Director of the Program in Human Rights, Catholic University of America
William L. Saunders is Chair Emeritus of the Religious Liberties Practice Group of the Federalist Society. He is also a religious liberty and human rights scholar as well as director of the Center for Human rights at The Catholic University of America. He is Law Fellow with the Institute for Human Ecology, Professor and Director of the Program in Human Rights in the School of Arts & Sciences and Co-director of the Center for Religious Liberty at the Columbus School of Law. Before joining The Catholic University of America, Mr. Saunders served as Senior Vice President and Senior Counsel with Americans United for Life for ten years. From 1999 to 2009, he was Senior Fellow in Bioethics and Human Rights Counsel at the Family Research Council.
Mr. Saunders attended the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill on a Morehead scholarship. He obtained his degree in law from the Harvard Law School.
Mr. Saunders was featured in Harvard’s first Guide to Conservative Public Interest Law in 2003 and again in the 2008 edition. He served on Harvard’s Advisory Committee for its 2008 celebration of public interest law. A member of the Supreme Court bar, he has authored numerous legal briefs in state, federal, foreign, and international courts.
Mr. Saunders’ book, Unborn Human Life and Fundamental Rights: Leading Constitutional Cases Under Scrutiny, was published in 2019. His articles and book chapters have been published by the university presses of Harvard, Villanova, Brigham Young, Fordham, Georgetown, Houston, Scranton, and the Catholic University of America, as well as by the Intercollegiate Studies Institute, Freedom House, Greenhaven Press, Rowan & Littlefield, Praeger, St. Augustine’s, and Intervarsity press. He has given lectures and participated in debates at many colleges, universities, and law schools, including Princeton, Harvard, Georgetown, and Notre Dame. He delivered the annual J. Michael Miller Lecture at the University of St. Thomas (on international law) in February 2007, the annual R. Wayne Kraft Memorial Lecture (on bioethics) at DeSales University in February 2004 and the annual James Moore Lecture (on human rights violations in Sudan) at Millikin University in 1999. He has also lectured, and/or has been published, in many foreign countries, including Italy, Germany, Poland, Austria, Spain, Greece, Slovakia, Mexico, Qatar, Malaysia, Romania, the Philippines, Hong Kong, and the United Kingdom.
In addition to speaking and writing frequently on bioethics topics, Mr. Saunders has submitted testimony to the President’s Council on Bioethics, as well as to UNESCO’s Committee on Bioethics, and has briefed Congressional staff and state legislatures. He is a regular columnist for the National Catholic Bioethics Quarterly.
Mr. Saunders has appeared often in the media, including BBC World News, CNN, Fox News, Vatican Radio, and National Public Radio. His articles on issues have appeared in a variety of journals, such as First Things, Human Events, Human Life Review, The Legal Times, Communio, The Family in America: A Journal of Public Policy, Ethics & Medics, and Touchstone.
Mr. Saunders served on the official United States delegation to the UN Special Session on Children in 2001/02. In 2011, he was a speaker at an official briefing at the UN, addressing the topic, why euthanasia is not a human right.
In 2004, he served on the NGO Working Committee in connection with the Doha Intergovernmental Conference for the Family.
Mr. Saunders is Senior Fellow with the Religious Freedom Institute, and Affiliated Scholar with the Pellegrino Center for Clinical Ethics at the Georgetown University School of Medicine. He is President of the Fellowship of Catholic Scholars and a member of the boards of the International Association of Catholic Bioethicists, the International Right to Life Federation, the Institute on Religion and Democracy, and the Society of Catholic Social Scientists.
In 1999, Mr. Saunders founded Sudan Relief and Rescue, Inc., to aid the persecuted church in Sudan. He has worked for and written on behalf of the persecuted church for many years.
Charles E. Rice Professor of Law, Concurrent Professor of Political Science, & Director, de Nicola Center for Ethics and Culture, University of Notre Dame Law School
Professor Carter Snead is one of the world’s leading experts on public bioethics – the governance of science, medicine, and biotechnology in the name of ethical goods. His research explores issues relating to neuroethics, enhancement, human embryo research, assisted reproduction, abortion, and end-of-life decision-making.
He is the author of What It Means to be Human: The Case for the Body in Public Bioethics (Harvard University Press, October 2020), which was named by the Wall Street Journal as one of the “Ten Best Books of 2020;” in his review for the same paper, Yuval Levin called it “among the most important works of moral philosophy produced so far in this century.” In May of 2022, it was listed in The New York Times as one of “Ten Books to Understand the Abortion Debate in the United States.” Snead and the book received the 2021 “Expanded Reason Award” (given by Francisco de Vitoria University (Madrid) and the Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI Vatican Foundation), and has been reviewed and discussed in such publications as the Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, New York Post, USA Today, Bloomberg Opinion, Il Foglio, Christian Post, The Review of Metaphysics, American Journal of Jurisprudence, America Magazine, First Things, The New Atlantis, Plough, The Boston Pilot, Public Discourse, Practical Ethics (Oxford University), Legal Ethics Forum, Church Life Journal, Law & Liberty, Angelus News, Mirror of Justice, Crux, Mars Hill Audio Journal, Mercator Net, BioEdge, Front Porch Republic, The National Catholic Register, The American Conservative, Fare Forward, Catholic World Report, The Gospel Coalition, Chronicles: A Magazine of American Culture, The Human Life Review, Eikon, Salvo, The Catholic Thing, The Daily Signal, and National Review.
