. Milliken Professor of Law and Taxation
Jordan Barry's research spans a variety of topics pertaining to business law, tax law, and law and economics. His work has been published in a range of academic publications, including the Stanford Law Review, Virginia Law Review, Journal of Political Economy, Southern California Law Review, and University of Pennsylvania Law Review. In addition, his research has been discussed in local, national and international media outlets, including The New Yorker, Bloomberg, NPR Marketplace, the Los Angeles Times, and the Times of India.
Barry's teaching covers a similar range of business, finance, and tax topics. His courses have included corporate finance, contracts, tax, tax policy, and law and economics, among other subjects. Prior to joining USC, Barry was a professor of law at the University of San Diego School of Law, where he also directed the Center for Corporate and Securities Law and co-directed the graduate tax program. In addition, Barry has taught courses at the University of Michigan Law School and the UC Berkeley School of Law.
In his time at the University of San Diego, Barry was awarded the Thorsnes Prize for Excellence in Teaching in both 2011-12 and 2018-19. He was named the Herzog Endowed Scholar for meritorious teaching and scholarship in both 2014-15 and 2015-16, University Professor in 2019, and the Kaye and Richard Woltman Professor in Finance in 2020. His article Regulatory Entrepreneurship (with Elizabeth Pollman) was named among the Top 10 Corporate and Securities Law Articles of 2017 by Corporate Practice Commentator. He was also named a "Favorite Faculty Member" by the USD School of Law's Public Interest Law Foundation from 2011-12.
Before he became a professor, Barry practiced law in the New York office of Fried, Frank, Harris, Shriver & Jacobson and clerked for the Honorable Jay Bybee of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. He is a graduate of Cornell University and Stanford Law School, where he served as Managing Editor of the Stanford Law Review.
Job Titles:
- Senior Law Librarian, Head of Access Services and Law Library Administrator, Adjunct Assistant Professor of Law
- Senior Law Librarian, Interim Co - Director of the Law Library, Law Library Administrative Head of Access Services and Adjunct Professor of Law
Job Titles:
- Member of the Graduate & International Programs Staff
- Associate Director of Registration
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- Member of the Graduate & International Programs Staff
- Marketing Administrator
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- Assistant Director of Admissions
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- Senior Director of Strategic Communications and Marketing
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- Co - Founder of California Pizza Kitchen
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- Director of Undergraduate Programs
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- Member of the Graduate & International Programs Staff
- Marketing Projects Manager
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- Director of Student Life and C. David Molina First Generation Professionals Program
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- Associate Dean
- Associate Dean of Human Resources and Administration
Maria De La Garza is the associate dean of human resources and administration at the USC Gould School of Law. In this role, De La Garza oversees personnel and benefits functions for Gould's 400-plus employees, guides the Gould HR and payroll teams, and manages executive recruitment strategies, among numerous duties. In addition, De La Garza directs three of the law school's operational offices: Events, Academic Operations and Faculty Support.
De La Garza earned her master's degree in alternative dispute resolution and bachelor's degree in communication from the University of Southern California.
Job Titles:
- Member of the Graduate & International Programs Staff
- Instructional Designer
Job Titles:
- Member of the Graduate & International Programs Staff
- Student Services Advisor
Job Titles:
- Director of Stewardship and Development Operations
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- Assistant Director of Communications and Media Relations
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- Member of the Graduate & International Programs Staff
- Director of Strategic Partnerships
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- Allied Professionals Insurance Company
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- Director of Academic Operations
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- Member of the Graduate & International Programs Staff
- Assistant Dean of Graduate and International Programs
- Associate Dean and Dean of Students for Graduate and International Programs
Job Titles:
- Admissions Advisor
- Member of the Graduate & International Programs Staff
- Senior Admissions Advisor
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- Law Library Business Coordinator
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- Member of the Graduate & International Programs Staff
- Director of Online & Graduate Programs
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- Director of Alumni Relations
- Executive Director of Alumni Relations
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- Member of the Graduate & International Programs Staff
- Instructional Designer
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- Senior Law Librarian, Research Services / Foreign and International Law and Adjunct Assistant Professor of Law
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- Director of Career Services
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- Associate Dean of Finance and Strategic Planning
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- 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 Chief Development Officer
- Associate Dean of Development, Alumni Relations and Continuing Legal Education
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.
