Featured Speakers

Vincent Warren

Executive Director, Center for Constitutional Rights

Vincent Warren is the executive director and chief strategist of the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR), a US legal advocacy organization dedicated to advancing and defending the rights guaranteed by the United States Constitution and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. He is a leading expert in racial justice and discriminatory policing and a noted social movement lawyer and teacher.

Warren oversees CCR’s groundbreaking litigation and advocacy work, which uses both international and domestic law to fight egregious civil and human rights abuses. Under his leadership, CCR has successfully challenged illegal roundups of immigrants, illegal stop-and-frisk and surveillance policies, profiling of Muslims, proliferation of toxic industry in Louisiana’s “Cancer Alley,” and long-term solitary confinement. CCR also established the persecution of LGBTQ people as an international crime against humanity. CCR is currently challenging the mass deportation of migrants and immigrants, environmental injustice in the South, and the criminalization of transgender people, as well as seeking accountability for the torture of prisoners in Abu Ghraib prison. Warren also provides legal and policy support to Black, brown, and Indigenous organizers across the country.

Warren has received the Pritzker Fellowship at the University of Chicago’s Institute of Politics and has held the W. Haywood Burns Chair in Human and Civil Rights at CUNY School of Law. Previously, he monitored South Africa’s historic Truth and Reconciliation Commission hearings, was a senior staff attorney at the American Civil Liberties Union, and a criminal defense attorney for the Legal Aid Society in Brooklyn.

In addition to his advocacy work, Warren is a composer and musician, whose work has been featured in films premiering at the Sundance and Blackstar film festivals. He is a graduate of Haverford College and Rutgers School of Law and received an honorary doctor of humane letters degree from Marymount Manhattan College.

 

Ryan P. Haygood

CEO, Southern Poverty Law Center

Ryan P. Haygood is a civil rights lawyer and the president and CEO of the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC)—one of the nation’s most storied institutions in the fight to fulfill the promises of the civil rights movement. For 55 years, the SPLC has done precisely that—fighting what stands before us and building what must come next.

As president and CEO of the New Jersey Institute for Social Justice, Haygood led some of the most significant democracy-expanding victories in New Jersey’s modern history. Prior to his work at the institute, he served as deputy director of litigation at the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, where he litigated consequential civil rights cases, including twice defending a core provision of the Voting Rights Act before the US Supreme Court.

Haygood speaks and writes widely on race, law, democracy, and power. He earned his JD from the University of Colorado Law School and his BA, cum laude, from Colorado College, where he was nominated for the Rhodes Scholarship and earned academic and athletic all-American and hall of fame honors as a football player. He serves on the Board of Trustees of Colorado College and as a board member of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.

 

Damon T. Hewitt 

President and Executive Director, Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law

Damon T. Hewitt is the president and executive director of the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law. One of the nation’s foremost experts in civil rights litigation and policy, he has 25 years of experience, including prior leadership roles in the nonprofit, philanthropic, and public sectors.

Prior to joining the Lawyers’ Committee, Hewitt was the inaugural executive director of the Executives’ Alliance for Boys and Men of Color—a philanthropic network of more than three dozen national and local foundation presidents focused on shifting policies, structures, and the false narratives that negatively impact our nation’s sons and brothers. Hewitt previously worked for more than a decade as an attorney and manager at the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund.

Hewitt joined the Lawyers’ Committee as executive vice president in 2019 and led the organization’s internal strategy and development. He was named president and executive director in 2021. During his tenure, the organization has achieved significant victories on a range of critical civil rights and racial justice issues, including defending race-conscious programs, Election Protection and voting rights, redistricting, fair housing, educational opportunity, and algorithmic bias.

His thought leadership has been featured in a number of outlets, including the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Guardian, Bloomberg News, the Grio, CNN, MSNBC, NBC, and CBS. He holds a BA in political science from Louisiana State University and a JD from the University of Pennsylvania Law School. He is a proud father and husband and a member of Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity.

 

Vincent M. Southerland

Professor of Law
Faculty Director, Center on Race, Inequality, and the Law

Vincent M. Southerland is a professor of law, faculty director of the Center on Race, Inequality, and the Law (CRIL) at NYU School of Law, and executive director of Washington Square Legal Services. He teaches the Criminal Defense and Reentry Clinic and a seminar on race and the criminal system. 

Southerland’s research explores the intersection of race and the criminal legal system, including the social and racial justice implications of predictive and surveillance technologies. He serves on the boards of The Bail Project, the Federal Defenders of New York, the Center for Constitutional Rights, Washington Square Legal Services, and Hammer & Hope, and is on the steering committee of the NYU Alliance for Public Interest Technology.

Before joining NYU Law as CRIL’s inaugural executive director, Southerland was an assistant federal public defender with the Federal Defenders for the Southern District of New York. As senior counsel at the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund (LDF), Southerland engaged in a wide range of criminal justice litigation and advocacy, including the successful representation of people sentenced to death and children sentenced to life imprisonment without parole. He also led LDF’s advocacy efforts around race and policing, and was lead counsel in several school desegregation cases. 

Southerland 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 Judge Theodore McKee of the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit and Judge Louis H. Pollak of the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania. He holds a BA from the University of Connecticut, a JD from Temple University School of Law, and an LLM from Georgetown University Law Center.

 

Patrice Sulton

Executive Director of the Center on Race, Inequality, and the Law

Patrice Sulton, Executive Director of the Center on Race, Inequality, and the Law, is a distinguished attorney, educator, and advocate with deep experience advancing racial justice and transforming legal systems. She has been described as the “tip of the spear” for public safety reform, and “one of the most trusted sources of bold ideas about how to change the system.” 

Before joining NYU Law, Patrice and her law students founded and led DC Justice Lab, a nonprofit dedicated to driving large-scale changes to the District of Columbia’s approach to public safety. She played a critical role in rewriting D.C.’s Criminal Code and meaningfully contributed to a record number of legislative changes to policing, prosecution, and punishment.

Patrice’s career is marked by her dedication to cultivating community power, mentoring emerging leaders, and advancing policies that make people safer, freer, and more equal. 

Patrice has received numerous honors, including the Echoing Green Fellowship, Washington Lawyers’ Committee Alfred McKenzie Award, Greater Washington Urban League Champion of Justice Award, and the National Bar Association’s Lendon J. Alexander Advocacy & Leadership Award. She was also a finalist in the World Justice Challenge in The Hague.

 

Christina Swarns

Executive Director, Innocence Project

Christina Swarns is the executive director of the Innocence Project, which works to free the innocent, prevent wrongful convictions, and create fair, compassionate, and equitable systems of justice for everyone.

Swarns previously served as president and attorney-in-charge of the Office of the Appellate Defender (OAD), one of New York City’s oldest providers of indigent appellate defense representation. Prior to joining OAD, she was the litigation director for the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund (LDF) and served as director of LDF’s Criminal Justice Project. She previously served as a supervising assistant federal defender and assistant federal defender at the Capital Habeas Unit of Philadelphia’s Federal Community Defender Office, and she began her legal career as a staff attorney with the Legal Aid Society’s Criminal Defense Division in New York.

At the US Supreme Court, Swarns argued, and won, Buck v. Davis, a challenge to the introduction of explicitly racially biased evidence in a Texas death penalty case. She was the only Black woman to argue in that Supreme Court term and is one of the few Black women to have argued before the nation’s highest court.

In 2025, Swarns was named to Forbes’ 50 Over 50 list, recognizing her as one of the most impactful women leaders in the country.