Director
Andrew is the founding Director of the The Law, Power, and Organizing Initiative, an innovative model for expanding the application and integration of a broad range of analytical and change-making tools into legal education. The Initiative is a first-of-its kind program focused on meaningfully expanding the boundaries of traditional legal education, and it encompasses classroom teaching, student and faculty advising, and expert staff housed in the clinical program to collaborate with clinical law faculty and law students, as well as a broad range of community clients and partners, to develop and deploy a sophisticated understanding of organizing, campaigning, realpolitik and social change.
Senior Fellows
Daniela Tagtachian is a poverty lawyer and a sociology PhD student at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York (CUNY). She received her BA in Political Science from the University of Chicago in 2012 and her JD from the University of Michigan Law School in 2016. Prior to joining CUNY, she was a Mysun Foundation Fellow and a lecturer-in-law at the University of Miami School of Law Environmental Justice Clinic. While there, as a community lawyer, she focused on empowering minority communities and addressing systemic inequity through projects such as the development of anti-displacement strategies. As a doctoral student, her research interests include municipal equity and the empowerment of minority communities, legal estrangement, inclusion/exclusion through civic engagement, structural inequity, the role of law in the perpetuation of inequality, social justice, and theories of social change.
John Whitlow is an associate professor at the CUNY School of Law, where he co-directs the Community and Economic Development Clinic. Prior to joining CUNY’s faculty, John was an assistant professor at the University of New Mexico School of Law. Before entering academia, John was a supervising attorney at Make the Road New York and a staff attorney at the Urban Justice Center’s Community Development Project. John holds a BA from the Johns Hopkins University, an MA from the New School for Social Research, and a JD from the CUNY School of Law. He has been a fellow at the Center for Place, Culture and Politics and was the Inaugural Faculty Fellow at Yale Law School’s Law and Political Economy Project.
Kumar Rao is a social justice lawyer with years of experience partnering with grassroots organizations and elected officials in the fight to strengthen our democracy, and for racial and economic justice at the local, state, and federal levels. Previously, he served in senior policy, political, and strategy roles at the Working Families Party and the Center for Popular Democracy. Kumar is also a scholar with the Institute for Social Policy & Understanding, for whom he led a major study into the disparate legal and media treatment that suspects of ideological violence receive based on their perceived racial and religious identity. A former litigator and public defender, he has also represented thousands of clients in state and federal court, in both criminal and civil matters, and has counseled defender offices in the United States and globally on the delivery of legal services and effective client representation practices. Kumar holds a JD cum laude from New York University School of Law and a BBA with honors from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.