Background information
on gender and asylum issues

• Staff
• Board
• Funders
• Visiting International Scholars
• Students, interns and volunteers

Staff

Karen Musalo
Professor. Karen Musalo directs the Center for Gender & Refugee Studies, and the Refugee and Human Rights Clinic. She is lead co-author of Refugee Law and Policy: An International and Comparative Approach (4th edition), and has contributed to the evolving jurisprudence of asylum law through her scholarship, as well as her litigation of landmark cases. Professor Musalo was lead attorney in Matter of Kasinga (fear of female genital cutting as a basis of asylum), which continues to be cited as authority in gender asylum cases by tribunals from Canada to the United Kingdom to New Zealand. She was co-counsel in the Ninth Circuit en banc decision, Abebe v. Gonzales, and attorney of record in Canas-Segovia v. INS and Ramirez-Rivas v. INS.  She represented Rody Alvarado, whose case was a landmark in the struggle for the right to asylum for women fleeing domestic violence.  She also represented Ms. L-R-, the asylum seeker from Mexico whose high profile victory broke additional ground on the issue of gender asylum.  Professor Musalo has been quoted extensively in the media, including The New York Times, Washington Post, The Nation and El Pais, and has been interviewed on other media, such as Nightline, CNN International, The Diane Rehm Show and Talk of the Nation. She was featured in the PBS Documentary, Breaking Free: A Woman's Story, which focuses on Rody Alvarado's case. Professor Musalo is recognized for her innovative work on refugee issues. She was the first attorney to partner with psychologists in her representation of traumatized asylum seekers – a  practice that has since become standard – and  she edited the first handbook for practitioners on cross-cultural issues and the impact of culture on credibility in the asylum context. She has received numerous advocacy awards for her pioneering legal work, including the 2010 California Lawyer of the Year Award, the 2009 Daily Journal’s recognition as one of the “Top 100” lawyers in California, and the American Lawyer's 1997 recognition as one of the forty-five outstanding young public interest lawyers. Professor Musalo is a frequent speaker at conferences and law schools in the United States, and has lectured extensively in Europe and Latin America.

Lisa Frydman
Managing Attorney. Lisa has extensive experience in asylum law. Both as a staff attorney at Legal Services for Children in San Francisco, and an Equal Justice Works Fellow at the Florida Immigrant Advocacy Center (FIAC) in Miami, Lisa represented immigrant children seeking asylum, protection as victims of human trafficking, Special Immigrant Juvenile status, and other types of relief. Many of Lisa’s asylum cases involved representing young women fleeing gender persecution, such as forced marriage, female genital cutting, and sexual abuse. Lisa has significant appellate experience practicing before the Board of Immigration Appeals, and has represented several clients in federal district court. She has played an integral role in local and national efforts aimed at improving policies and practices for immigrant children. Through her participation in legislative, administrative, and media advocacy, as well as public education campaigns, Lisa has fought for immigrant children’s rights. Lisa has given numerous presentations to judges, attorneys, law students, and community members on a broad range of topics, including children's asylum claims, representing trafficked children, and more. Lisa graduated with honors from Boalt Hall School of Law.

Robin Goldfaden
Senior Staff Attorney and Kazan, McClain, Abrams, Fernandez, Lyons, Greenwood, Harley & Oberman Foundation, Inc. Clinical Teaching Fellow. Robin co-teaches and supervises the Refugee and Human Rights Clinic at U.C. Hastings College of the Law. Robin joined CGRS as a senior staff attorney and clinical teaching fellow in 2010. She previously served as a senior staff attorney with the ACLU Immigrants’ Rights Project, where for several years she engaged in complex litigation and related advocacy work addressing a range of matters affecting immigrants, including post-9/11 policies and practices, detention, racial profiling and other discrimination on the basis of race, ethnicity and religion, unlawful arrests, substantive and procedural due process violations, access to the courts, and the proper interpretation and application of legal standards governing the adjudication of asylum cases. Earlier in her legal career, Robin was a NAPIL (now Equal Justice Works) Fellow at a disability rights organization and a clerk to federal district and circuit court judges. Robin received her J.D. from Columbia University School of Law and her undergraduate degree from Brown University.

Blaine Bookey
CGRS Fellow/Staff Attorney. Blaine is a graduate, summa cum laude, Order of the Coif, of U.C. Hastings College of the Law where she was Editor-in-Chief of the International and Comparative Law Review, Director of the Hastings-to-Haiti Partnership, and Judicial Extern at the Executive Office for Immigration Review.  After law school, she served as a law clerk to the Honorable Dolores K. Sloviter, United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit (2010-11), and as a fellow with the Institute for Justice & Democracy in Haiti (IJDH) and the Bureau des Avocats Internationaux (BAI) (2009-10).  As a fellow in Haiti, Blaine helped launch the organizations' Rape Accountability and Prevention Project, and was a member of a legal team that brought a successful case on behalf of displaced women at risk of rape before the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights and the United Nations Human Rights Council.  Before law school, Blaine worked as a paralegal at an immigration firm specializing in asylum law.  She holds an undergraduate degree from Northwestern University in Social Policy and Gender Studies.  Blaine speaks Spanish, Haitian Creole and French, and is admitted to practice in California and the Third Circuit Court of Appeals.

