Linda Chavez is Chairman of the Center for Equal Opportunity. She has published opinions and columns in newspapers across the country and appears regularly on cable news. Chavez is the author of the three books: Out of the Barrio: Toward a New Politics of Hispanic Assimilation, An Unlikely Conservative: The Transformation of an Ex-Liberal, and Betrayal: How Union Bosses Shake Down Their Members and Corrupt American Politics. She has been honored by the Library of Congress as a "Living Legend" and as nominee for Secretary of Labor by President George W. Bush.
Chavez has held many appointed positions and has served on numerous corporate and nonprofit boards. Among her appointed positions has been Chairman, National Commission on Migrant Education (1988-1992); White House Director of Public Liaison (1985); Staff Director of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights (1983-1985); and member of the Administrative Conference of the United States (1984-1986). Chavez was also the Republican nominee for U.S. Senator from Maryland in 1986 and was elected by the United Nations' Human Rights Commission to serve a four-year term as U.S. Expert to the U.N. Sub-commission on the Prevention of Discrimination and Protection of Minorities.
Chavez earned her BA from the University of Colorado.
Director, Fellows Program, Brennan Center for Justice
Biography
Theodore (Ted) R. Johnson is the director of the Fellows Program at the Brennan Center for Justice. His work explores the role that race plays in electoral politics, issue framing, and disparities in policy outcomes. Previously, he was a national fellow at New America and a research manager at Deloitte. He is also a retired commander in the U.S. Navy following a two-decade career that included service as a White House fellow, military professor at the U.S. Naval War College, and speechwriter to the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
His work has appeared in the Washington Post, Atlantic, New York Times Magazine, Wall Street Journal, National Review, and Politico, among other publications. He teaches law and public policy to master’s and doctoral students. His debut book, When the Stars Begin to Fall: Overcoming Racism and Renewing the Promise of America, outlines a path toward a multiracial national solidarity to finally overcome the existential threat of racism in the United States. It was published by Atlantic Monthly Press in June 2021. He also writes a column for The Bulwark, which highlights relevant academic research on how race continues to operate in America.
Johnson holds a BS in mathematics from Hampton University, an ALM with a concentration in international relations from Harvard University, and a doctorate of law and policy from Northeastern University.
Senior Research Fellow, Center for Equal Opportunity
Biography
In D.C. area for over 20 years, Althea Nagai, Ph.D., is a research fellow at the Center for Equal Opportunity. She has conducted numerous statistical analyses on racial and ethnic preferences in higher education, including racial and ethnic preferences in undergraduate education at five public universities in Virginia, the University of Michigan, two Arizona universities, the University of Wisconsin-Madison, two Ohio universities, and various law and medical schools. In addition, she has written two essays for CEO focusing on Asian Americans, “Too Many Asian Americans,” and “Harvard Investigates Harvard.”
She has also has done work on other statistical studies in the field of social policy. Her first study was a content analysis and critique of the national history standards with John Fonte and Lynne Cheney. She has also conducted studies on marriage, religion, and family structure; on adolescent risk behavior; on philanthropy and social change; and on American elites (American Elites, with Robert Lerner and Stanley Rothman, 1996 Yale University Press).
Aaron Siri is the Managing Partner of Siri & Glimstad LLP and has extensive experience in a wide range of complex civil litigation matters, with a focus on civil rights, class actions, and commercial litigation.
Mr. Siri has successfully litigated numerous civil rights cases involving informed consent and parental rights with regard to mandated medical products, including representing whistleblowers. (See representative examples ) He has successfully prosecuted class actions against large corporations resulting in payments to hundreds of thousands of Americans. (See representative examples ) Mr. Siri has also acted as counsel to clients in multiple commercial disputes exceeding one billion dollars. (See representative examples )
Prior to founding Siri & Glimstad, Mr. Siri was a litigation attorney at Latham & Watkins for over five years. Before Latham, Mr. Siri clerked for the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Israel (Aharon Barak) from 2004-2005 where he advised the Chief Justice of relevant American, English (including Commonwealth Countries), and International Law precedents for cases of first impression, including the implications of Israel’s planned removal of its citizens from the Gaza Strip/West Bank.
Mr. Siri has also been involved in various pro-bono matters, including representation of asylum applicants, housing discrimination victims, and non-profit organizations in tenant-landlord disputes, as well as being chosen as a Frank C. Newman delegate to present a paper he authored before the United Nations Human Rights Sub-Commission.
