Members

Chair and Co-Chairs:

Jeff Thamkittikasem
Director, Mayor’s Office of Operations
Jeff Thamkittikasem is the Director of the Mayor’s Office of Operations, an office dedicated to enhancing government efficiency and effectiveness. Previously, Thamkittikasem served for four years as Chief of Staff at the New York City Department of Correction (DOC). During his time at DOC, Thamkittikasem led many progressive reforms, including dramatically reducing the use of punitive segregation and increasing incarcerated individuals’ access to educational and job-preparation programming in New York City jails. Prior to joining the Administration and returning to public service, Thamkittikasem co-founded and served as Managing Partner and Vice President of Sentinel Strategy and Policy Consulting, where he provided strategic and operational guidance to a wide-ranging array of clients and developed a strong cohort of data analysis experts. The firm served public and private-sector clients in the US and abroad. Previously, Thamkittikasem has served as senior advisor and Chief of Staff for US Customs and Border Protection, where he directed various emergency response events. His public service began in New York City, where he worked for the NYC City Council. Thamkittikasem holds a Master’s of Public Administration degree from Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs, a Master’s degree in Sociology from Stanford University, and Bachelor’s degrees in Political Science and International Relations from Stanford University.

Brittny Saunders
Deputy Commissioner for Strategic Initiatives, NYC Commission on Human Rights
Brittny Saunders is Deputy Commissioner for Strategic Initiatives at the NYC Commission on Human Rights. At the Commission, Brittny oversees projects related to racial justice, the intersection between the City Human Rights Law and emerging technologies, and other topics. Prior to joining the Commission, Brittny worked in the Office of the Mayor’s Counsel where she focused on issues related to broadband access and human rights. Before joining the Mayor’s Office, Brittny worked for the Center for Popular Democracy, where, as Supervising Attorney for Immigrant Rights and Racial Justice, she successfully pushed for creation of a program to provide free legal representation for detained individuals facing deportation, and the Center for Social Inclusion (now “Race Forward”), where she advocated on broadband access, transportation equity, and disaster and emergency policies from a racial justice perspective. Brittny holds a BA magna cum laude in sociology from Harvard College, a Masters in education from Fordham University, and a JD cum laude from Harvard Law School.

Kelly X. Jin
NYC Chief Analytics Officer and Director, Mayor’s Office of Data Analytics
Kelly X. Jin is the Chief Analytics Officer for the City of New York and Director of the Mayor’s Office of Data Analytics (MODA). She brings over a decade of diverse public service and consulting experience to MODA. She pairs a broad range of analytics experience in both the public and private sectors with a deep understanding of policy and strategy for federal, state, and local governments. Prior to the Chief Analytics Officer role, Kelly served as Director at the Laura and John Arnold Foundation, where she worked with public servants to identify data-driven investments to support effective state and local government policy making and operations priorities. Previously, Kelly worked in the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy as a policy advisor to the US Chief Technology Officer and Chief Data Scientist, advising on strategy for local jurisdictions. She also built and co-led the City of Boston’s analytics team and served as Citywide Analytics Manager. Her earlier career included advisory roles in the US General Services Administration, White House Domestic Policy Council, and as a management consultant. Kelly holds a BA in economics from the University of Pennsylvania.

Task Force Members:

Solon Barocas
Assistant Professor, Cornell University and Principal Researcher, New York City Lab of Microsoft Research
Solon Barocas is a Principal Researcher in the New York City Lab of Microsoft Research and an Assistant Professor in the Department of Information Science at Cornell University. He is also a Faculty Associate at the Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University. His research explores ethical and policy issues in artificial intelligence, particularly fairness in machine learning, methods for bringing accountability to automated decision-making, and the privacy implications of inference. Previously, he was a Postdoctoral Researcher at Microsoft Research and the Center for Information Technology Policy at Princeton University. He is a New York native and earned his doctorate from New York University.

