Yasmin Cader is a Deputy Legal Director at the ACLU and the Director of the Trone Center for Justice and Equality, which encompasses the National Prison Project, the Criminal Law Reform Project, the Racial Justice Program, the Capital Punishment Project, as well as the John Adams project.

In her 30-year career as a civil rights lawyer and public defender in Washington, D.C., New York, and Los Angeles, Yasmin has been at the front lines of the fight for racial justice and brings a unique perspective and creative vision to addressing the most important issues facing our country. She has represented juveniles and adults facing misdemeanor and felony charges, including clients charged with capital offenses as well as domestic and international terrorism. Notably, Yasmin’s time with the Public Defender Service aligned with the height of the “war on drugs” and with a soaring juvenile murder rate in DC. Her time at the Federal Defenders of New York aligned with NYPD’s Stop and Frisk policy, the 9/11 attacks, subsequent passage of the Patriot Act, and escalated monitoring, enforcement and prosecutions targeting Muslims. And, her time at FPD Los Angeles coincided with the rise of nativism and the accompanying scapegoating and targeting of immigrant communities. As a public defender, Yasmin witnessed these attacks on people of color across the country first hand. While fighting for justice for her clients, she also developed a sharp analysis of inequities within our criminal legal system.

Prior to joining the ACLU, Yasmin was the co-founder of Cader Adams Trial Lawyers, a women-owned litigation boutique in Los Angeles. At Cader Adams, Yasmin litigated high-stakes civil and criminal matters and counseled higher education, non-profit, and for-profit institutions seeking to transform organizational culture and enact systems to advance intersectional racial justice.

Yasmin currently lives in Los Angeles and is deeply involved with her community. Through the Los Angeles Board of Police Commission’s Advisory Committee on Building Trust and Equity and the Los Angeles Unified School District Superintendent’s Reimagining School Safety Task Force, she is centrally involved in coalitions dedicated to examining the role and footprint of police in Los Angeles’ Public Schools. Yasmin is also a leader in several programs devoted to racial justice work on a national level. She is a member of the Opportunity Agenda’s Steering Committee, amplifying voices and narratives that change how the public perceives and understands systemic inequities and oppression in the criminal legal system.

Passionate about mentoring and training law students and public interest lawyers, Yasmin is involved in Gideon’s Promise, the National Criminal Defense College, and Harvard Law School’s Trial Advocacy Workshop. She also served as the Director of Training for Federal Public Defenders in Los Angeles, a position in which she developed and executed substantive legal and trial skills training programs for attorneys across the country. Yasmin is a Vice President of the Yale Law School Association Executive Committee and is a member of the Leadership Advisory Council for The Tsai Leadership Program at Yale Law School.

Yasmin began her career as a judicial law clerk to the Honorable Damon J. Keith of the U.S. Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals. Afterwards, she served as an Honors Program Trial Lawyer with the Employment Litigation Section of the U.S. Department of Justice Civil Rights Division, where she litigated individual and class-action claims of sexual and racial harassment and discrimination. She is a graduate of Howard University and Yale Law School.

Michael E. Carter is the Executive Director of the Federal Community Defender Office of the Eastern District of Michigan (FCDO). FCDO provides indigent defense for individuals charged with violating federal criminal law, both felony and misdemeanor offenses.

Michael earned his Bachelor of Arts in English from the University of Michigan in 2002, and his law degree from Wayne State University in 2007. After graduating from law school, Michael served as an associate attorney for the Law Offices of John A. Shea in Ann Arbor, Michigan. While there, he represented criminal defendants charged in state and federal court. Wanting to devote his practice to representing indigent clients, Michael left private practice in 2011 to join the Public Defender Service of the District of Columbia. Michael spent four years at that office representing adult and juvenile clients charged with felonies in D.C. Superior Court. In January 2016, Michael returned to Michigan to serve as a Deputy Defender with the Federal Defender Office of the Eastern District of Michigan (FDO, the forerunner of the FCDO). He worked at the FDO until August 2019 when he became a supervising attorney with the Neighborhood Defender Service of Detroit representing adult clients in felony cases prosecuted in the Circuit Court of Wayne County while also helping to administer the Wayne County Criminal Advocacy Program. Michael returned to FCDO as the Executive Director in December 2020.

Michael is licensed to practice in both Michigan and Washington, D.C. He currently serves on the boards of the ACLU of Michigan Board of Directors, the Criminal Defense Attorneys of Michigan (CDAM), the Detroit Justice Center, the National Association of Federal Defenders, and the Federal Bar Association Eastern District of Michigan. Michael also serves on the faculty of the National Criminal Defense College and is a fellow of the American Board of Criminal Lawyers as well as the Michigan State Bar Foundation.

Byron L. Conway Jr. is the Executive Director for the Federal Defenders program for the Middle District of Georgia. Prior to his current position, he was the Director of Diversity, Equity, & Inclusion for the Office of Respondent Parent Counsel in Denver, CO and was also a trial attorney with the Federal Defender Program, Inc. in Atlanta, GA.

Byron started his legal career as a staff attorney in the trial division of the Public Defender Service for the District of Columbia, where he tried complex felonies before the D.C. Superior Court. Byron is a proud alumnus of the University of Michigan – Ann Arbor, and Boston University School of Law.