Additionally, he has written more than 70 journal articles, book chapters, and essays. His scholarly works appear in such publications as the New York University Law Review, the Harvard Law Review Forum, the Vanderbilt Law Review, Constitutional Commentary, Quaderni Costituzionali (Italy’s premier journal of constitutional law), the Yale Journal of Health Policy, Law and Ethics, the Journal of Medicine and Philosophy, and Political Science Quarterly. He is also the editor of two book series for the University of Notre Dame Press – “Catholic Ideas for a Secular World” and “Notre Dame Studies in Bioethics and Medical Ethics.” Snead teaches Law & Bioethics, Health Law, Torts, and Constitutional Criminal Procedure.
In addition to his scholarship and teaching, Snead has provided advice on the legal and public policy dimensions of bioethical questions to officials in all three branches of the U.S. government, and in several intergovernmental fora. Prior to joining the law faculty at Notre Dame, Snead served as general counsel to The President’s Council on Bioethics (Chaired by Dr. Leon R. Kass), where he was the primary drafter of the 2004 report, “Reproduction and Responsibility: The Regulation of New Biotechnologies.” He has testified in the U.S. House of Representatives on regulatory questions concerning RU-486 (the abortion pill). In 2013, he testified in the Texas state legislature on the constitutionality of a proposed fetal pain bill. Snead led the U.S. government delegation to UNESCO and served as its chief negotiator for the Universal Declaration on Bioethics and Human Rights, adopted in October 2005. He served as the U.S. government’s Permanent Observer to the Council of Europe’s Steering Committee on Bioethics, where he assisted in its efforts to elaborate international instruments and standards for the ethical governance of science and medicine. In conjunction with the American Association for the Advancement of Science, he has lectured to state and federal judges on the uses of neuroimaging in the courtroom. He regularly serves as an expert witness on bioethical matters before federal courts.
In 2008, he was appointed by the director-general of UNESCO to a four-year term on the International Bioethics Committee, a 36-member body of independent experts that advises member states on bioethics, law, and public policy. The IBC is the only bioethics commission in the world with a global mandate. In 2016, he was appointed to the Pontifical Academy for Life, the principal bioethics advisory body to Pope Francis. He is also an elected fellow of The Hastings Center, the oldest independent bioethics research institute in the world.
Snead received his J.D., magna cum laude, from Georgetown University, where he was elected to the Order of the Coif, and his bachelor of arts from St. John’s College in Annapolis, Maryland. He clerked for Judge Paul J. Kelly Jr. of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit.
Director, International Center for Food Industry Excellence, Texas Tech University
Dr. Mindy Brashears is the former Under Secretary of Agriculture in Food Safety where she served the USDA as a political appointee from 2019-2021. She is currently the Associate Vice President of Research at Texas Tech University and a Professor of Food Safety and Public Health holding the Roth and Letch family Endowed Chair of Food Safety. She also serves as the Director of the International Center for Food Industry Excellence at Texas Tech University.
She is a fellow of the National Academy of Inventors and has 3 spinoff companies based on her work. She holds a B.S. in food technology from Texas Tech (magna cum laude) and M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in food science from Oklahoma State University. She is married to Dr. Todd Brashears, who is a professor of agricultural education, and has three daughters, Bailey, Reagan (Jimenez) and Presley and one son-in-law, Eli Jimenez. Her research focuses on mitigation strategies in pre-and post-harvest environments and on the emergence of antimicrobial drug resistance in agricultural ecosystems. Her interests are primarily in meat, poultry and vegetable products.
She also has a passion for food security and has led international research teams to numerous places across Latin America and the Caribbean to improve food safety and security in those sectors and to set up sustainable agriculture systems in developing areas. She teaches courses in food microbiology and food safety and offers industry training in food safety and security. She has received multiple awards including the IAFP Laboratorian Award, The AMSA Research and Industry/Extension Award and was named as a Future Icon in the Meat Industry by the National Provisioner Magazine.
MD
Dr. Ostroff retired from the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in early 2019.
During his 7 years at FDA, he served as Deputy Commissioner for Foods and
Veterinary Medicine, where he oversaw the agency’s food and animal health
activities of FDA, including responsibilities in the areas of food safety and
nutrition, food labeling, food and color additives, cosmetics, dietary supplements,
animal drugs and animal feed, and research to support the food and veterinary
medicine mission of FDA. Dr. Ostroff also served as FDA’s Chief Scientist and as
the agency’s Acting Commissioner on two occasions in both the Obama and
Trump administrations.