Shelby Chestnut
National Organizing and Policy Strategist, Transgender Law Center
Shelby Chestnut is a National Organizing and Policy Strategist at the Transgender Law Center. Chestnut served as the Director of Community Organizing and Public Advocacy at the New York City Anti-Violence Project (AVP) for five years prior to joining Transgender Law Center. At AVP, Chestnut worked at the city, state, and national level advancing the rights and protections of LGBTQ survivors of violence. For over a decade, Chestnut has been organizing with LGBTQ people, people of color, and low income communities to address violence, promote access to resources, and affect local policy change that is for and by the people most impacted by oppression. Chestnut is a gender non-conforming, two spirit, mixed race organizer who has called Brooklyn their home for the past seven years, but always draws on their Montana roots for country sensibility and dry sense of humor.

Khalil A. Cumberbatch
Chief Strategist, New Yorkers United for Justice
Khalil A. Cumberbatch currently serves as Chief Strategist at New Yorkers United for Justice, a coalition of broad and diverse organizations whose goal is to pass criminal justice reform legislation in New York State. Previously, he served as Associate Vice President of Policy at the Fortune Society, a reentry organization whose goal is to build people and not prisons. He also previously served as Manager of Training at JustLeadershipUSA, a national non-profit dedicated to cutting the US correctional population in half by year 2030. He is also a lecturer at the Columbia University School of Social Work. In December 2014, after being held for five months in immigration detention, Khalil was one of two recipients to receive an Executive Pardon from NYS Governor Andrew Cuomo to prevent his deportation from the United States.

Howard Friedman, Esq.
General Counsel, NYC Department of Education
Howard Friedman is the General Counsel of the New York City Department of Education (DOE). As the chief legal advisor for DOE, he oversees the provision of legal services, counsels the Chancellor, and focuses on the development and implementation of new initiatives and the revision of existing education policy. Prior to joining DOE, Friedman served as the Chief of the Contracts and Real Estate Division of the New York City Law Department, where he counseled City agencies and the Mayor’s Office on transactional matters and special projects. Friedman joined the Contracts and Real Estate Division in 1998, became Deputy Chief of the Division in 2004, and was promoted to Chief in 2015. Friedman began working for the city in 1996 with its Loft Board. Prior to joining the New York City Law Department, Friedman worked as an attorney for the Legal Aid Society, where he first worked in the Criminal Appeals Bureau, and then in the Civil Division serving the Harlem neighborhood. He is a 1985 cum laude graduate of Harvard Law School.

Daniel Hafetz, Esq.
Special Counsel to the First Deputy Commissioner, NYC Department of Social Services
Dan Hafetz is Special Counsel to the Department of Social Services’ First Deputy Commissioner. The Department of Social Services encompasses the Human Resources Administration and the Department of Homeless Services. At DSS, Dan assists the DSS First Deputy Commissioner in managing operations, advises on strategic policy and runs special projects. Prior to joining DSS, Dan was Senior Advisor to the General Counsel at the New York City Housing Authority where he led initiatives in criminal justice, reentry, public safety, and eviction, and advised on other matters in law and policy. Dan also served as Counsel to the Committee on Health at the New York City Council where he helped enact landmark legislation related to transgender rights, smoking and e-cigarettes. Dan was a Skadden Fellow in the Community and Economic Development unit of Brooklyn Legal Services Corporation A in East New York. Before entering the law, Dan was a middle and high school social studies teacher in Brooklyn through the New York City Teaching Fellows.

Tanya Meisenholder
Deputy Commissioner, Equity and Inclusion, New York City Police Department
Tanya Meisenholder is the Deputy Commissioner, Equity and Inclusion at the New York City Police Department. In this role, she serves as a senior advisor in the development, implementation, coordination and evaluation of major department policies and procedures, which impact all aspects of Police Department operations. Commissioner Meisenholder holds a Ph.D. in Criminal Justice from the State University of New York at Albany.

