Legal Voice - Staff

Staff

Sara L. Ainsworth: Senior Legal & Legislative Counsel
Katie DeWeese Bennett: Perkins Coie Fellow
Laurie Carlsson: Volunteer Coordinator & Receptionist
Janet Chung: Legal & Legislative Counsel
B. Michelle Johnson: Director of Development
June Krumpotick: Lead Paralegal/Program Manager
Kelli Maguire: Director of Administration & Events
Chloë Phalan: Program Assistant
Rebecca Pogany: Development Officer
Lisa M. Stone: Executive Director

David Ward Legal and Legislative Counsel

Sara Ainsworth

Sara Ainsworth is Senior Legal & Legislative Counsel at Legal Voice. Her career has been spent working for social justice, from founding the Public Interest Law Association at the University of Washington School of Law to practicing poverty law for Northwest Justice Project and Snohomish County Legal Services. Later, as Public Service Counsel at Foster Pepper and Shefelman, she managed the firm's pro bono program and carried an entirely pro bono caseload for low-income clients. Through her anti-poverty work, Sara came to understand that domestic and sexual violence are a significant barrier to poor women's access to economic security, which led to her volunteer with Legal Voice.

In 2002, she found a permanent home at Legal Voice, where she currently works to advance women's rights to healthcare and reproductive freedom. She also represents Legal Voice in the Northwest Reproductive Justice Collaborative, an innovative regional project designed to achieve a broad-based, community-supported reproductive justice agenda. Sara continues her affiliation with the University of Washington School of Law, from which she graduated in 1996, as a part-time lecturer on poverty law. Sara loves Legal Voice (and her colleagues) because here she has the opportunity to use her law degree as it was intended – to help change the system to better serve justice for the most vulnerable people.

Katie Deweese Bennett

Katie will be spending a year working with Legal Voice. Katie became interested in women’s rights at the University of Washington while studying history and French, writing two senior theses on women’s issues in American and French societies. After spending a year living in rural France teaching English to middle school students, she moved to Boston and graduated from Boston College Law School in May 2009. While attending law school, she focused on employment and constitutional law, including participating in the National First Amendment Moot Court team. She was also on the executive board of the Boston College Women’s Law Center. During school, she worked as a law clerk at Planned Parenthood of Western Washington during her first summer, as well as a summer associate at Perkins Coie during her second. Katie is excited to have the opportunity to devote the beginning of her legal career to furthering women’s rights and helping provide access to the legal system to those who need it the most.

Laurie Carlsson

A number of years ago, Laurie found herself at a cafe just one block from the Legal Voice offices. Through her morning conversations with Legal Voice staff, Laurie was able to keep tabs on the progress the organization was making in the social justice arena, and eventually, to her delight, was able to join her friends in helping women to obtain the equal rights that they deserve.

Her passion for women's rights began at the age of 12, when she was the sole female participant in the statewide Model Solar Boat Competition. She was not allowed to weld solar panels, nor drive the boat, simply because of her gender. Laurie continued to break into fields that were considered "off limits" to women, as one of three female members of the Whatcom County Ice Hockey League, and as a student at Berklee College of Music, where enrollment was 80 percent male.

Laurie is grateful that her job allows her to interact with such a diverse and wonderful group of people, and to support the efforts that Legal Voice is putting forth to make equality for women a reality.

Janet Chung

Janet has always loved writing and language, as well as learning about current events. As a first-generation Korean-American, she got her first taste for American politics—and girl power—at Girls State in Texas. Her initial introduction to feminist theory came through literature courses at Yale, and by the time she left college, she had found her true passion: women's rights.

After a stint teaching in a civic education program in Washington, D.C. and volunteering at various women's advocacy organizations, Janet decided a legal career would allow her to marry her love of words and analysis to her interest in politics and social change. Her legal career has included a federal clerkship; practicing employment law and business and appellate litigation at law firms in D.C. and Seattle; and teaching at Seattle University School of Law. When she saw the job posting at Legal Voice— which asked, "Have you always wanted to realize your dream of using the law to improve the world?"— she yelled, "Yes!" and hasn't looked back.

Janet's passionate belief in the value of women's contributions to society is inspired by her grandmother, who at age 14, without her father's consent, took a boat by herself to another country to seek more schooling. Her grandmother's education later paved the way for her to be able to send her daughter (Janet's mom) through medical school.

B. Michelle Johnson

Michelle was born to be a fundraiser. She started her development career at an early age, selling cheese and sausage door-to-door for her school. As she grew older, she honed her fundraising skills by asking all of her neighbors to sponsor her for various "walks for hunger" or "rides for cancer." Suffice it to say, fundraising is in her DNA.

Michelle's varied life experiences—including serving in the Peace Corps, externships in South Africa, and volunteering for HIV/AIDS organizations—have shaped her enthusiasm for women's rights. Michelle couples her 10+ years of fundraising experience with her passion, and won't give up until "we have an equal place at the table." In 2004, she and her coalition partners organized 5,000 participants for the March for Women's Lives in Washington, D.C.

In 2008, after spending six years with a nationally-recognized women's organization, Michelle jumped at the opportunity to join Legal Voice, where she's charged with making positive change for women's rights both regionally and nationally.