Before joining the FDA, Dr. Ostroff worked at the Centers for Disease Control and
Prevention (CDC) in Atlanta for more than 20 years on infectious disease
surveillance and outbreak investigations, especially management and
coordination of complex emerging infectious disease threats such as anthrax,
Ebola, West Nile virus, SARS, and avian influenza. He was in the US Public Health
Service Commissioned Corps, attaining the rank of Assistant Surgeon General
(Rear Admiral). He also worked at the Pennsylvania Department of Health as
Director of the Bureau of Epidemiology and the Commonwealth’s Acting Physician
General.
Dr. Ostroff received his undergraduate and medical degrees from the University
of Pennsylvania. He currently holds adjunct professor appointments at Penn
State College of Medicine’s Department of Public Health Sciences and the
University of Pittsburgh School of Public Health’s Department of Epidemiology.
Deputy Secretary of Agriculture, U.S. Department of Agriculture
Judge Stephen Alexander Vaden was appointed as the Deputy Secretary of the U.S. Department of Agriculture on July 7, 2025. Alongside Secretary Brooke L. Rollins, Deputy Secretary Vaden leads the Department’s operations and implements policies that support America’s food and farm systems. A native of Union City, Tennessee, Deputy Secretary Vaden brings expertise in agricultural policy, law, and rural development. Previously, he served as a judge on the U.S. Court of International Trade and as General Counsel of USDA. Throughout Deputy Secretary Vaden’s time as General Counsel, he led successful Supreme Court litigation, advanced regulatory reform, and supported the implementation of the 2018 Farm Bill. He is a graduate of Yale Law School and Vanderbilt University. A public servant with strong agricultural roots, Deputy Secretary Vaden is committed to revitalizing rural America and ensuring an abundant, affordable, and safe U.S. food supply.
Former Deputy Commissioner for Food Policy and Response, FDA
Frank Yiannas is a former Deputy Commissioner for Food Policy and Response, a position he assumed in December of 2018. In that role he was the principal advisor to the FDA Commissioner in the development and execution of policies related to food safety, including implementation of the FDA Food Safety Modernization Act (FSMA). His leadership role within the Agency covered a broad spectrum of food safety priorities, such as outbreak response, traceback investigations, product recall activities, and supply chain innovation across the full spectrum of FDA-regulated products.
Prior to his time at FDA, Mr. Yiannas held leadership roles with two industry giants: Walmart and the Walt Disney Company. At Walmart, which he joined in 2008 and served for over a decade, Mr. Yiannas was the Vice President for Food Safety. In this role, he led the effort to make Walmart the first U.S. retailer to require suppliers to achieve certification against one of the Global Food Safety Initiative (GFSI) benchmarked food safety schemes.
At Disney, where he worked for 19 years, he was the Director of Safety and Health. During his tenure, Disney received the prestigious Black Pearl Award for corporate excellence in food safety from the International Association for Food Protection. The recipient of numerous awards, in 2007, he received the National Science Foundation’s International Lifetime Achievement Award for Leadership in Food Safety. He is also the recipient of the Collaboration Award by FDA in 2008 and he was named the 2015 Industry Professional Food Safety Hero Award by STOP Foodborne Illness, a consumer advocacy group.
Mr. Yiannas is a past president of the International Association for Food Protection and a past vice-chairman of the Global Food Safety Initiative. He was also an adjunct Professor in the Food Safety Program at Michigan State University, and in 2017 was awarded the MSU Outstanding Faculty Award.
A microbiologist, Mr. Yiannas received a B.S. in microbiology from the University of Central Florida and a Master of Public Health degree from the University of South Florida.
Paula Stannard is a former deputy general counsel and acting general counsel of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), where she oversaw the Food and Drug, Civil Rights and Legislation divisions of the 450-attorney HHS Office of the General Counsel and provided legal advice and counsel to senior HHS officials, including the Secretary of the department, on the issues arising in their respective areas.
At Alston & Bird, Paula advises clients on regulatory questions that arise out of the on-going health care reform effort and focuses her practice on HIPAA and health information technology (including certified EHR and meaningful use issues), food and drug and other regulatory issues in the health care sector. Her HHS experience provides clients substantive knowledge of, and experience in, FDA, HIPAA, e-health and health IT, federal health insurance regulation, patient safety, and public health preparedness and emergency response issues.
Paula received her J.D. from Stanford Law School in 1990, where she was an executive editor of the Stanford Law Review, and her B.A., magna cum laude, in political science and Latin from Amherst College, where she was elected to Phi Beta Kappa. She clerked for the Honorable J.L. Edmondson of the United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit.
Stanford University
(J.D., 1990)
Amherst College
(B.A., 1987)
Talks with Authors: What It Means to Be Human
William L. Saunders, O. Carter Snead
In What It Means to Be Human - The Case for the Body in Public...
Food Safety: When Regulatory Jurisdictional Battles and Public Safety Collide
Mindy Brashears, Stephen Ostroff, Stephen Alexander Vaden, Frank Yiannas
Food is a necessity for life. It should therefore surprise few that the federal government...
The Obama Administration’s Budget Proposal for Health and Human Services
Paula M. Stannard
Brought to you by the Administrative Law & Regulation Practice GroupOn February 26, 2009, President Barack Obama...