Stacey Fernandez
CGRS Fellow/Staff Attorney. Prior to joining CGRS, Stacey received a J.D. and a Certificate in Refugees and Humanitarian Emergencies from Georgetown University Law Center in 2010. During law school she focused on immigration and refugee law and policy and human rights. She worked at Georgetown’s Center for Applied Legal Studies where she represented an applicant for asylum in Immigration Court, and was Executive Submissions Editor for the Georgetown Journal of Law and Modern Critical Race Perspectives. She interned with the Refugee Rights Project at World Organization for Human Rights, USA; with Catholic Charities Immigrant Legal Services; and with the Commission on Human Rights and Administrative Justice in Ghana. Stacey received undergraduate degrees from the University of Washington’s Community, Environment and Planning program and from the Jackson School of International Studies.

Julia Epstein
Director of Development. Julia has extensive experience in media relations and fundraising for public interest legal services organizations. Before joining CGRS in 2011, she was Director of Communications and Development for the Disability Rights Education & Defense Fund for over 9 years. Prior to her legal services career, Julia taught at Haverford College, where she was Barbara Riley Levin Professor of Comparative Literature. She is the author of Altered Conditions: Disease, Medicine, and Storytelling and The Iron Pen: Frances Burney and the Politics of Women's Writing, and the co-editor of Shaping Losses: Cultural Memory and the Holocaust, and Body Guards: The Cultural Politics of Gender Ambiguity. She received a Ph.D. from Cornell University and her undergraduate degree from Washington University.

VIcky Siu
Administrator and Office Manager. Vicky oversees all administrative and operational functions for CGRS. Before joining the Center in February 2011, Ms. Siu spent over 5 years as an Office Manager with San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency Taxi Services where she was the administrative lead in a $50 million Medallion Sales Pilot Program and implemented over $1 million in clean air taxi grant subsidies. She also worked for several years directing administrative and technical support at REM Works and provided technical support at Premier Retail Networks in San Francisco. Ms. Siu received her BA from San Francisco State University.

Advisory Board

*Denise Abrams, Of Counsel
Kazan, McClain, Lyons, Greenwood & Harley PLC

Rody Alvarado, Refugee

*Richard Boswell, Professor
University of California, Hastings College of the Law

*Sara Campos, Bay Area Lawyer and Writer

Janet Dench, Executive Director, Canadian Council for Refugees

*Jayne Fleming, Pro Bono Counsel
Reed Smith LLP

Pamela Goldberg, Protection Officer
United Nations HIgh Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR)

Fauziya Kassindja, Refugee

*Minette Kwok, Partner
Minami Tamaki LLP

Susan Martin, Director
Institute of International Migration, Georgetown University

Bernadette Passade Cisse, Independent Contractor/Writer

*Darren Teshima, Senior Associate
Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe LLP

Rebecca Wallace, Director
Centre for Rural Childhood, Perth College, University of the Highlands and Islands

* indicates members of the CGRS Executive Committee

Funders

CGRS is grateful to all the foundations that have supported, and continue to support, its work.

Visiting International Scholars

CGRS has played host to visiting international scholars seeking to engage in research relating to gender asylum.

• Dr. Victor Merino Sancho, Professor of Philosophy of Law, 2011
• Maria Diaz Crego, Spanish law professor, 2008
• Nina Truchsess, German doctoral candidate, 2006
• Leonie Newhouse, American doctoral candidate, 2006
• Marei Pelzer, German refugee lawyer, 2006
• Sean Rehaag, Canadian refugee scholar, 2006
• Carmen Miguel Juan, Spanish refugee lawyer, 2005
• Noemi Alarcon, Spanish refugee lawyer, 2005
• Francesca Paltenghi, Italian lawyer, 2004-05
• Shahyar Roushan, Australian lawyer & refugee judge, 2004-05
• Mary Anne Kenny, Australian immigration professor, 2003

Students, interns & volunteers

The work of law clerks continues to be vital to CGRS. CGRS works with law students (working for credit through the Refugee and Human Rights Clinic, as research assistants for pay, or volunteering), as well as other volunteers from all walks of life. These individuals provide critical support to CGRS's work.

2010

Heather Alexander
Oona Appel
Courtney Avery Moloney
Katie Bryant
Allison Deneen
Sangita Devaskar
Stacey Fernandez
Heather Freitag
Mariana Jones
Seema Kadaba
Elizabeth McCullough-Sanden
Celeste Peifer
Elisabeth Pellegrin
Lauren Reiser
Hillary Richardson
Julie Rieber-Mohn
Claire Rogerson
Carley Russell
Patricia Santiago
Teresa Shellmon
Sonya Sultan-Khan
Jesse Thompson
Sadie Wathen
Morgan Weibel
Josephine Weinberg
Laura Weitzel
Nina Zelic

Past students and volunteers