Afaf Nasher, Esq.
Executive Director, Council on American-Islamic Relations – New York
Afaf Nasher currently serves as the Executive Director for the New York Chapter of the Council on American Islamic Relations, CAIR-NY. Prior to accepting the role of Executive Director, she served as Board President for the organization. Before shifting her focus to civil rights advocacy, she worked as an associate for the Law Firm of Rossi and Crowley, LLP, performing work in commercial litigation. Nasher continues to serve as a volunteer with several religious and secular organizations in various capacities. Her involvement with CAIR–NY stems from an enthusiasm to challenge discrimination in all its forms, promote positive activism, and foster an understanding of the Muslim American identity. Nasher obtained her Juris Doctor from St. John’s University School of Law and has a Bachelor of Science in Criminal Justice.

Michael Replogle
Deputy Commissioner for Policy, NYC Department of Transportation
Michael Replogle is a globally recognized expert on sustainable transportation who has served since 2015 as Deputy Commissioner for Policy for the New York City Department of Transportation. At the Department he is responsible for strategic planning and guides new and emerging programs. He has helped shape the City’s highly successful Vision Zero traffic safety initiatives, new mobility strategies such as bike-sharing, car-sharing, and for-hire vehicle policy, as well as parking and freight initiatives. He founded and for many years led the Institute for Transportation and Development Policy and the Partnership on Sustainable Low Carbon Transportation, which have both advanced sustainable transportation worldwide. Through those groups, he mobilized a $175 billion 10-year commitment from eight multilateral development banks towards more sustainable transport at the Rio+20 conference, with annual reporting. He spent 17 years as Transportation Director for the Environmental Defense Fund, helping cities reduce car dependence. For a decade he helped guide Montgomery County, Maryland’s growth and comprehensive planning policies. He concurrently co-founded and led the Bikes Not Bombs campaign, which sent 10,000 bikes to teachers and health workers in Nicaragua and capitalized a bicycle assembly industry there. Trained as a civil engineer and sociologist, he brings to the Task Force an interest in algorithmic governance in transportation, particularly focused on improving curb and road management for safety and congestion relief. He holds BSE and MSE degrees in Civil and Urban Engineering and a BA in Sociology, all from the University of Pennsylvania.

Jennifer Rodgers, Esq.
Former Executive Director, Center for the Advancement of Public Integrity at Columbia Law School and Lecturer-in-Law, Columbia Law School
Jennifer Rodgers is a Lecturer-in-Law at Columbia Law School. From 2013-2018, Jennifer served as the Executive Director of the Center for the Advancement of Public Integrity at Columbia Law School (CAPI), which works to improve the capacity of public offices to identify, deter, and combat corruption. Prior to joining CAPI, Jennifer worked for 13 years at the United States Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York, where she served in numerous capacities, including as a Deputy Chief Appellate Attorney, the Chief of the Organized Crime Unit, and a Chief of the General Crimes Unit. Jennifer writes extensively on and speaks all over the world about anti-corruption efforts and best practices and criminal justice matters, and chairs the New York City Bar Association’s Government Ethics and State Affairs Committee.

Julie Samuels, Esq.
Executive Director, Tech:NYC
Julie Samuels is the founder and Executive Director of Tech:NYC, an organization representing New York’s fast growing, entrepreneurial tech industry. Before that she was Executive Director at Engine, a nationwide nonprofit focused on technology entrepreneurship and advocacy, where she remains a member of the Board. She previously worked at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, where she was a senior staff attorney and the Mark Cuban Chair to Eliminate Stupid Patents. Before joining EFF, Julie litigated IP and entertainment cases. Prior to becoming a lawyer, Julie spent time as a legislative assistant at the Media Coalition in New York, as an assistant editor at the National Journal in Washington DC, and she worked at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) in Champaign, IL. Julie earned her JD from Vanderbilt University and her BS in Journalism from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

