NATIONAL STATE ATTORNEYS GENERAL PROGRAM
Charities Law Conference, March 28-29, 2008
Panelist Bios
Allen, Richard
Richard C. Allen is a partner at the Boston law firm of Casner & Edwards, LLP, where he specializes in nonprofit corporate, regulatory, tax exemption, foundation and trust matters. Mr. Allen is Co-Chair of the State & Local Regulation Subcommittee of the ABA’s Exempt Organizations Committee. He has served as an elected member of the BBA Board of Directors, as Chair of the Tax-Exempt Organizations Committee, and as Co-Chair of the Health Law Section. Mr. Allen is also a member of the Boston Bar Association’s Colleges & Universities Section and Corporate Law Committee and the Board of Trustees of Massachusetts Continuing Legal Education, Inc. (MCLE).
Prior to joining Casner & Edwards, Mr. Allen was counsel at the Boston law firm of Choate, Hall & Stewart and served as Assistant Attorney General and Director of the Division of Public Charities in the Massachusetts Office of the Attorney General. He was a president of the National Association of State Charity Officials and a recipient of the National Association of Attorneys General award for national achievement. Mr. Allen is a graduate of Harvard Law School and Indiana University. He is a frequent lecturer at programs and seminars sponsored by bar associations, continuing legal education organizations, and other Massachusetts, regional and national organizations.
Alvarado, Audrey
Dr. Audrey R. Alvarado is the Executive Director of the National Council of Nonprofit Associations (NCNA). NCNA envisions a world that supports nonprofits in their missions with the essential resources they need and deserve. NCNA is working toward that future in two ways: first by advocating for and raising awareness of the nonprofit sector at the national level - voicing its concerns, needs, and value; and second, by strengthening the capacity of its state associations to offer leadership and essential services to nonprofits at the local level. Under her guidance, NCNA and the state association network have grown in influence and impact at the national, state and local level. NCNA is the convening organization for the Nonprofit Congress, an unprecedented initiative to unite nonprofits and strengthen the charitable sector.
Prior to her appointment she served as the associate dean for student and external affairs at the University of Colorado at Denver Graduate School of Public Affairs. Among other duties, she oversaw the nonprofit management academic areas for both master and doctoral students. Prior to her appointment as associate dean she served as Special Assistant to the Chancellor at the University overseeing areas such as affirmative action and the graduate school. She has also served as Executive Director of the Latin American Research and Service Agency in Denver, CO and Program Director of the Hispanic Office of Planning and Evaluation's Talent Search program in Boston, MA.
Dr. Alvarado has extensive experience as a board member, often serving in key leadership positions. Previous board service includes the National Council of La Raza (chair), the Colorado Association of Nonprofit Organizations (chair), Regis University Trustee, Latin American Youth Center, Community Resource Center, Colorado Women’s Foundation, Colorado Women’s Forum, and Rocky Mountain PBS. Current board activities include the Foundation Center, BoardSource, and Aspen Institute Nonprofit Sector Research Fund Advisory Committee.
Her political appointments include Governor Roy Romer’s (CO) representative on the Western Interstate Commission on Higher Education (chair), the Immigration and Control Act (IRCA) State Committee (co-chair) and the Minority Economic Business Opportunity Task Force (co-chair).
Dr. Alvarado was recognized in 2001-2004 and 2006-2007 by The NonProfit Times as a member of the Power and Influence Top 50, an annual list of “leaders who are shaping the nonprofit world.” Her byline in the 2006 issue stated, “Nonprofits at the state level are doing the sector’s heavy lifting and Alvarado leads the umbrella organization for them all. She also is leveraging that clout with [the] Nonprofit Congress in Washington, D.C., later this year.”
Atkinson, Robert E.
Rob Atkinson received his undergraduate degree in history and philosophy from Washington and Lee in 1979 and his law degree from Yale in 1982. After clerking a year for Judge Donald S. Russell on the United States Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals, he practiced law in Washington, D.C., with the firm of Sutherland, Asbill, and Brennan. In 1987 he joined the faculty of law at Florida State University, where he is now Ruden, McClosky, Smith, Schuster & Russell Professor of Law. His specialties are professional responsibility, property, and nonprofit organizations.
Ayotte, Kelly A.
