Jim Blew is a co-founder of DFI, the Defense of Freedom Institute for Public Policy Studies, and president of DFI Action. These DC-based nonprofits promote education freedom, civil rights, and a limited federal role in education and workforce development.
Jim served as U.S. assistant secretary for policy and budget under Betsy DeVos. Prior to his federal service, he worked in state-based education reform for more than 20 years, including leadership roles at StudentsFirst, 50CAN, and the predecessor to the American Federation for Children. He also helped guide the education reform investments of the Walton Family Foundation for nearly a decade until 2014. Before committing himself full time to education reform, Jim worked at political and communications firms in New York and California. He holds a bachelor’s degree from Occidental College and a master’s in business administration from the Yale School of Management.
Vice President of Legal Affairs & Director of Legal Defense & Education Center, EdChoice
Biography
Leslie Hiner, Esq. is an advocate of educational freedom, a crusader fighting for the unencumbered opportunity of parents to decide how and where their children will be educated. She believes in the power of individuals to change the world, and believes personal liberty will be enhanced when our method of funding K–12 education is changed to empower parents and students before institutions.
As vice president of legal affairs at EdChoice, the nation’s leading educational choice organization, Leslie leads the EdChoice Legal Defense and Education Center for this nonpartisan, charitable nonprofit and engages with other national organizations to support school choice. She is a proven leader, advancing educational freedom and choice for all as a pathway to successful lives and a stronger society.
Hiner is an attorney with extensive state legislative and executive branch experience. In Indiana, she was the first woman chief of staff to the speaker of the house, counsel to the senate president pro tempore, and general counsel/elections deputy to the Secretary of State. She is also a former small business owner, and former litigator in private practice.
A founding board member of one of Indiana’s first charter schools, Leslie served as chairman of the board for the first several years, guiding the school’s growth from about 150 to over 1000 students. She was also directly involved in developing Indiana’s original charter school law, one of the best in the nation, and Indiana’s voucher law, the largest in the country to date.
Leslie is a member of the American Enterprise Institute Leadership Network, serves on the Schools That Can National Advisory Council, and is a Policy Advisor for The Heartland Institute. Leslie is a long-time member of the Federalist Society and a Lugar Series Excellence in Public Service alumna.
Hiner travels the country speaking on educational issues and testifying at public hearings. Recent engagements include the American Enterprise Institute With all deliberate speed: Brown v. Board of Education II 60 years later; Center for Urban Renewal and Education National Policy Summit, “Changing Policy to Change Lives”; National Conference of State Legislatures Summit debate, School Vouchers and Education Savings Accounts: Are They Constitutional; Network of Enlightened Women National Conference, Three Things You Need To Know About Education Policy; International Conference on School Choice and Reform, The Constitutionality of Educational Choice; 100 Black Men of Greater Dallas/Fort Worth, Project Soar’s Mobilizing the Village; Louisville Federalist Society Lawyers’ Chapter, Is School Choice Good Public Policy; American Conservative Union CPAC 2017.
She’s been cited in several publications, including the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Chicago Tribune, Washington Times, Forbes, US News & World Report, The Hill, Real Clear Policy, Federalist Society DocketWatch, National Review, The Federalist, Zman Magazine, Watchdog, and has appeared on EWTN News Nightly, Wall Street Journal Video Opinion Journal podcasts, David Webb Show on Sirius/XM, ChoiceMediaTV, The Heartland Institute podcasts and school choice events, The Morning Blaze, Issues in Education and many state level broadcasts.
A native of Ohio, she earned her Juris Doctorate from the University of Akron School of Law, her Bachelor of Arts degree from the College of Wooster, and attended Rostad Teachers College as an exchange student in Sweden where she was a student teacher in grades 2 and 3. She and her husband reside in Indianapolis, and have two grown children.
Shaka Mitchell serves as a Senior Fellow for the American Federation for Children.
He brings experience from several high-performing charter school networks, including Rocketship Education and LEAD Public schools, that serve over 2,500 students in Nashville.
Shaka began his career in education as the Associate Director of Policy and Planning at the D.C.-based Center for Education Reform. He then led outreach efforts at the Institute for Justice, a constitutional law firm based in Arlington, VA.
He is an alumnus of Belmont University where he teaches American Government and Constitutional Law as an adjunct faculty member. He earned his Juris Doctorate from the Wake Forest University School of Law where he sits on the Board of Advisors for the Journal of Law and Policy. Shaka is a co-founder of MoreMarrowDonors.org, a non-profit committed to providing scholarships to bone marrow donors who are matches for patients with various blood diseases. Shaka is the Chair of the Tennessee State Advisory Committee to the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights.
He is a member of the American Enterprise Institute’s Leadership Network and Aspen Institute Civil Society Fellowship. Shaka and his wife Stephanie are members of Edgefield Church in Nashville and are active in several non-profit organizations.
Gene Schaerr specializes in handling—and usually winning—civil appeals, writ proceedings and similar matters, both in appellate courts and in the law-focused proceedings at the trial-court or agency level that often determine success or failure on appeal. He has argued and won dozens of cases in a variety of forums—including the U.S. Supreme Court (where he has argued six cases), every federal circuit, and numerous federal district courts and state appellate courts. His win rate in the dozens of federal appeals he has argued in the past six years is over 75 percent.