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:
- Supervising Library Assistant
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- Member of the Graduate & International Programs Staff
- Director of Special Projects and Adjunct Assistant Professor of Law
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- Member of the Graduate & International Programs Staff
- Digital Marketing Specialist
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- University Professor Emeritus
Job Titles:
- Associate Director of Admissions
- Member of the Graduate & International Programs Staff
- Assistant Director of Admissions
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- Member of the Graduate & International Programs Staff
- Senior Student Services Advisor
- Student Services Advisor
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- Vice Dean for Academic Research and Intellectual Life, and Maurice Jones, Jr. - Class of 1925 Professor of Law
Stephen Rich is the Maurice Jones, Jr. - Class of 1925 Professor of Law at the USC's Gould School of Law ("USC Gould"), where he teaches courses in employment discrimination law, constitutional equality law, and civil procedure. He also serves as the Vice Dean for Academic Research and Intellectual Life.
Rich is an expert in the field of antidiscrimination law. His work blends statutory and constitutional analysis with contemporary research in sociology and social psychology in order to analyze familiar problems concerning social injustice, affirmative action, and the practical limitations of antidiscrimination law's enforcement from new perspectives. His representative articles in this field include Inferred Classifications, 99 Virginia Law Review 1525 (2013), in which he warns that the Supreme Court's practice of inferring racial classifications from the form and practical effect of governmental action threatens race neutral affirmative action programs designed to promote racial equality regardless whether the government acted with a discriminatory purpose, and Against Prejudice, 80 George Washington Law Review 1 (2011), in which he argues that social psychology's concept of a "new" prejudice, which rejects the simple equation of prejudice with malice, offers insufficient guidance when antidiscrimination law confronts forms of discrimination that masquerade as legal compliance and cannot be attributed to prejudicial motivations. In more recent publications, Rich has addressed fundamental issues of statutory interpretation. For example, he has criticized the Supreme Court's use of textualist methods to disrupt continuity between its past and present decisions in the field of employment discrimination law, and he has argued against the convergence of constitutional and statutory legal standards in order to permit the government to explore different approaches to addressing the persistent problem of racial inequality. In his most recent work, forthcoming in Southern California Law Review, Rich argues that the law's current understanding of diversity in education and employment underserves the goal of equal opportunity, and he proposes a new vision of diversity that would apply beyond the limited context of traditional affirmative action programs.
Prior to joining the faculty of USC Gould, Rich practiced law at Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton LLP, where he litigated a variety of high profile matters concerning topics such as freedom of speech, securities fraud, trademark infringement, and the right to counsel. Rich entered private practice after having served as a judicial law clerk to the Honorable Betty B. Fletcher on the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. He received his JD from Yale Law School, and he received his MA and BA in African American Studies concurrently from Yale University. He won prizes for his senior essay and master's thesis, both of which concentrated on issues of intellectual history and literary theory, and he was awarded the A. Bartlett Giammati Fellowship by the university. In between his two stays at Yale, Rich won a Fullbright Scholarship to study music in Fes, Morocco. Returning to the United States reaffirmed his commitment to issues of social justice and equality. While at Yale Law School, Rich was an Olin Fellow and after graduation performed research on issues of race and political equality as a recipient of Harvard Law School's Reginald Lewis Fellowship. At USC Gould, Rich has continued to pursue his interests in educational and workplace diversity, political and social equality, and procedural fairness. He was the law school's first junior faculty member to receive the prestigious William A Rutter Distinguished Teaching Award.
Job Titles:
- Clarity Partners ( Lifetime Member )
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- Administrative Judge of New York County, Criminal Term
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- Senior Law Librarian, Head of Cataloging and Law Library Administrator
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- Senior Director of Development and Continuing Legal Education
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- President of the People 's Republic of China