Kelly Ayotte is the first woman to serve as Attorney General of the State of New Hampshire. Ms. Ayotte graduated from the Pennsylvania State University (with honors) in 1990 with a B.A. in Political Science, and graduated from the Villanova University School of Law in 1993, where she served as Executive Editor of the Environmental Law Journal. Ms. Ayotte is a member of the New Hampshire and Maine bars. After law school, Ms. Ayotte spent one year as a law clerk to the Honorable Sherman D. Horton, Associate Justice of the New Hampshire Supreme Court. Following her clerkship, Ms Ayotte worked from 1994 to 1998 as a litigation associate in the Manchester law firm of McLane, Graf, Raulerson & Middleton, where she litigated complex civil, commercial and criminal defense cases, including court appointed representation in the matter of U.S. v. Burke, a three month jury trial in the United States District Court for the District of New Hampshire involving RICO, conspiracy, robbery, carjacking and firearms offenses.
Ms. Ayotte joined the Office of the Attorney General in 1998 as a prosecutor in the Criminal Bureau, where she handled white collar, public integrity and homicide cases. She became a member of the Homicide Unit where she tried numerous homicide cases and was responsible for dozens of death investigations throughout the State of New Hampshire. She was appointed a Senior Assistant Attorney General and Chief of the Homicide Unit in 2000, where she was responsible for the most complex homicide cases, including the case of State v. Parker and State v. Tulloch, in which she successfully prosecuted two defendants for the brutal murders of two Dartmouth professors. In February of 2003, Ms. Ayotte left the Attorney General's Office to serve as legal counsel for Governor Craig Benson at the beginning of his term. In July of 2003, she was appointed Deputy Attorney General where she served until July of 2004 when she was appointed Attorney General.
Ms. Ayotte is a past recipient of the Robert E. Kirby Award presented by the New Hampshire Bar Foundation to an attorney 35 years or younger who demonstrates the traits of civility, courtesy, perspective and excellent advocacy. She was recognized by New Hampshire Magazine in 2004 as one of the State's remarkable women and she was selected as one of the 40 leaders in New Hampshire under the age of 40, by the Manchester, N.H. Union Leader in 2002. New Hampshire Business Magazine most recently named her as one of New Hampshire's 10 Most Powerful People. Ms. Ayotte is a native of New Hampshire. She resides in Nashua, New Hampshire with her husband, Joseph Daley, and daughter, Katherine.
Bjorklund, Victoria B.
Victoria Bjorklund is a Partner at Simpson Thacher & Bartlett LLP where she heads the Firm’s Exempt Organizations Group. She advises public charities, private foundations, boards, and donors.
In 2001, Ms. Bjorklund was appointed by the Secretary of the Treasury to serve as one of six exempt-organization members on the IRS’s Tax Exempt/Government Entities Advisory Committee and served as Chair for 2004-2005. In June 2005, she received the IRS Tax Exempt Division Commissioner’s Award for “ground-breaking service” to the Advisory Committee.
Ms. Bjorklund as named a David Rockefeller Fellow for 1997-1998 as a rising civic leader in New York City. From 1989 through 2001, she served as a director, secretary and still serves as pro bono legal counsel for Doctors Without Borders, the emergency medical relief organization that was awarded the 1999 Nobel Peace Prize. She is also a director of and pro bono counsel for the Robin Hood Foundation. She chaired the ABA Tax Section Committee on Exempt Organizations from 2001 through 2003 and now serves as Co-Chair of the Subcommittee on International Philanthropy. Ms. Bjorklund was honored in May 2002 as ABA Tax Section “Pro Bono Lawyer of the Year” in recognition of her 9/11 work. She also accepted the “Pro Bono Firm of the Year” award from the NYS Bar Association in recognition of the Firm’s 9/11 work. The Nonprofit Coordinating Committee of New York City and Lawyers Alliance of New York, Inc. honored Ms. Bjorklund for her outstanding volunteer service in responding to the legal needs arising from September 11. In 2003, she received the Commissioner’s Award, the highest honor the Commissioner of Internal Revenue can bestow, for her “timely, creative and nimble response to 9/11’s unprecedented legal challenges.” In 2005, she received the Assistant Commissioner’s Award for her contributions to the IRS Advisory Committee. In 2006, Ms. Bjorklund was appointed to the Board of Trustees, Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton.
Ms. Bjorklund speaks and writes frequently on exempt-organization subjects. Every year since 1989 she has spoken at the ALI-ABA Charitable Giving Program on “Choosing Among Private Foundations, Supporting Organizations, and Donor-Advised Funds,” a topic she also addresses at the annual Georgetown Conference. She is the co-author with Jim Fishman and Dan Kurtz of New York Nonprofit Law and Practice (LexisNexis, 2d Ed. 2007).
