Lam Nguyen Ho is the Executive Director of CALA (Community Activism Law Alliance), which he founded with a Harvard Law School Public Service Venture Fund seed grant. He is currently an Echoing Green Global Fellow and will serve as a 2016-2017 Wasserstein Public Interest Fellow.
Prior to founding CALA, he was a staff attorney at Equip for Equality, where he defended the civil rights of people with disabilities. After graduating from Harvard Law School in 2008, Lam joined Chicago’s Legal Assistance Foundation (LAF) through a Skadden Foundation Public Interest Fellowship. During his time at LAF, he established and ran 10 community-based clinics providing free legal services to youth and their families on the west side of Chicago. He experienced firsthand the challenges of community lawyering and civil legal services, and was inspired to innovatively confront these challenges through the creation of CALA.
In the wake of the 2020 Black Lives Matters protests in the United States, the 2021 Fordham International Law Journal Symposium topic will focus on the manifestation of the Black Lives Matter movement and the issue of racial and ethnic discrimination around the globe. Panelists will include judges, scholars, and activists within and outside of the Fordham community well versed in civil and human rights issues in an international context. Conversation will surround an identification of the particular issues in jurisdictions outside of the United States as well as ongoing proposed solutions.
Mani Mostofi, Miaan’s Director, is a lawyer, international law expert, researcher, and human rights advocate with 10 years of experience. Mostofi served as Communications Director and Senior Researcher at City University of New York’s Human Rights in Iran Unit where he provided support to the United Nations mechanism. Mostofi was a director of the UN advocacy of collation at Impact Iran. Mostofi has been a researcher at Human Rights Watch and the Center for Human Rights in Iran, and co-supervisor of a project at Fordham Law School’s Walter Leitner Human Rights Clinic. Mostofi, also is an advisor to United for Iran. Mostofi has a Master’s in Middle Eastern Studies from the University of Texas at Austin and a Juris Doctor from Fordham Law.