Board Spotlight: Karlene Goller

As Vice President and Deputy General Counsel of the Los Angeles Times and Senior Counsel/West Coast Media for the Tribune Company, Karlene Goller fights daily to protect and defend rights and liberties guaranteed by the First Amendment of the United States Constitution.  As the new Chairperson of Public Counsel’s Board of Directors, Goller brings that same zeal to her leadership of the world’s largest pro bono public interest law firm and its mission of ensuring equal access to justice for the most vulnerable members of our society.

She galvanized Public Counsel staff, board members and clients with her very first speech at the annual board retreat, setting the tone for her year as Chairperson.  “A good lawyer can take a struggling person and help her triumph over a slumlord or a bureaucrat, can secure housing or benefits that our society provides and yet infuriatingly withholds.  Without that lawyer, she might sink beneath the complexity of immigration regulations or the depressing crush of Section 8 rules.  With that lawyer, she might find an apartment, grab ahold of residency, protect her children, raise a family, become an American.  In that moment, a life is changed and a nation elevated.  That is what moves me to support Public Counsel and thrills me to lead it.” (Full article.)


Volunteer Spotlight: Kassandra Perez

“Kassandra Perez is a superstar,” says Ted Zepeda, Public Counsel’s Pro Bono Director.  “She directs the small but dedicated team of volunteers in the day-to-day work of the project, coming in two to three times a week to the City Attorney’s office in downtown L.A. from the Pepperdine campus in Malibu and personally oversees the myriad details of the semi-monthly Homeless Court sessions which entails the minutia of legal paperwork, and event scheduling, while also addressing the mercurial needs of clients, staff and judges alike - all as a volunteer.  Meanwhile she maintains a full course load and is not only unflappable but also unfailingly gracious and kind.”

Kassandra Perez is a 3L at Pepperdine Law School.  She began working at Public Counsel’s Homeless Court Program (a special project of Public Counsel’s Homelessness Prevention Law Project) at the Los Angeles City Attorney’s office in the spring of this year. “I was eager to work for Public Counsel,” explains Kassandra, “not only because of its prestigious reputation, but because I felt Homeless Court was not only one of the most progressive and advantageous programs I had heard of but is a perfect example of a public interest organization and government agency working together on a major societal problem.” (Full Article)


 


Karlene Goller

 



 


Kassandra Perez, Volunteer

2009-10 Board of Directors


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