Mr. Siri earned his law degree at the University of California, Berkeley School of Law where he received four Prosser Prizes and ten High Honors. He was also the Editor-in-Chief and founder of the Berkeley Business Law Journal, which he developed into a nationally recognized publication, and was ranked the #1 commercial law journal in the country.
Prior to law school, Mr. Siri was an auditor at Arthur Andersen LLP, where he examined internal controls and audited corporate documents for private and public micro-cap technology companies. Mr. Siri is a Certified Public Accountant and an attorney admitted in federal and state courts across the country.
Adjunct Professor of Law, Scalia Law; Google, Corporate Counsel
Biography
Kathryn Ciano Mauler currently serves as a Corporate Counsel at Google. Prior to Google, Kathryn was Senior Regulatory Counsel at Uber Technologies, and also spent three years at i360, LLC as General Counsel. Before this, she also worked at a boutique law firm in Washington, D.C. and at the Institute for Justice.
She received her B.A. from the University of Florida. She also received her business degree from the University of Florida - Warrington College of Business, studying at the Ecole supérieure de Commerce de Toulouse in France. Kathryn's J.D. is from the George Mason University School of Law.
Senior Director of Strategy and Research, The Center for Growth and Opportunity at Utah State University
Biography
Christopher Koopman is the Senior Director of Strategy and Research at The Center for Growth and Opportunity at Utah State University. He previously served as a Senior Research Fellow and Director of the Technology Policy Program at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University. He specializes in regulation, competition, and innovation. His research and commentary has appeared in the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Washington Post, USA Today, Bloomberg,and NPR. He is also a contributor at The Hill, and was named to Forbes' 30 Under 30 2016 for law and policy.
Koopman earned his J.D. from Ave Maria University and his LL.M. in law and economics at George Mason University where he now teaches in both the economics department and the George Mason University School of Law.
Lewis & Clark Distinguished Professor of Law Emeritus, Lewis & Clark Law School
Biography
Professor Funk is the author of American Constitutional Structure and a co-author of one of the leading administrative law casebooks, Administrative Procedure and Practice: Problems and Cases, as well as Administrative Law: Examples & Explanations and the Federal Administrative Procedure Sourcebook. Together with Professor Craig Johnston, Professor Funk is also a co-author of Legal Protection of the Environment, an environmental law casebook. In 2004-05, Funk was a Senior Fulbright Scholar at the University of Heidelberg, where he taught both American constitutional law and environmental law. Funk has published numerous articles on administrative and environmental issues, including in such publications as the Duke Law Journal, the Harvard Journal on Legislation, the Yale Journal on Regulation, the Administrative Law Review, and the U.C.L.A Journal of Environmental Law and Policy. He has chaired both the Administrative Law and Natural Resources Law Sections of the American Association of Law Schools. Funk is also active in the American Bar Association, where he recently served on the ABA’s President’s Task Force on Preemption of State Tort Law and where he is a Fellow of the Administrative Law and Regulatory Practice Section, which he formerly chaired and on whose Council he served. Professor Funk is also a Center for Progressive Reform Scholar, a member of the American Law Institute, and a Fellow of the American Bar Foundation. He has been admitted to practice in New York, the District of Columbia, and before the U.S. Supreme Court.
Before coming to the law school to teach, Professor Funk was an assistant general counsel at the U.S. Department of Energy and earned a special citation for exceptional performance from the Secretary of Energy. Prior to that Funk served as the principal staff member of the Legislation Subcommittee of the U.S. House of Representatives Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, where he was instrumental in the drafting of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. Before joining the House Committee, Funk was a staff attorney in the Office of Legal Counsel of the U.S. Department of Justice, where he received a special commendation for outstanding service. Immediately after law school he clerked for Judge James Oakes of the U.S. Court of Appeals, Second Circuit.
Karen Harned is President at Harned Strategies LLC. Previously, she served as Executive Director of the National Federation of Independent Business Small Business Legal Center, a post she held from 2002-2022. Prior to joining the Legal Center, Ms. Harned was an attorney at a Washington, D.C. law firm specializing in food and drug law, where she represented several small and large businesses and their respective trade associations before Congress and federal agencies. She also served as Assistant Press Secretary to U.S. Senator Don Nickles of Oklahoma from August of 1989 to March of 1993. Ms. Harned received her B.A. from the University of Oklahoma in 1989 and her J.D. from The George Washington University National Law Center in 1995. She is admitted to practice in the District of Columbia.
