Staff & Board

Browse: Home / About / Staff & Board

Board Members

Dan Pearlman, Chair

Dan is one of the original PILP Board Members and was elected Chair in 2011.
After working in Mississippi in the summer of 1964 with the Lawyers Constitutional Defense Committee, Dan devoted his volunteer work and career as a public interest attorney, advocate and consultant to Civil Rights work and to helping low income people and their advocates in their pursuit of social and economic justice. Dan was a legal services attorney from 1968 to 1995 including 22 years with the National Housing Law Project where his work focused on developing and preserving housing for very low and low income households.

Mona Towatao, Vice-Chair

Mona Tawatao has been a regional counsel with Legal Services of Northern California (LSNC) since October 1999. In this capacity, Mona directs and coordinates LSNC=s major land use and housing advocacy in its 23 county service area and has litigated a number of cases that preserved and improved existing affordable housing or led to the development of new housing units for lower income households. Prior to joining LSNC, Mona worked for nine years at San Fernando Valley Neighborhood Legal Services (NLS) as a staff attorney and directing attorney where she focused on affordable housing development, tenants= rights and land use cases and school finance cases. From 1988 to 1990, she clerked for the Honorable Consuelo B. Marshall in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles. Mona received her J.D. from UCLA School of Law in 1986. Mona received a Legal Aid Association of California Award of Merit in 2005 and a Reginald Heber Smith Award from the National Legal Aid and Defender Association in 2007. Mona is a visiting professor at UC Davis School of Law and also serves on the board of the Equal Justice Society and the Advisory Editorial Board of the Clearinghouse Review.

Irma Herrera, Treasurer & Secretary

Irma Herrera joined PILP’s board in 2010. She currently works as a journalist covering legal and social justice issues at San Francisco based New America Media. Her thirty-year career as a civil rights lawyer included serving as the Executive Director of Equal Rights Advocates for 15 years. She was served a staff attorney at Washington State’s Evergreen Legal Services and with the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund. She is the recipient of various awards including the American Bar Association’s Margaret Brent Award, awarded to women lawyer of distinction.

Miye Goishi

Miye Goishi joined the Hastings faculty in 1992 after 11 years of practice in the San Francisco Bay Area public interest community. She specialized in housing work at both Legal Aid of Marin and Contra Costa Legal Services Foundation. In 2008 she became the Director of the Civil Justice Clinic. She serves on the Board of Directors of two public interest organizations, the Child Care Law Center and the Public Interest Law Project.
Professor Goishi grew up in the East Bay community of Livermore and always knew she would return to the Bay Area after school to take advantage of its temperate climate and progressive politics.

William Hebert

William N. Hebert is a partner in the San Francisco office of Calvo & Clark. Mr. Hebert represents clients in business litigation, including class action defense, business torts (such as antitrust, trade secret litigation, and interference with economic advantage), patent and trademark infringement, false advertising and California’s Unfair Competition Law. Mr. Hebert has published numerous articles in the areas of antitrust and business torts, and he is contributing co-author of California Antitrust and Unfair Competition Law (Lexis Nexis, 2010), published by the California State Bar Section on Antitrust and Unfair Competition, for which he contributed chapters on the subjects of expert witnesses, injunctions, treble damages and void contracts. Mr. Hebert was elected to serve as President of the State Bar of California for the 2010-2011 term. He is a member of the Board of Directors of the San Francisco Legal Aid Society and a member of the Board of Trustees of Prospect Sierra School, where he chairs the Development Committee. He received his J.D. for the University of California, Boalt Hall School of Law in 1988 and an A.B. from Stanford University in 1983 (with distinction).

Barbra Williams-Diallo

Barbra W. Diallo is an Associate in Burke, Williams & Sorensen’s Labor and Employment Law Practice Group, where she represents public and private sector management clients, including cities, counties, corporations, small businesses, non-profit entities, educational entities, and special districts. Ms. Diallo has extensive experience in complex civil litigation, including discrimination, employee misclassification, wage and hour violations, and other employment related liabilities. Ms. Diallo’s experience includes significant pre-trial law and motion practice, all aspects of discovery, advising on various employment matters, and conducting workplace investigations. Ms. Diallo received her J.D. in 2006 from the University of California, Hastings College of the Law, where she served as the Notes Editor for the Hastings Race and Poverty Law Journal, Sub-regional Director for the National Black Law Students Association, and as a Teaching Assistant for Legal Writing & Research.

gaceves : November 7, 2011 3:15 pm : Staff & Board

Leave a response »

Staff

Mike Rawson, Co-Director

Mike has dedicated his career as a lawyer to advocate on behalf of lower income persons in need of affordable housing. He began at the Legal Aid Society of Alameda County, where he established the California Affordable Housing Law Project. In 1996, he and co-director Steve Ronfeldt founded The Public Interest Law Project to provide litigation and other advocacy support for California legal services and public interest law offices. Mike focuses on state and federal land use, community redevelopment, fair housing and tenant-landlord law. He has litigated many cases with legal services programs and has drafted many California land use and tenant-landlord statutes. His litigation includes suits addressing the adequacy of local housing elements, displacement of lower income families and discriminatory housing practices. Mike also has authored many articles, book chapters and manuals on these issues.

