Staff

Professional Staff

Henry A. Freedman

Executive Director

Freedman has served as Executive Director of the Center since 1971. Before becoming Executive Director, he had been in private practice in New York City and taught at Catholic University Law School in Washington, DC. He has also taught at Columbia and New York University Law Schools, and Columbia and Fordham Schools of Social Work. He has chaired the Committee on Legal Assistance of the Association of the Bar of the City of New York, and was the only "welfare recipient advocate" on HEW Secretary Califano's 32-member group formed to study welfare reform alternatives in 1977. He successfully argued Califano v. Westcott before the United States Supreme Court in 1979.

Freedman has received the National Legal Aid and Defender Association’s Reginald Heber Smith Award for Dedicated Service (1981), the New York State Bar Association’s Public Interest Law Award (1998), the William Nelson Cromwell Medal of the New York County Lawyers' Association (2001), and an honorary Doctor of Laws degree from Amherst College in 2008. He is a graduate of Amherst College and Yale Law School.

Marc Cohan

Director of Litigation

Cohan joined the Center as Director of Litigation in 1996 following nine years as Director of the Government Benefits Unit in South Brooklyn Legal Services and 16 years in impact litigation in various legal services programs. He has served as lead counsel in many of the major welfare cases in New York City, developing new litigation and legal arguments to impel systemic reform, and has litigated many major cases around the country in recent years, including ones related to privatization. At national and regional conferences, he has helped to train legal advocates around the country in policy advocacy, negotiations, and litigation. Cohan has written numerous self-help materials and manuals for advocates, and has co-authored articles for Clearinghouse Review and other publications.

Cohan was recognized by the Bar of the City of New York as one of the Legal Services Lawyers of the Year in 1996. In 2000, he won the New York State Bar Association Denison Ray Award for his extraordinary commitment and leadership. He is a graduate of Brooklyn Law School and Brooklyn College.

Vicki Henderson

Director of Development

Henderson came to the Center in March 2006 after serving for four years as the chief fundraiser for Advocates for Children in New York City. Before that she was Development Coordinator for a youth development and mediation agency on Staten Island, Director of Institutional Giving for the Community Service Society of New York, and for eight years the Development Officer for IPAS, an international women's reproductive health agency in North Carolina. Prior to working with those agencies, she served with United Ways in Georgia and North Carolina.

She attended Wake Forest University and graduated from the University of Tennessee with a BA in Speech Communications.

Cary LaCheen

Senior Attorney

LaCheen, one of the nation's foremost experts on the intersection of welfare and disability law, joined the Center in 2000 after three years as an Instructor of Law in the Lawyering Program at NYU School of Law. Prior to that, she spent several years as an attorney at New York Lawyers for the Public Interest, and as an attorney in the Civil Division of the Legal Aid Society of New York. Among her groundbreaking cases were the first case filed in the country under the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA); the first successful lawsuit under the ADA against a health plan that excluded coverage for HIV and AIDS; and enforcement of the permanent injunction in the Willowbrook case, a class action brought on behalf of 5,000 developmentally disabled New Yorkers involving the right to live in the community and receive high quality services.

She is a graduate of Brown University and New York University School of Law, where she was a Root Tilden Scholar.

Lynn Lu

Staff Attorney

Lu joined the Center staff in May 2007. Following her graduation from New York University Law School in 2004, Lu clerked for the Hon. Kermit Lipez on the First Circuit Court of Appeals and worked at the Brennan Center for Justice as Counsel and Katz Fellow. In law school she worked at the Legal Aid Society, National Advocates for Pregnant Women, and the ACLU Reproductive Freedom Project. Before law school she was an editor and publisher at the South End Press in Cambridge MA. She has an M.A. in English Literature/Critical Theory from Sussex University in Brighton, England, and is a graduate of Harvard University.

Mary R. Mannix

Program Director/Senior Attorney

Mannix is an experienced public benefits attorney who has participated in litigation before the United States Supreme Court and other federal and state courts. She participates in the Center's litigation, provides litigation support to poverty advocates across the country, directs the Center's communication and outreach efforts to advocates across the country, has authored numerous articles on welfare advocacy, and has extensive experience designing and conducting national and regional training. She conceived and directed the Low Income Networking and Communication (LINC) Project and also directs the Center's welfare privatization project.

Mannix is a graduate of Columbia University School of Law, where she was a James Kent and Harlan Fiske Stone Scholar, and Fordham University.

Laura Redman

Pfizer/Equal Justice Works Fellow

Redman graduated from Northeastern University School of Law in 2003, clerked for two years in the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, Staff Attorneys’ Office, and then spent a year in England working at the Commission for Racial Equality. During law school, she worked at Equal Rights Advocates, the National Council for Civil Liberties in London, and Gay and Lesbian Advocates and Defenders. Before law school she worked as a legal assistant at the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights in Washington, D.C., where she investigated potential employment discrimination claims. She has an M.A. in Gender Studies from Birkbeck College, University of London, and is a graduate of American University.

Denise Soffel

Health Policy Coordinator

Denise Soffel joined NCLEJ as the Health Policy Coordinator in September 2007. Prior to joining NCLEJ Soffel spent 12 years as Senior Policy Analyst at the Community Service Society. Soffel has held a variety of health policy positions in government, hospital, and academic settings and served as a Peace Corps Health Extension Agent in Paraguay from 1979 to 1981. She is currently an adjunct faculty member at the Wagner Graduate School of Public Service at NYU. Soffel also serves as Coordinator of Medicaid Matters New York, a statewide coalition of over 125 groups committed to bringing consumer voices and concerns into Medicaid policy debates.

She received her Ph.D. and her Masters degree in Public Administration (with a concentration in Health Planning and Policy Analysis), from New York University’s Wagner Graduate School of Public Service and is a graduate of Clark University in Worcester, Massachusetts.

Petra Tasheff

Senior Attorney

Tasheff joined the Center in 2004, bringing an extensive history in managing complex litigation in federal and state courts, most recently as General Counsel for Litigation, Global Consumer Business and Senior Trial Counsel at Citigroup. She has also been a senior attorney at the U. S. Securities and Exchange Commission in New York City and was a partner at Morrison & Hecker in Kansas City, Missouri. Tasheff graduated from Northwestern University School of Law and the University of Kansas. She serves as chair of the Board of Directors of the Kansas University Alumni Association.

Administrative Staff

Peter Kendall

Systems Administrator

Kay Khan

Office Manager

Michelle Peeples

Secretary

Daniel Yuhas

Secretary