She earned her J.D. at Columbia University School of Law, a Ph.D. in Medieval Studies from Yale University, and a B.A. magna cum laude from Princeton University, where she graduated in three years and was elected to Phi Beta Kappa. Ms. Bjorklund is a former member of the Firm’s Pro Bono Committee and in 2006, she was appointed co-chair of the Diversity Committee.
Brody, Evelyn
Evelyn Brody is a professor at Chicago-Kent College of Law, Illinois Institute of Technology, having visited at Penn, Duke, and NYU law schools. She teaches courses on tax and nonprofit law. Evelyn is chair-elect of the Nonprofit and Philanthropy Law Section, Association of American Law Schools. She has worked in private practice and with the U.S. Treasury Department’s Office of Tax Policy, and served as secretary of the American Bar Association’s Tax Section from 2003-2005.
Evelyn is the Reporter of the American Law Institute’s Project on Principles of the Law of Nonprofit Organizations. She is also associate scholar with The Urban Institute’s Center on Nonprofits and Philanthropy, assisting in organizing semi-annual seminars on Emerging Issues in Philanthropy, sponsored jointly with Harvard’s Hauser Center.
A prolific author of law review articles and book chapters, Evelyn’s recent publications include: The Board of Nonprofit Organizations: Puzzling Through the Gaps Between Law and Practice, 76 Fordham L. Rev. 521 (2007); From the Dead Hand to the Living Dead: The Conundrum of Charitable-Donor Standing, 41 Georgia L. Rev. 1183 (2007); The States’ Growing Use of a Quid-Pro-Quo Rationale for the Charity Property Tax Exemption, 56 Exempt Org. Tax Rev. 269 (June 2007); and Business Activities of Nonprofit Organizations: Legal Boundary Problems, in Nonprofits and Business: A New World of Innovation and Adaptation (C. Eugene Steuerle & Joseph J. Cordes, eds.) (The Urban Institute, forthcoming).
Evelyn served as a member of the Panel on the Nonprofit Sector’s expert advisory group, and was an invited presenter to Senate Finance Committee Staff Roundtables in 2004 and 2006. She appeared as a panelist on the “Attorney General Authority and Role” at the Conference on State Attorney General Oversight and Regulation of Charitable Organizations (Columbia Law School’s Conference of Attorneys General, February 24, 2006), and currently serves as an advisory board member of Columbia Law School’s Charities Law Project. In Fall 2006 Evelyn joined the board of the BBB Wise Giving Alliance.
Chapnick, Ellen
Ellen P. Chapnick is the Dean for Social Justice Initiatives at Columbia Law School. Her responsibilities include development and implementation of projects that will further Columbia's excellence in preparing the public interest, government and human rights lawyers of the future and projects for Columbia's participation in capacity building in the U.S. and abroad regarding democratic governmental institutions, legal education and civil society. Dean Chapnick joined Columbia as the founder and Dean of its Center for Public Interest Law in 1993 and held that position until July 2003. She also co-teaches the Appellate Court Externship. Prior to Columbia, she was a federal litigator at Wolf Popper Ross Wolf & Jones, a plaintiffs' law firm where, among other matters, she worked on In re Exxon Valdez Oil Spill Litigation, for which she and her co-counsel shared TLPJ's 1995 Trial Lawyer of the Year Award. She also had been a staff attorney at the Puerto Rican Institute for Civil Rights in San Juan and at various labor unions. Dean Chapnick is an honor graduate of Georgetown University Law Center and Cornell University, College of Arts and Sciences. Her recent pro bono work includes serving as: President of Legal Services for New York-Bronx; chair and immediate past chair of the Association of American Law Schools' Section on Pro Bono and Public Service Opportunities; and president and immediate past president of the Center for Constitutional Rights. Dean Chapnick also has served as Co-Chair of the Court as Employer Committee of the Second Circuit Task Force on Gender, Racial and Ethnic Fairness in the Courts and on several committees of the New York City Bar Association. Dean Chapnick has received the Association of American Law Schools' Father Robert F. Drinan award, Sanctuary for Families' Abely Pro Bono Achievement Award, Legal Aid Society of New York's award for outstanding pro bono publico service and the Pro Bono Students America award for best Law School public interest program. She is the author of several articles and the Access to the Courts chapter in the American Bar Association's The Law of Environmental Justice.