Washington, D.C.—The board of the Center for Law and Social Policy (CLASP) has welcomed four new trustees for 2017: Lisa Brown, Thomas Kahn, Sunil Mansukhani, and Edward Montgomery.

“These four leaders bring to CLASP decades of high-level experience in the executive branch, the Congress, academia, and the nonprofit world.  In the challenging days ahead, their extensive knowledge of how federal policymaking works will be of vital assistance to CLASP staff and to CLASP board members throughout the county,” said Joe Onek, chair of CLASP’s board of trustees.  

Lisa Brown joined Georgetown University in March 2013 as vice president and general counsel following distinguished service in the Obama Administration as assistant to the president and staff secretary in the White House, as well as acting chief performance officer at the Office of Management and Budget. She also held positions in the Clinton Administration, serving as counsel to Vice President Gore, as an executive board member on the President’s Committee for Employment of People with Disabilities, and as an attorney adviser in the Office of Legal Counsel at the U.S. Department of Justice. Outside of government, Ms. Brown was executive director of the American Constitution Society for Law and Policy for six years and was a partner at the Shea & Gardner law firm. She graduated magna cum laude from Princeton University with a degree in political economy and earned her law degree (with honors) from the University of Chicago Law School.

Thomas Kahn became the director of Legislative Affairs at the American Federation of Government (AFGE) in 2016, after serving for 19 years as Democratic staff director for the House Budget Committee. In that role he worked on the 1997 budget agreement under President Clinton, as well as other significant legislation. He was also a corporate attorney at Sullivan & Cromwell in New York. Mr. Kahn earned his law degree from Georgetown University Law Center, where he served as editor of the Georgetown Law Journal.

Sunil Mansukhani is a principal at The Raben Group in Washington, DC, where he works on a range of education, civil rights and access to justice issues. Mr. Mansukhani’s senior public leadership positions include deputy assistant secretary for the U.S. Department of Education Office for Civil Rights, and senior attorney for the U.S. Department of Justice Civil Rights Division, Educational Opportunities section. He was also the founding executive director for the District of Columbia Access to Justice Commission. Mr. Mansukhani graduated summa cum laude from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and received his law degree from Yale Law School.

Edward Montgomery, dean of the McCourt School of Public Policy at Georgetown University, was deputy secretary of the U.S. Department of Labor in the Clinton Administration, directing a $33 billion department, and served on President Obama’s Auto Task Force as executive director of the White House Council for Auto Communities & Workers. As an economist, Dr. Montgomery’s research has focused on state and local economic growth, wage and pension determination, savings behavior, productivity and economic dynamics, social insurance programs, and unions. In 2011, he was elected as a fellow of the National Academy of Public Administration, and he has been a research associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research for over two decades. From 2003 to 2008, he served as dean of the College of Behavioral and Social Sciences at the University of Maryland, and he has been on the faculty at Carnegie Mellon University, Michigan State University, and the University of Maryland. In addition, he has held visiting positions at the board of governors of the Federal Reserve and The Urban Institute. Dr. Montgomery earned a B.S. (with honors) in economics from Pennsylvania State University and master’s and doctoral degrees in economics from Harvard University.

Two CLASP trustees, Angela Glover Blackwell, founder and CEO of PolicyLink, and Luis Jaramillo, retired attorney for California Rural Legal Assistance, have left the board after distinguished service. “We are deeply indebted to Angela and Luis for their decades of service to CLASP and their pioneering work to advocate for the rights and needs of poor, low-income, and disenfranchised people in this country,” said Onek. “Our organization is stronger because of their guidance, and we thank them both for their many contributions.”

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CLASP is a national, nonpartisan, anti-poverty organization advancing policy solutions that work for low-income people. With nearly 50 years of trusted expertise, a deeply knowledgeable staff, and a commitment to practical yet visionary approaches to opportunity for all, CLASP lifts up the voices of poor and low-income children, families, and individuals, equips advocates with strategies that work, and helps public officials put good ideas into practice. The organization’s solutions directly address the barriers that individuals and families face because of race, ethnicity, and immigration status, in addition to low income. For more information, visit clasp2022.tealmedia.dev and follow @CLASP_DC.