Susan Sommer, Esq.
General Counsel, Mayor’s Office of Criminal Justice
Susan Sommer joined the Mayor’s Office of Criminal Justice (MOCJ) in 2018, where she has led the Mayor’s Task Force on Cannabis Legislation. As the Chief Legal Officer for MOCJ, she oversees the office’s legal work and participates in policy development and implementation of strategies to make the City’s criminal justice system smaller, safer, and fairer. Prior to joining MOCJ, she was the Director of Constitutional Litigation at Lambda Legal Defense and Education Fund, a national civil rights organization advocating for those who are LGBT and living with HIV. At Lambda Legal, she led its efforts to achieve marriage equality and parenting rights for LGBT New Yorkers and was Lambda Legal’s lead counsel in Obergefell v. Hodges, winning the right to marry for same-sex couples nationwide. Sommer supervised attorneys and staff and worked on the full range of the organization’s litigation, public policy, and advocacy issues, including supervision of the Youth in Out-of-Home Care Project and the Transgender Rights Project. Sommer also litigated cases involving the criminal justice system and the civil rights of LGBT police officers. Prior to joining Lambda Legal, she was a partner at Lankler Siffert & Wohl, a New York criminal defense and civil litigation firm, and earlier worked as an associate at Davis Polk & Wardwell. Sommer clerked for Federal District Court Judge William Schwarzer (N.D. Cal.), and received a BA from Yale College and a JD from Yale Law School.

Vincent Southerland, Esq.
Executive Director, Center on Race, Equality, and the Law, NYU Law School
Vincent M. Southerland joined the Center on Race, Inequality, and the Law at NYU Law School as its inaugural Executive Director in February 2017. He has dedicated his career to advancing racial justice and civil rights. Vincent joined NYU Law after serving as an Assistant Federal Public Defender with the Federal Defenders for the Southern District of New York since 2015. Prior to his time at the Federal Defenders, Vincent spent seven years at the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc. (LDF), where he was a Senior Counsel. While at LDF, he engaged in litigation and advocacy at the intersection of race and criminal justice, including the successful representation of death-sentenced prisoners across the American South and juveniles sentenced to life imprisonment without parole. He also led LDF’s advocacy efforts around race and policing, and was lead counsel in school desegregation and as employment discrimination matters. Vincent previously served as a staff attorney at The Bronx Defenders and an E. Barrett Prettyman Fellow at Georgetown University Law Center. He began his career as a law clerk to the Honorable Theodore McKee, Judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit, and the Honorable Louis H. Pollak, of the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania. Vincent holds an LLM from Georgetown University Law Center, received his JD from Temple University School of Law and his BA from the University of Connecticut.

Julia Stoyanovich
Assistant Professor of Computer Science and Engineering, Assistant Professor of Data Science, NYU
Julia Stoyanovich is an Assistant Professor of Computer Science and Engineering at the Tandon School of Engineering, and an Assistant Professor of Data Science at the Center for Data Science at New York University. She is a recipient of an NSF CAREER award and of an NSF/CRA CI Fellowship. Julia’s research focuses on responsible data management and analysis practices on operationalizing fairness, diversity, transparency, and data protection in all stages of the data acquisition and processing lifecycle. Prof. Stoyanovich holds MS and Ph.D. degrees in Computer Science from Columbia University, and a BS in Computer Science and in Mathematics and Statistics from the University of Massachusetts Amherst.

Andrew White
Deputy Commissioner for Policy and Planning, NYC Administration for Children’s Services
Andrew White is Deputy Commissioner for Policy, Planning & Measurement at the New York City Administration for Children’s Services (ACS). The division is responsible for bringing knowledge to practice across ACS programs through research and analytics, policy and program development, workforce development, provider agency monitoring and evaluation, and quality management. From 1998 to 2014, White directed the Center for New York City Affairs, an applied policy research center at The New School, where he served on the graduate faculty in urban policy. He is co-founder of the journal Child Welfare Watch, founder of the Center for an Urban Future, and former editor of City Limits, a magazine serving the community development and human services sectors in New York City.