He was a coordinator of Sidley Austin's appellate practice from 1993 until 2005, and from 2005 until 2014 was the chair of the nationwide appellate practice at Winston & Strawn—a practice he led to numerous recognitions in such publications as the Appellate Hot List. His personal practice successes have won him repeated recognition in such publications as Best Lawyers in Washington, D.C., Legal 500, D.C. Superlawyers, and Best Lawyers in America. In January 2014, Mr. Schaerr formed his own boutique litigation firm so that he could serve his clients without the conflicts and inefficiencies inherent in big-firm law practice.
Substantively, Mr. Schaerr's experience includes not only virtually every area of federal law, defamation, higher education law, immigration, insurance coverage, labor and employment, patent and trademark, privacy, product liability and warranty, statutory interpretation and tax.He has represented clients in virtually every sector, including automotive, communications, energy, financial services, health care, higher education, insurance, maritime, pharmaceuticals, technology and state and local government. He also teaches courses in Supreme Court litigation, religious freedom litigation and advanced litigation skills as an adjunct professor of law at the Brigham Young University law school.
Mr. Schaerr began law practice in 1987 following clerkships on the U.S. Supreme Court (for Chief Justice Warren Burger and Justice Antonin Scalia) and on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit (for then- Judge Kenneth Starr). He graduated in 1985 from the Yale Law School, where he was Editor-in-Chief of the Yale Journal on Regulation and Senior Editor of the Yale Law Journal. From 1991 to 1993, he served in the White House as Associate Counsel to the President, where he had responsibility for a wide range of constitutional and administrative-law issues, including those involving economic regulation, higher education, separation of powers, federalism and religious freedom. He serves as Chairman of the Constitutional Sources Project, a digital resource providing free public access to historical materials relevant to the U.S. Constitution.
Dr. John Eastman is the former Henry Salvatori Professor of Law & Community Service and former Dean at Chapman University's Dale E. Fowler School of Law, where he had been a member of the faculty since 1999, specializing in Constitutional Law, Legal History, and Property. He is a founding director of the Center for Constitutional Jurisprudence, a public interest law firm affiliated with the Claremont Institute that he founded in 1999. He has a Ph.D. in Government from the Claremont Graduate School and a J.D. from the University of Chicago Law School, and a B.A. in Politics and Economics from the University of Dallas. He serves as the Chairman of the Board of the National Organization for Marriage.
Prior to joining the Chapman law faculty, Dr. Eastman served as a law clerk to the Honorable Clarence Thomas, Associate Justice, Supreme Court of the United States, and to the Honorable J. Michael Luttig, Judge, United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit and practiced law with the national law firm of Kirkland & Ellis. Dr. Eastman has also represented numerous clients in important constitutional law matters and has argued before the Supreme Court. On behalf of the Claremont Institute Center for Constitutional Jurisprudence, he has participated as amicus curiae before the Supreme Court of the United States, U.S. Courts of Appeals, and State Supreme Courts in more than one hundred cases of constitutional significance, including Boy Scouts of America v. Dale, Zelman v. Simmons-Harris (the school vouchers case), Kelo v. New London, Ct. (eminent domain), and Van Orden v. Perry (the 10 Commandments case). He has also appeared as an expert legal commentator on numerous television and radio programs, including C-SPAN, Fox News, PBS, NewsHour, and The O'Reilly Factor.
Director, Project on Criminal Justice, Cato Institute
Biography
Matthew Cavedon is the Director of the Cato Institute’s Project on Criminal Justice. He focuses on reforming plea-driven mass adjudication, ensuring police accountability, and defending constitutional criminal originalism. Cavedon’s scholarship has been published (or is forthcoming in) publications including the Arizona State Law Journal, Cato Supreme Court Review, Seattle University Law Review, and Georgetown Journal of Law and Public Policy. Formerly a Georgia public defender and fellow at the Institute for Justice, Cavedon has taught law school courses on criminal law and procedure, as well as the First Amendment. Cavedon clerked for a U.S. district court and the Supreme Court of Georgia. He came to Cato following a fellowship at the Emory University Center for the Study of Law and Religion.
Sarah Field is Chief Counsel, Legal Policy at Koch Capabilities, LLC, where she develops and scales Koch-wide strategic policy initiatives on a variety of legal, judicial, and regulatory topics.
Sarah specializes in leading initiatives that require rapid vision development, start-up, and scaling expertise. This has included leading criminal justice reform and constitutionally limited government initiatives for the Stand Together community, overseeing the comprehensive portfolio of the Stand Together community’s issue areas, driving Americans for Prosperity’s long-term vision and strategy for addressing the country’s political environment, and leading judicial engagement strategy at Americans for Prosperity.
Before that, Sarah served as Executive Director of the Center for Shared Services, which provided compliance, talent development, and operational support for the Stand Together community. Previously, Sarah held roles at the Charles Koch Foundation, the Federalist Society, and a variety of other nonprofit organizations. Sarah serves on the board of Americans for Public Safety, an organization dedicated to public safety, justice, and the rule of law.
