Redistricting 2011: Mapping Political Power for the Decade

Debo P. Adegbile is associate director-counsel/director of litigation and is responsible for supervision of the legal program at the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund. (LDF).  Adegbile successfully argued against a constitutional challenge to the core federal preclearance provision of the Voting Rights Act before a three-judge panel in federal court in Washington D.C., and again in April of 2009 before the U.S. Supreme Court.  That case, Northwest Austin Municipal Utility District No. One v. Holder, followed a multi-year effort which resulted in the Congressional reauthorization of several important provisions of the VRA.

Prior to joining LDF in 2001, Debo was a litigation associate at the law firm of Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison for seven years. At the firm Debo worked closely with Judge A. Leon Higginbotham, Jr. on the representation of Congressman Cleo Fields, to defend his Louisiana congressional district against an Equal Protection challenge in Hays v. Louisiana.

Writer/Director

Jeff Reichert is a writer and director who recently served as senior vice president of Magnolia Pictures, where he developed release campaigns for some of the most theatrically successful documentaries in recent years. Thes include the Academy-Award nominees Capturing the Friedmans, Enron: the Smartest Guys in the Room, Jesus Camp and No End in Sight, and the Academy Award-winning Man on a Wire. He is the cofounder and editor of the popular online film journal Reverse Shot.

Michael Waldman is executive director of the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University School of Law. Waldman was director of speechwriting for President Bill Clinton from 1995-1999, serving as assistant to the president.

Waldman is a former director of Public Citizen's Congress Watch. Most recently he has been a litigator in private practice in New York.

Thomas A. Saenz, a nationally recognized civil rights attorney, is president and general counsel at the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund. Previously, as counsel to Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, Saenz served on the four-person executive team to the mayor, where he provided legal and policy advice on major initiatives.

Executive Director
U.S. Programs

Ann Beeson, a distinguished human rights advocate and litigator, joined the Open Society Institute in June 2007 as the executive director of U.S. Programs. She is working on the most acute challenges to open society in the United States, including race discrimination in the criminal justice system and immigration and national security policies that threaten human rights.

Prior to joining OSI, Beeson was associate legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union. At the ACLU, she spearheaded groundbreaking initiatives to stop the erosion of civil liberties in the name of national security and to expand the use of international human rights strategies in the areas of immigrants' rights, women's rights, and racial justice.

Beeson has argued twice before the U.S. Supreme Court. In August 2006, she won an important ruling on behalf of prominent journalists, scholars, and attorneys challenging the National Security Agency's illegal surveillance of Americans without a warrant.

In June 2007, Beeson was named one of the 50 most influential women lawyers in America by the National Law Journal, and was also featured as one of American Lawyer magazine's 50 rising legal stars under the age of 45. She has published essays in two books, Liberty Under Attack and The War on Our Freedoms.

Beeson graduated from Emory University School of Law, where she was editor-in-chief of the Emory Law Journal. She is a Texas native, and holds a master's degree in cultural anthropology from the University of Texas.