Bailey Henderson joined NCLR as a legal assistant in June 2023. He is a recent graduate of the University of California, Berkeley where he earned a Bachelors of Arts in Political Science and Global Studies. Prior to coming to NCLR, Bailey worked as a social work intern for the Federal Defenders Office for the Eastern District of California and spent his last year at UC Berkeley as the External Affairs Vice President of the university’s student government, advocating for students at the...
KJ Popkin has joined the NCLR litigation team as a Staff Attorney to challenge transgender medical bans across the country. Prior to joining NCLR, they worked as a civil rights litigator targeting the worst abuses of the criminal legal system and acted as appellate counsel in eight high-impact appeals in federal circuit courts. They filed and argued a case in the Third Circuit that reversed the dismissal of a case filed by a transgender woman who, despite having been beaten and raped at an...
Janine joined NCLR as a legal assistant in April of 2023. She earned her Bachelor of Arts in Sociology and Legal Studies from the University of California Santa Cruz, where she also competed on the Division III diving team. Since graduating Janine has worked on a ballot measure campaign in San Francisco and a voter registration campaign in Michigan, and more recently she worked as a counselor at a non-profit organization. Janine lives in San Francisco with her housemate and their two cats, Mia...
Rachel Berg works on NCLR’s nationwide impact litigation. She litigates the full range of NCLR’s civil practice, including transgender rights, education, sports, youth, and discrimination. Before joining NCLR, Rachel spent most of her career in private practice at large law firms in New York and Nashville, where she focused on class action litigation. While there, she also developed a substantial pro bono practice related to various social justice issues. Rachel clerked for the Honorable Eli...
Pamela Mercado Garcia was born and raised in Mexico. In 2011, when she was 12 years old, she migrated to the United States. She remained undocumented until her family was granted residency in 2015 after her mother applied for adjustment of status through the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA). Pam joined NCLR as the Immigration Project Associate in June of 2022. She is responsible for assisting the Immigration Project Director and the pro bono of Counsel Attorneys with a variety of tasks...
Danielle (Danny) King is the Senior Youth Policy Counsel at the National Center for Lesbian Rights (NCLR), where they practice through an intersectional lens to advance the well-being of LGBTQ youth through community education, collaboration with coalitions, and public policy advocacy, particularly for LGBTQ youth impacted by the Child Welfare and Juvenile Justice Systems. Danielle (Danny) first joined NCLR in 2021, as a Gender Equality Attorney where they engaged in legal research and...
Nesta joined NCLR in 2020, continuing a career focused on advocating for the rights of children and families, particularly in the child welfare arena. Before joining NCLR, Nesta served as a staff attorney with the Legal Aid Society, and later with the Children’s Law Center, in Brooklyn, New York. Nesta graduated in 2008 with a BA from Stony Brook University, where she majored in Philosophy, and served as the Distinguished Alumni speaker at the 2016 departmental graduation ceremony. Nesta was...
Noemi was born and raised in Managua, Nicaragua. At the age of 14, her family immigrated to the United States due to the unstable political climate in her country of origin. Her family applied for political asylum in 1982 and it was granted ten years later. After earning her B.A. in Spanish and a B.S. in psychology from the University of California at Davis in 1991, Noemi worked as a counselor at FamiliesFirst, a non-profit organization serving troubled youth in the Bay Area. In 1994 she...
Michael Airhart is a news editor, data scientist, and longtime vocal critic of conversion therapy. As a journalist, Michael worked in the Washington, D.C., offices of the Knight Ridder, McClatchy, and Tribune joint-venture newswires from 1993 until 2014, over time transitioning into data-science roles performing text analytics, content classification and syndication, data modeling, and research. In 2002, Michael launched Ex-Gay Watch, a pioneering and popular multiple-author blog devoted to...
Mathew Shurka is a conversion therapy survivor and Co-Founder of Born Perfect, a campaign that has become a global movement to end conversion therapy. Mathew leads the campaign alongside a team of lawyers and other conversion therapy survivors committed to protect LGBTQ+ people through legislation, litigation, and public education. During his five years of conversion therapy from ages 16-21, Mathew endured many different types of fraudulent and scientifically discredited “treatments” that he...