Steve Ronfeldt, Co-Director

Steve specializes in major litigation on behalf of low-income persons, recently focusing on public benefits issues, including disability rights, disaster relief, Medi-Cal and Medicaid, general assistance, and skilled nursing care. He has also litigated numerous cases involving public housing, freeway relocation, and employment discrimination and has negotiated many community reinvestment agreements with banks, anti-patient dumping agreements with hospitals, and affirmative action agreements with public agencies and corporations. He began his poverty law practice as a Reginald Heber Smith Fellow and served as Litigation Director of the Legal Aid Society of Alameda County, an attorney with the National Housing Law Project, and Senior Lecturer on Poverty Law and Federal Court Practice at King Hall School of Law, University of California at Davis. He was a founder of the California Reinvestment Coalition and the East Bay Community Law Center.

Deborah Collins, Managing Attorney

Deborah has been with PILP since 2002, and was a Staff Attorney and Managing Attorney of the Solano County office of Legal Services of Northern California for ten years prior to that. She specializes in state and federal laws related to the development and preservation of housing that is affordable to the lower income community including state land use, planning and redevelopment laws, subsidized housing, relocation assistance issues, and fair housing laws. She has also participated in administrative and legislative advocacy regarding local, state, and national housing policies and co-authored the 2001 and 2002 subsidized housing chapter of the California Eviction Defense Manual published by the Continuing Education of the Bar.

Craig Castellanet, Attorney

Craig works with the California Affordable Housing Law Project of the Public Interest Law Project to enforce housing laws in local land use and redevelopment practices around the state. Since 1994, he has worked in California, Hawai`i and at the national level, on affordable housing issues ranging from state housing element law, public housing residents’ right to organize and secure decent and safe housing, eviction defense, criminalization of homelessness, preservation of affordable housing at risk of conversion to market rate, and redevelopment laws. Craig joined PILP in 2004 and previously practiced at Legal Services of Northern California, the Legal Aid Society of Hawai`i, and at the National Housing Law Project.

Judy Gold, Attorney

Judy’s work at PILP centers on improving public benefits programs for indigent people. Before joining the Public Interest Law Project in 2008, she had practiced law for nearly 30 years. She was a shareholder at Heller Ehrman LLP, where she specialized in complex, multiparty commercial litigation and consumer class action litigation. She also handled prisoners’ rights cases as well as class actions and other impact cases relating to civil rights and public benefits programs including General Assistance, SSI, and AFDC. She was a pro bono coordinator for the firm for many years, supervising several of its litigation programs that served indigent defendants in unlawful detainer actions, debt collections, and other matters. Judy earned her B.A. and M.A,. both with distinction, from Stanford University. She earned her J.D. from Boalt Hall School of Law in 1980, externed for Justice Mathew Tobriner of the California Supreme Court, and was a law clerk for Judge Robert F. Pecham, Chief Judge of the United States District Court for the Northern District of California.

Patti Prunhuber, Attorney

Patti recently joined the Public Interest Law Project as a staff attorney specializing in public benefits. She has a wealth of experience and knowledge based upon 25 years of public benefits, health and employment work in legal services programs in Massachusetts. Most recently, Patti was the litigation director at the Legal Assistance Corporation of Central Massachusetts (LACCM), where she had primary responsibility for setting the advocacy agenda and overseeing its implementation. She has extensive experience litigating individual and class action cases in state and federal court in the areas of public benefits (e.g., TANF, food stamps, & GA), health care (e.g., Medicaid & health reform law), the rights of low-wage and immigrant workers and unemployment law. She has taught law students, graduate students and undergraduates in the areas of Welfare Law and Social Policy, Family Law, and Labor and Employment Law.

Julie McNulty, Legal Assistant

Julie joined PILP in August 2011 as the Legal Assistant, providing litigation and administrative support to PILP’s staff attorneys. A native of Boston, Julie graduated with honors from Providence College in 2010 with a dual degree in English Literature and Political Science. Julie previously worked in direct legal services as a legal advocate at East Bay Community Law Center in Berkeley.

Griselda Aceves, Administrator

Griselda joined PILP in March of 2011. A bay area native, Griselda has worked at several bay area non-profits such as Shelter Network, First 5 San Francisco, The San Francisco Education Fund and BlueShield Foundation. Working for non-profits that provide good quality assistance to people in need has been her passion for over 10 years.

Georgie Feltz, Bookkeeper

Georgie has worked as an Administrator and Accountant since the late 1960′s at California Indian Legal Services, California Rural Legal Assistance, The Legal Services Corporation and Legal Aid Society of Alameda County. After 6 years as The Public Interest Law Project’s contract bookkeeper, she accepted their part-time job in administration and financial support.

Peter Gallotta : February 14, 2011 2:57 pm : Staff & Board