June Krumpotick

June earned a B.A. in Linguistics from the University of Wisconsin and a paralegal certificate from the University of Washington. Coming from a progressive, working-class family, she plunged into the peace and civil rights movements in Madison and later in Berkeley. She worked in libraries in Madison and Oklahoma (where her scheduling a union organizer as a speaker for a staff meeting infuriated her supervisor).

Her second career teaching English as a Second Language fed her lifelong interest in other languages and cultures. Law was a thread throughout. Her grandfather, the leading lawyer in a small Wisconsin town, bought up foreclosed homes during the Depression and returned them to the homeowners. In college, she remembers reading a court decision noting that it was reasonable to give women longer sentences than men because women are more amenable to punishment. In Oklahoma, a hospital refused to issue a paycheck to a nurse because she hadn't changed her surname when she married. And the professor in her first Library Science class announced that all women would receive "D's". Twenty years ago, a new part-time position at Legal Voice allowed her to bring together her passion for civil rights, her belief in information sharing as a form of activism, and her joy in learning every day from colleagues and community. She never left.

Kelli Maguire

From junior high school on, Kelli spent years volunteering: coaching a swim team for Special Olympics; teaching English as a second language to refugees new to the US; counseling teens who, for the sake of safety, had to flee the war in Bosnia; and managing an emergency shelter for women fleeing abusive relationship and those in need of emergency housing.

While spending years working in Business Administration in the private sector helped Kelli hone a keen eye for accounting books and budgets, Legal Voice has provided her the opportunity to bring passion to her position as Director of Administration. Though books and budgets may not be the most glorious part of the fight for women's rights, Kelli is happy to support work that is so close to her heart.

ChloË Phalan

Chloë grew up on an island were people were very concerned about global warming. Her childhood was filled with recycling, beach clean-ups, seal pup rescues, nature documentaries, tree planting, the Golden Rule, and organized protests. The word "Valdez" still gives her the heebie-jeebies. Of course, there were other interests—she loved painting, sports, and Thai food. So she packed her bags and moved to Seattle.

Soon she had a piece of paper from a university, and an agreeably muddy job with an organic gardening company. It was then, while contemplating a career in environmental law, that a friend told her about a legendary "Center" that used the law to fight the patriarchy. Why, fighting the patriarchy and saving the planet go together like chocolate and peanut butter! Her excitement compounded after attending Kelli Maguire's volunteer orientation. For three straight days she said nothing but "Where has the Law Center been all my life?" On a cold November day in 2004, Chloë arrived at Legal Voice for her first volunteer shift. She's still here.

Rebecca Pogany

Armed with a desire to do good for others (and not knowing what else to do with herself after college), Rebecca took a fundraising internship at a social justice organization in Cleveland. Four years later, 2,000 miles away, and with many hours of envelope-stuffing experience, Rebecca is still raising money to save the world.

Rebecca took an academic route into the women's movement: she majored in Sociology with a concentration in Women's Studies. Her experiences ranged from the appalling (a project on emergency contraception that revealed just how difficult it would be to walk into a pharmacy and obtain a prescribed medication) to the amusing (a "Women's Biology" course in which male students were asked to sit in the back row and keep their mouths shut.) Rebecca is grateful to know too many inspiring feminists to mention, including friends, professors, and now colleagues.

Although joining Legal Voice is Rebecca's first experience working for a women's rights organization, taking a job here felt like coming home.

Lisa M. Stone

Lisa has worked as a retail manager, a lawyer for the government and in private practice, and as an environmental manager for an oil-spill cleanup company. But it wasn't until she became the Executive Director of Legal Voice that Lisa found the place she belongs. Her casual inquiry about volunteering for the organization in 1988 led to a three-year case representing clinics, patients, and doctors against anti-choice extremists blocking medical facilities. She was hooked on the cause and the people of Legal Voice. Lisa volunteered for several more years until she finagled a paying job as Executive Director in 1995.

Although being ED keeps her too busy to spend much time in a courtroom, Lisa exercises her legal acumen overseeing the work of the terrific staff and volunteers of Legal Voice. Working at Legal Voice permits Lisa to speak her mind about women's rights and stand up for those who need it most— lifelong traits that are finally appreciated...most of the time. Lisa's work at Legal Voice can be summed up by the sign she carried at the 2004 March for Women's Lives, which featured a photo of her late mother at the 1992 March: its caption read, "No going back...I promised my mother."

David Ward

David has spent his career working for equal justice, both in the courts and in the legislature. He began his career as an aide to U.S. Senator Herb Kohl, focusing on reproductive rights, health care, and economic security issues. After graduating from Yale Law School in 1998, he joined the Seattle office of Heller Ehrman, where he devoted hundreds of hours each year to providing pro bono representation to survivors of domestic violence in protection order and family law cases. This work fueled David's commitment to women's rights and to providing a voice for the most vulnerable. He later served as a staff attorney at the Access to Justice Institute at Seattle University School of Law, managing a program for survivors of domestic violence and stalking. He has also served as a law clerk to U.S. District Judge Marsha Pechman and as the legislative liaison for the Washington State Bar Association.

David joined Legal Voice in 2008, where his work focuses on gender violence, family law, and LGBT rights. Working at Legal Voice is David's dream job, providing a rare opportunity to use both his legal and legislative experience to fight for equal rights and fairness.

Women's rights. Nothing less.