Meredith Whittaker
Co-Founder and Co-Director, AI Now Institute at NYU; Distinguished Research Scientist at NYU; and Founder of Google’s Open Research Group
Meredith Whittaker is a Distinguished Research Scientist at New York University, Co-founder and Co-director of the AI Now Institute, and the founder of Google’s Open Research Group. She has over a decade of experience working in industry, leading product and engineering teams. She co-founded M-Lab, a globally distributed network measurement system that provides the world’s largest source of open data on internet performance. She has also worked extensively on issues of data validation and privacy. She has advised the White House, the FCC, the City of New York, the European Parliament, and many other governments and civil society organizations on artificial intelligence, internet policy, measurement, privacy, and security. She is the co-founder and co-director of the AI Now Institute at NYU, which is a leading university institute dedicated to researching the social implications of artificial intelligence and related technologies.

Maya D. Wiley, Esq.
Senior Vice President for Social Justice, The New School and Co-Director, Digital Equity Laboratory at The New School
Maya Wiley is a nationally renowned expert on racial justice and equity. She has litigated and lobbied the US Congress and developed programs to transform structural racism in the US and in South Africa. Wiley is currently the Senior Vice President for Social Justice at The New School and serves as the Henry Cohen Professor of Public & Urban Policy at The New School’s Milano School of International Affairs, Management & Urban Policy. She is an expert on digital equity and is the founder and co-director of The New School’s Digital Equity Laboratory. She is also the Co-Chair of the New York City Department of Education’s School Diversity Working Group, formulating recommendations on school desegregation. She is the former Chair of the New York City Civilian Complaint Review Board (CCRB), the independent oversight agency on police misconduct by officers in the New York Police Department and formerly served as Counsel to the Mayor of the City of New York from 2014-2016. As the Mayor’s chief legal advisor and a member of his Senior Cabinet, Wiley was placed at the helm of the Mayor’s commitment to expanding affordable broadband access across New York City, advancing civil and human rights and gender equity, and increasing the effectiveness of the City’s support for Minority/Women Owned Business Enterprises (M/WBEs). During her tenure, she also served as the Mayor’s liaison to the Mayor’s Advisory Committee on the Judiciary. Before her position with the de Blasio Administration, Wiley was the Founder and President of the Center for Social Inclusion. She has also worked for the Open Society Foundation in the US and in South Africa, the NAACP Legal Defense & Educational Fund, Inc., the American Civil Liberties Union and US Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York. Wiley appears regularly on MSNBC and has written numerous opinion editorials for major news outlets, including The Guardian, Time magazine, Essence.com, Fast Company, and the New York Daily News. In 2016, Good Housekeeping magazine honored Wiley as one of its 50 Over 50. City and State magazine named Wiley one of the 100 most powerful people in New York City in 2014 and in 2015. In 2011, Wiley was named one of “20 Leading Black Women Social Activists Advocating Change” by TheRoot.com and a “Moves Power Woman” in 2009 by the same magazine. Wiley holds a JD from Columbia University School of Law and a BA in psychology from Dartmouth College. She resides in Brooklyn with her two daughters and her partner.

Jeannette M. Wing
Avanessians Director, Data Science Institute and Professor of Computer Science, Columbia University
Jeannette M. Wing is the Avanessians Director of the Data Science Institute and Professor of Computer Science at Columbia University. From 2013 to 2017, she was a Corporate Vice President of Microsoft Research. She is an Adjunct Professor of Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon where she twice served as the Head of the Computer Science Department and had been on the faculty since 1985. From 2007–2010, she was the Assistant Director of the Computer and Information Science and Engineering Directorate at the National Science Foundation. She received her SB, SM, and PhD degrees in Computer Science, all from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, American Association for the Advancement of Science, the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM), and the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers (IEEE). She received the CRA Distinguished Service Award in 2011 and the ACM Distinguished Service Award in 2014. Her current research interests are in trustworthy AI and privacy-preserving technologies.