Sarah received her B.A. from Grove City College, her law degree from Case Western Reserve University School of Law, and is an alumna of the Koch Associate Program.
Chief Counsel to Senate Republican Majority Leader
Biography
Ryan Giles serves as a Chief Counsel to the United States Senate Majority Leader.
Ryan previously served as Chief Counsel on the Senate Judiciary Committee, where he supervised the Nominations & Constitution unit and the Crime & National Security unit. He also served as General Counsel to the Senate Republican Policy Committee and the Homeland Security & Governmental Affairs Committee. In the Senate, Ryan has advised on nominations and the federal judiciary, constitutional law, criminal law, congressional oversight, national security, foreign relations law, regulatory policy, technology and artificial intelligence, and Senate procedure and legislative strategy.
Before his Senate tenure, Ryan litigated at both trial and appellate levels at Williams & Connolly in Washington, D.C. He clerked for Judge David B. Sentelle on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit and Judge Britt C. Grant on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit.
Ryan is a summa cum laude graduate of the University of Georgia School of Law, where he served as Editor-in-Chief of the Georgia Law Review.
Earlier in his career, Ryan served as a police officer in Georgia, working as a midnight-shift patrol officer, field training officer, and SWAT team member. He also served as an infantry officer in the Georgia Army National Guard.
Erin Morrow Hawley serves as Chair of Lex Politica's Supreme Court and Appellate Practice overseeing the firm’s strategic appellate litigation and critical motions practice in the trial courts. Erin is an experienced litigator who represents clients in constitutional, regulatory, and appellate matters in federal and state courts throughout the country.
Erin has represented dozens of clients before the Supreme Court of the United States, served as lead counsel in high-profile cases raising novel constitutional and statutory issues, and authored numerous successful petitions for certiorari and briefs in opposition. She has argued in state and federal appellate and trial courts throughout the country, including the Supreme Court of the United States. Erin represents diverse clients in high-stakes litigation from state governments to faith-based nonprofits to Fortune 100 companies. She possesses expertise on a wide range of subject matters including administrative law, the First Amendment, religious liberty, federal jurisdiction, federal preemption, equitable jurisdiction, tax law, the Affordable Care Act, and Title IX.
Erin represents clients in cases where public communications strategy is paramount. She is a sought-after speaker and writer, has testified multiple times before Congress, and is a frequent presenter on constitutional and administrative law issues, including at the Oxford Union, the National Federalist Society Convention, and university campuses across the country. She is a frequent commentator to media outlets, including Fox News, MSNBC, the Wall Street Journal, WORLD, USA Today, the Federalist, and the Hill.
Erin previously oversaw Alliance Defending Freedom’s--where she still serves as Of Counsel--litigation strategies to empower women and protect the dignity of life, defend pregnancy centers’ First Amendment rights from government overreach, and safeguard Americans’ freedoms from the ever-encroaching administrative state.
Justice William B. Sellers was appointed by Governor Kay Ivey in May 2017. He was elected to a full term in 2018 and re-elected in 2024. His current term expires in 2031.
Justice Sellers received a Bachelor of Arts degree from Hillsdale College in 1985, a Juris Doctorate from the University of Alabama in 1988, and a Masters of Laws in Taxation from New York University in 1989. Justice Sellers practiced law in Montgomery for 28 years. He maintained a general business practice with emphasis on taxation, business organizations and finance. A major part of Justice Sellers's practice involved tax litigation.
Justice Sellers is a member of numerous civic organizations and professional associations. In 2012, he received the President's Award for service to the Alabama Bar Association. In 2013, Governor Robert Bentley appointed Justice Sellers to the Alabama State Council on the Arts. In August 2014, Justice Sellers was elected chairman of the Fair Ballot Commission. He is past president of the Rotary Club of Montgomery, past chairman of the Montgomery Area Business Committee for the Arts, chairman of the River Region United Way Campaign in 2008, and past chairman of the YMCA of Greater Montgomery. Justice Sellers was a member of the Electoral College in 2004, 2008, 2012, and 2016.
Justice Sellers is admitted to practice before the United States Supreme Court, the Supreme Court of Alabama, the District of Columbia Court of Appeals, the United States District Courts for the Middle and Northern Districts of Alabama, the United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit, and the United States Tax Court. He is a member of the Alabama State Bar, the Montgomery County Bar Association, and the District of Columbia Bar. Since 2014, he has served as the community liaison with the International Officers School at Maxwell Air Force Base.
Justice Sellers and his wife, Lee, have been married for 37 years. They are members of Trinity Presbyterian Church and have three adult children and two grandchildren.
Adam Doverspike serves as strategic counsel to corporations, municipalities, and developers navigating the intersection of high-stakes litigation, regulatory compliance, and economic development. With a background in economics and federal policy, Adam brings a data-driven and commercially pragmatic approach to resolving his clients’ most complex legal challenges.
Speaker Information
Gregory Kent Frizzell
Senior Judge, U.S. District Court, Northern District of Oklahoma
