Board
The Board of Directors celebrates PIC's 30th Anniversary, July 16, 2009
Judi McManigal, Chair, has served on the PIC Board since 1996. She is an associate with Gibney, Anthony & Flaherty LLP, specializing in all areas of business immigration law, corporate compliance and HR immigration training. She is a past Chair of the American Immigration Lawyers Association's Northern California Chapter. Ms. McManigal is an ongoing advocate for comprehensive immigration reform at the national and state levels. She is a graduate of the University of San Francisco School of Law, where she served as Comments Editor of the U.S.F. Law Review. Prior to law school, Ms. McManigal worked in non-profit administration.
Luis Jaramillo, Vice-Chair, is Deputy Director of California Rural Legal Assistance. CRLA, with 22 field offices throughout the state, has advocated for California farm workers and the rural poor since 1966. Luis has served on the PIC Board since 2001. In addition to his statewide work, Luis recently completed a six-month assignment as Acting Special Counsel to LSC President Helaine Barnett and is a member of the Civil Policy Group of the National Legal Aid and Defender Association.
Max Ochoa, Treasurer, is currently VP & General Counsel to Adify Corporation, where he holds overall responsibility for the vertical networking & online advertising firm’s legal and regulatory affairs. He was previously General Counsel at Aliph. Mr. Ochoa has also served as Associate General Counsel at TiVo and was an Associate with Cooley Godward Kronish LLP. During his time at Cooley Godward, Mr. Ochoa worked to coordinate the Pro Bono Participation by the firm’s business group. He holds an S.B. in Aeronautics and Astronautics from MIT, an M.S. in Aerospace Engineering from The University of Michigan, and a J.D. from Stanford Law School.
Lisa Dickinson, Secretary, has been the Attorney Recruiting and Professional Development Manager for Kirkland & Ellis LLP since early 2007. Prior to this, she served as the Director of the Office of Career Planning at USF for several years. She has always been very involved in the work of PIC and is a strong advocate of PILP. She has served as President-elect of NALP-The Association of Legal Career Professionals. Ms. Dickinson also served as the President of the Bay Area Legal Recruitment Association and is actively involved in the Consortium of Northern California Law Career Services Offices, the sponsor of Public Interest/Public Sector Legal Careers Day. Ms. Dickinson is also an accomplished athlete and has completed two Ironman triathlons, competing as part of the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society’s Team in Training program.
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Mark Aaronson, Clinical Professor of Law and Civil Justice Clinic Director for UC Hastings, has served on the PIC Board since 2004. He joined the Hastings faculty in 1992 to establish the in-house Civil Justice Clinic as part of the academic curriculum. Prior to his tenure at UC, Professor Aaronson was Executive Director of S. F. Lawyers' Committee for Urban Affairs (currently Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights) for 14 years, shepherding projects such as the nascent Child Care Law Center and the Bayview Legal Advocacy Project.
Maureen P. Alger is a partner in the Cooley Godward Kronish litigation department, and also serves as the firm’s Pro Bono Partner . As Pro Bono Partner, Ms. Alger is responsible for the development and administration of Cooley’s Pro Bono practice. Prior to her concentration on the Pro Bono practice, Ms. Alger’s practice focused on complex commercial litigation matters and appellate and writ proceedings. In addition to founding the Bay Area Pro Bono Roundtable and the National Association of Pro Bono Counsel (APBCo), Ms. Alger is a member of the Bar Association of San Francisco’s Pro Bono Committee as well as the State Bar of California’s Standing Committee on the Delivery of Legal Services (SCDLS). She received a J.D. from Columbia University School of Law, where she served as an editor for the Columbia Law Review.
Marc Axelbaum is a Senior Associate with Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman LLP. He concentrates his practice in white-collar criminal defense, SEC enforcement actions, and corporate investigations, as well as complex civil litigation. Mr. Axelbaum also represents indigent clients in both civil and criminal cases in state and federal courts. He is a past Chair of the Criminal and Constitutional Law Section, San Francisco Barristers Club; and is a Steering Committee Member of the San Francisco Young Lawyers Division of the ABA/White Collar Crime Committee.
Jack Londen, a partner at Morrison & Foerster LLP, joined PIC in 1996 and served as Board President from 2001 to 2008. A champion of legal aid, Mr. Londen co-founded Californians for Legal Aid in 1995 and has served on the boards of numerous local and national non-profits. He is the Vice-Chair of the California Commission on Access to Justice and Chair of Californians for Legal Aid, and also serves on the Board of Directors of the Legal Aid Society of San Francisco. Mr. Londen has been acknowledged with many awards for his public interest work, including the State Bar's 1996 Loren Miller Legal Services Award.
Carmen Ramirez is the Community Planning Coordinator at CAUSE (Central Coast Alliance United for a Sustainable Economy). Previously she worked for Ventura Superior Court’s Self-Help Legal Access Centers as one of two attorneys staffing the Mobile Self-Help Unit, which traveled to communities in outlying areas of Ventura County. Ms. Ramirez was President of the Ventura County Bar Association in 1998 and served as a member of the Volunteer Lawyers Committee and the Lawyers’ Referral and Information Service Committee. She also served on the State Bar's Board of Governors.
Geoff Robinson is a partner at Bingham McCutchen LLP. His practice focuses on land use, development and real estate litigation. He represents clients in civil and administrative proceedings involving planning and zoning laws, CEQA, development fees and exactions, and public facilities financing. He is an authority on writs of mandate in the trial court and is co-author of the treatise California Administrative Mandamus (CEB, 3rd Ed. 2007) and other publications on civil writ practice. Geoff has been an active participant in the firm’s pro bono program, representing individuals, nonprofits and public agencies before state and federal courts, including several matters in the California Supreme Court. He is the recipient of the firm’s first John J. Curtin Public Service Award and the California State Bar’s President’s Pro Bono Award.
Toby Rothschild, General Counsel for the Legal Aid Foundation of Los Angeles, has served on the PIC Board since 2000. He is the current Chair of the California Legal Services Coordinating Council, and prior to joining PIC, served as Vice-Chairman for the Western Center on Law and Poverty, and President of the Legal Assistance Association of California. Mr. Rothschild was honored as “Lawyer of the Year” by the Long Beach Bar Association, and was honored by the State Bar in 1995 with the Loren Miller Legal Services Award.
Robert Thompson, a partner with Sheppard, Mullin, Richter & Hampton, also celebrates 21 year’s service on PIC’s Board. Mr. Thompson is active with several bar associations, and has served on the Board of the Legal Aid Society of San Francisco, Youth Law Center, Chinese Community Housing Corporation, and San Francisco Lawyers’ Committee for Urban Affairs. He has lectured extensively on real estate lending and development matters for California Continuing Education of the Bar and the Practicing Law Institute, and has taught real estate law as an adjunct professor at two local law schools.
Cristin Zeisler, a partner at Manatt, Phelps & Phillips, LLP, manages the Firm’s Public Interest Initiative, which includes pro bono work as well as community service and other volunteer projects. After working as a corporate/securities associate for a boutique law firm in Washington, D.C., Ms. Zeisler first joined Manatt as an Associate in 1999. Ms. Zeisler re-joined the Firm in 2005 after living and working in Ukraine for two years as a Business Education volunteer with the U.S. Peace Corps. While overseas, she taught critical thinking, decision making, leadership, and management courses at two higher-education institutes; conducted seminars for women-owned micro-enterprises; led peer-to-peer training classes in HIV/AIDS education and prevention; and developed a first-of-its kind mentoring program for orphans, which has since received recognition from the Ukrainian government and grown into a multi-city project.
Updated June 2010