As Executive Director of the NFIB Small Business Legal Center, Ms. Harned commented regularly on small business cases before federal and state courts, as well as the U.S. Supreme Court. She has appeared on Fox News, Fox Business, NBC Nightly News, CNN, CNBC and MSNBC, as well as National Public Radio, CBS Radio, and radio outlets across the country. Her opinion editorials and articles regarding healthcare, lawsuit abuse, regulation, and other issues important to small business have been published in newspapers and other publications nationwide.
Ms. Harned has testified before Congress on the small business impact of regulation and the civil justice system. Additionally, she has conducted numerous webinars and legal compliance seminars for small business owners across the country on issues relating to employment law, including unionization and immigration.
U.S. Attorney, Middle District of Tennessee, U.S. Department of Justice
Biography
Braden Boucek was sworn in on December 24, 2025, as the United States Attorney for the Middle District of Tennessee. Prior to becoming United States Attorney, Mr. Boucek served as the senior vice president of litigation at the Southeastern Legal Foundation having previously served as the vice president of legal affairs at the Beacon Center. Mr. Boucek has extensive experience as a prosecutor, starting his career at the Tennessee Attorney General’s Office before serving for two years as an Assistant District Attorney General in Williamson County. He was a federal prosecutor for ten years, first serving as an Assistant United States Attorney in the Western District of Tennessee from 2005 to 2011. From 2011 to 2015, Mr. Boucek was an Assistant United States Attorney in the Middle District of Tennessee, the district he now leads as the United States Attorney.
Lecturer in Residence and Executive Director, California Constitution Center, University of California, Berkeley, School of Law
Biography
David A. Carrillo received his doctorate from Berkeley Law before joining the faculty as a lecturer in residence and the founding executive director of the California Constitution Center in 2012. The center is devoted to developing scholarship concerning the California constitution and the California Supreme Court. Dr. Carrillo coauthored a casebook on California constitutional law, teaches courses on the California constitution and the California Supreme Court, publishes articles on those subjects, and is editor-in-chief of SCOCAblog.com, a blog about the state high court.
Before starting his academic career Dr. Carrillo was in active practice for 16 years, as a Deputy Attorney General with the California Department of Justice, as a Deputy City Attorney in San Francisco, as a Deputy District Attorney in Contra Costa County, and as a commercial litigation associate in private practice. A member of the California bar since 1995, Dr. Carrillo is admitted to practice before the Supreme Court of the United States, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, and the Northern, Southern, Central, and Eastern District Courts of California.
In October 2019, California Governor Gavin Newsom appointed Dr. Carrillo to a four-year term on the California Law Revision Commission, where he is serving as the 2021-22 vice-chair. He also serves on the board of the Constitutional Rights Foundation and chairs the Citrin Center advisory board. His past charitable and professional board service includes: the Bar Association of San Francisco; the California Bar Foundation; the National Advisory Council of the Institute of Governmental Studies; the Foundation for Democracy and Justice; the State Bar Committee on Appellate Courts; the Justice and Diversity Center of the Bar Association of San Francisco; the Volunteer Legal Services Corporation in Alameda County; and the Berkeley Law Alumni Association. Dr. Carrillo chaired the judicial appointments committee of the Alameda County Bar Association, and served on the State Bar Commission on Judicial Nominees Evaluation and the Committee of Bar Examiners, as well as San Francisco and Alameda bar association committees on judicial appointments. He is a life member of the La Raza Lawyers Association (San Francisco and East Bay) and the Hispanic National Bar Association.
Luke A. Wake is an attorney at the Pacific Legal Foundation. Prior to joining PLF, he was a senior staff attorney at the NFIB Small Business Legal Center.
Wake has particular expertise on environmental and land use issues, and has worked on numerous other constitutional issues and matters of importance to small business owners. He is an ardent defender of private property rights, which he believes are essential to the free enterprise system and the foundation of American liberty. As a strong advocate of individual rights and economic liberties, he has built his career defending small business interests.
Wake has focused on a whole host of issues, from employment law matters to regulatory compliance. In addition to serving as a resource for small business owners, Wake is committed to ensuring that the voice of small business is heard in the nation’s courts. As an appellate practitioner, Wake has focused particularly on informing the courts on matters of administrative law and on issues under the Fifth Amendment’s Takings Clause. He is also working to advance small business interests in law review articles, and was recently published in the Berkeley Journal of Law & Ecology. See R.S. Radford & Luke A. Wake, Deciphering and Extrapolating: Searching for Sense in Penn Central, 38 Ecology L.Q. 731, 746-747 (2011).
