About HERA
Executive Director
Maeve Elise Brown is Executive Director of HERA. She has 20 years of experience as a public interest attorney, starting in Southern California at Legal Aid Foundation of Los Angeles. She then joined the staff of the East Bay Community Law Center, first as a staff attorney, then as director of the Housing and Economic Development Units. While at EBCLC, Ms. Brown was lead organizer and founder of People's Community Partnership Federal Credit Union, a community development credit union. Thereafter, Ms. Brown joined the staff of National Housing Law Project where she directed the Section 8 Homeownership, Predatory Lending, and Rural Housing Foreclosure Avoidance Initiatives, providing training and technical assistance nationally. Ms. Brown has published articles on affordable housing issues and authored a chapter in the American Bar Association’s Legal Guide to Affordable Housing Development.
Staff Attorneys
Elizabeth Letcher has practiced as a public interest attorney for over a decade. She is a 1994 graduate of UC Berkeley School of Law, University of California. After clerking for the Hon. Thelton E. Henderson on the U.S. District Court and Hon. James R. Browning of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco, Ms. Letcher was a Skadden Fellow at the Employment Law Center. Over the course of six years as an associate at a small civil rights firm and two as a private attorney working with other firms, she practiced extensively in both state and federal courts and provided business and employment advice and counseling. Her litigation has focused on challenges to governmental acts and policies, employment discrimination and public benefits suits, civil, administrative and criminal appeals, and employment and consumer class action cases.
Adetunji Olude is a 2009 graduate of Georgetown University Law Center and joins HERA as an Equal Justice Works Fellow. Prior to law school, Ms. Olude worked as a legal assistant at Legal Services for Children in San Francisco where she assisted detained unaccompanied minors in immigration matters. Ms. Olude has previously worked on predatory lending issues as a law clerk at the Center for Responsible Lending in Washington, D.C. and in the Consumer Protection unit of the D.C. Office of the Attorney General. As a Fellow, Ms. Olude will focus on improving language access and access to legal services for immigrant homeowners facing foreclosure in Alameda and Contra Costa counties. Ms. Olude is fluent in Spanish and Portuguese.
Cynthia Singerman graduated Phi Beta Kappa and Summa Cum Laude from the University of Florida in 2003 and then from the University of Florida law school in 2006 where she earned highest honors in a trial practice training program. Throughout law school, she volunteered at a legal services organization, helping clients with family, employment and housing issues. Following law school Ms. Singerman moved to the Bay Area in May of 2006. Before joining HERA as a staff attorney in January of 2009, Ms. Singerman worked as a Public Defender in Marin County. She was the lead attorney on the Interpreter Calendar consulting with clients in Spanish. Ms. Singerman gained extensive experience addressing the needs of immigrant communities. As a bi-lingual staff attorney at HERA, Ms. Singerman works primarily with homeowners throughout Napa County focusing on foreclosure prevention services and the advocacy of social justice.
Lisa Sitkin has been practicing law since 1997, when she graduated from the Stanford Law School. Prior to joining HERA, Ms. Sitkin litigated civil rights, media law, intellectual property and advertising cases, as well as providing advice and counseling to newspapers, publishers, businesses and individuals on matters ranging from intellectual property to libel law to fair credit reporting. At HERA, Ms. Sitkin counsels individual clients, assists with predatory lending and related litigation and serves as a consumer advocate vis-à-vis lenders, loan servicers and legislative bodies. Since joining HERA, Ms. Sitkin has conducted numerous workshops and trainings regarding mortgages, foreclosures, loan modification and foreclosure rescue scams, including workshops produced by the Practicing Law Institute. She is also co-author of an article about post-foreclosure evictions, published in the July/August 2009 issue of the Clearinghouse Review, a journal of the Sargent Shriver National Center on Poverty Law.
Noah Zinner is a 2006 graduate of UC Berkeley School of Law. Following law school, Mr. Zinner received an Equal Justice Works fellowship to work on predatory mortgage lending issues with HERA and Bay Area Legal Aid, before returning to HERA as a Staff Attorney in 2008. Mr. Zinner has represented clients in cases dealing with mortgage fraud, loan servicing abuses, and financial elder abuse, and housing discrimination. While at Bay Area Legal Aid, Mr. Zinner also represented tenants in eviction cases.
HERA's Board of Directors
Notice: board members are not available to provide legal advice to the public on behalf of HERA.
Elizabeth Clark (Vice-President) is an attorney who has
worked extensively with clients in real estate, land use, banking and commercial
transactions and is now counsel with Fitzgerald, Abbott and Beardsley, in
Oakland, California. Previously with the Wendel Rosen law firm, Ms. Clark
has received commendations for her volunteer work, including serving as supervising
attorney for the Low Income Eviction Project for Landlords for the Alameda
County Volunteer Legal Services Corporation. She received the Individual
Distinguished Service Award in 2006 from the Alameda County Bar Association
and was named Volunteer of the Year in 2004 and Mentor of the Year in 2006
by the Alameda County Volunteer Legal Services Corporation. Ms. Clark is
admitted to the State Bar of California, the New York State Bar and the U.S.
Virgin Islands Bar.