Before joining the Legal Center’s team, Wake completed a prestigious two-year fellowship as an attorney in the Pacific Legal Foundation’s College of Public Interest Law. Wake is a graduate of Case Western Reserve University School of Law in Cleveland Ohio, and is a member of the California Bar. He completed his undergraduate studies at Elon University in North Carolina in 2006 where he focused on political theory and corporate communications.
Vice President and Director, Center for Data Innovation, Information Technology and Innovation Foundation
Biography
Daniel Castro is vice president at the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation (ITIF) and director of ITIF's Center for Data Innovation.
Castro writes and speaks on a variety of issues related to information technology and internet policy, including privacy, security, intellectual property, Internet governance, e-government, and accessibility for people with disabilities. His work has been quoted and cited in numerous media outlets, including The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, NPR, USA Today, Bloomberg News, and Bloomberg Businessweek. In 2013, Castro was named to FedScoop’s list of the “top 25 most influential people under 40 in government and tech.” In 2015, U.S. Secretary of Commerce Penny Pritzker appointed Castro to the Commerce Data Advisory Council.
Castro previously worked as an IT analyst at the Government Accountability Office (GAO) where he audited IT security and management controls at various government agencies. He contributed to GAO reports on the state of information security at a variety of federal agencies, including the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation. In addition, Castro was a visiting scientist at the Software Engineering Institute in Pittsburgh, PA, where he developed virtual training simulations to provide clients with hands-on training of the latest information security tools.
He has a B.S. in foreign service from Georgetown University and an M.S. in information security technology and management from Carnegie Mellon University.
Jennifer’s research focuses on the intersection of emerging technology and law with a particular interest in the interactions between technology and the administrative state. Her work covers topics including judicial deference, liability protection for Internet platforms, autonomous vehicles and other disruptive transportation technologies, the regulation of data privacy, and the benefits of technology and innovation. Her work has appeared in USA Today, the Chicago Tribune, the New York Daily News, the Sacramento Bee, the Washington Times, Real Clear Policy, and U.S. News and World Report. Jennifer has a JD from the University of Alabama School of Law and a BA in political science at Wellesley College.
Keir Lamont, CIPP/US, is a Senior Counsel with the Future of Privacy Forum’s U.S. legislation team. In this role he supports policymaker education and independent analysis concerning federal, state, and local consumer privacy laws and regulations. Keir previously held positions at the Computer & Communications Industry Association and the Program on Data and Governance at Ohio State University. Keir holds a J.D. from Georgetown University Law Center and a B.A. in Political Science & Economics from the University of Florida.
Vice President of Legal Affairs, Beacon Center of Tennessee
Biography
Wen Fa is the Vice President of Legal Affairs at the Beacon Center of Tennessee. He also serves on Beacon’s senior leadership team. Wen leads Beacon’s legal department in its efforts to protect the constitutional rights of property owners, entrepreneurs, and other Americans in courts across the United States. Having immigrated to America from Beijing, Wen believes that property rights, economic liberty, and equality under the law are essential to a free society and strives to advance those principles through his work.
Before joining Beacon, Wen was a senior attorney with Pacific Legal Foundation, where he litigated numerous cases involving equality under the law, free speech, economic liberty, and property rights. Wen litigated two Supreme Court cases: Minnesota Voters Alliance v. Mansky, which vindicated the free speech rights of voters, and Cedar Point Nursery v. Hassid, which secured the property rights of agricultural businesses. Wen has also secured important victories for farmers standing up against a racially discriminatory federal farm loan forgiveness program and small business owners who fought back against racial preferences in small business grants.
In addition to litigation, Wen promotes liberty through speeches, debates, and op-eds. Wen testified before Congress in 2021 and has published numerous op-eds in newspapers such as the Wall Street Journal, the Hill, and San Francisco Chronicle. He has spoken about his work in podcasts, on television, and in speeches to students at Georgetown, Duke, and law schools around the country.
Wen graduated with a bachelor’s degree in finance from the University of Texas-Dallas, a master’s degree in political theory from the London School of Economics, where he studied under libertarian scholar Chandran Kukathas, and a law degree from the University of Michigan. Wen is licensed to practice law in California, Texas, and several federal courts, including the Supreme Court of the United States.