Contact Info:
Fitzgerald, Abbott, Beardsley
1221 Broadway, 21st Floor, Oakland, CA 94612
(510) 451-3300
Scott Chang is an attorney specializing in representing
plaintiffs in fair housing cases. For more than a decade, Mr. Chang
has been a frequent workshop trainer and speaker at national fair housing
conferences and events. Before entering private practice, Mr. Chang
was a staff attorney at the Legal Aid Society of Santa Clara County.
Thereafter, Mr. Chang managed his own practice and represented both
individual clients and fair housing organizations in a variety of housing
discrimination cases. Throughout this time, Mr. Chang made available
his expertise to several non-profit legal service providers throughout
California, serving either as primary or co-lead counsel on seminal
fair housing cases of which some have resulted in published decisions.
Mr. Chang has served on the State Bar of California Standing Committees
on Federal Courts and the Delivery of Legal Services, and he is a past
president of the Silicon Valley Asian Bar Association. In 2005, Mr.
Chang joined Relman and Dane, a civil rights law practice in Washington
D.C.
Contact Info:
Relman & Dane
1225 19th Street, Washington D.C. 20036
(202) 728-1888
Elizabeth Hom is managing attorney of the Volunteer Legal Services Corporation of the Alameda County Bar Association (VLSC). The VLSC provides free legal assistance to low-income and poor people in Alameda County with certain non-criminal legal issues. Before becoming managing attorney, Elizabeth served as pro bono coordinator for the Alameda County Bar association. In addition to her legal training, Elizabeth has a Masters in Social Work from Loyola University in Chicago.
Arthur Levy has nearly 30 years of litigation experience
in business and financial services litigation. He is a business litigator
whose practice has historically focused on environmental, insurance
and securities cases. More recently, he has served as lead counsel
for consumers in class actions and unfair business practice cases in
the financial services area, most notably cases against Mercury Insurance
Group, Infinity Insurance Company, Eastwood Insurance Services, IKON
Business Solutions, Xerox, and Bank of America. He has been lead trial
counsel and tried several significant cases in the consumer, environmental,
real estate and securities fields. He has also been active in alternative
dispute resolution, serving as a neutral for the San Francisco federal
and state courts for the past several years. A native of San Francisco,
he attended Reed College and holds an M.A. in economics from The Johns
Hopkins University. He graduated from Boalt Hall School of Law in 1980,
where he was a member of the California Law Review and Order of the
Coif. His litigation practice has included associate positions at Morrison & Foerster
and Collette & Erickson in San Francisco and nine years as a partner
at Ewell & Levy, and 12 years at Levy, Ram & Olson.
Contact Info:
Three Embarcadero Center
Suite 1650
San Francisco, CA 94111
(415) 702-4550
Elizabeth A. Renuart Elizabeth A. Renuart is a law professor at Albany Law School in New York. Before that time, she served as a staff attorney with the National Consumer Law Center (NCLC) for over 15 years. Elizabeth is a nationally-recognized consumer law expert who focuses on predatory lending, truth in lending, consumer credit and sustainable homeownership issues. She co-authored two of NCLC's treatises, Truth in Lending and The Cost of Credit: Regulation and Legal Challenges, as well as NCLC Report: Credit & Usury. She is the principal author of the new Stop Predatory Lending: A Guide for Legal Advocates. Ms. Renuart advocates on behalf of low-income consumers before the Federal Reserve Board, HUD and other federal agencies. She teaches consumer law to legal services, private and government attorneys and other advocates around the country. She has been a legal services attorney since 1977.
Roxanne Romell (President)is a private attorney, based in Oakland,
California. Her areas of expertise include tenant law, commercial real
estate, and residential real estate law. For the last 10 years, she
has operated her firm with a focus on social justice for low-income
tenants. She is licensed to practice in the United States District
Court, Northern District of California, as well as California State
Court and is a member of the Women Lawyers of Alameda County, National
Legal Aid & Defenders Association, East Bay Tenant's Bar Association,
ACORN and local bar associations in the East Bay. Her litigation experience
includes representation of 39 low-income, immigrant families in a habitability
case against a slumlord who owns 18 properties in Oakland, and representation
of four Chinese-American families in a suit against a multi-millionaire
developer.
Contact Info:
Law Office of Roxanne Romell
1814 Franklin St #503, Oakland, CA 94612
(510) 465-3210
Marina Jimenez is a victim witness consultant with the Alameda County District Attorney’s Office specializing in cases involving Elder /Dependent Adult Abuse and Real Estate Fraud. In 2007, Marina was one of the recipient’s of a scholarship offered by the AARP Foundation, National Legal Services Training Project, to attend the National Law and Aging Conference held in Arlington Virginia. In 2002, Marina was hired by the Superior Court of California, Alameda County as the Elder Abuse/ domestic violence case manger to develop the Elder Protection Court, which is a model court for the State of California. Prior to 2002, Marina worked for Legal Assistance for Seniors as a senior legal assistant and Volunteer Legal Services Corporation, of the Alameda County Bar Association as pro bono placement case manager. Marina holds a paralegal certificate from Saint Mary’s College and has worked as a public interest paralegal for the last fourteen years.