Lisa Monet Wayne was appointed Executive Director of NACDL and the NACDL Foundation for Criminal Justice by the Board of Directors and assumed the role full-time in February of 2022. Prior, Wayne had been an attorney in private practice in both state and federal courts around the country since 1985. She has represented hundreds of individuals and corporations in both the investigation phase and criminally accused capacity. Previously, Wayne was a Colorado State Public Defender for 13 years where she served as office head, training director, and senior trial attorney. She lectures nationally with NACDL, National Criminal Defense College, National Institute of Trial Advocates, American Bar Association, numerous State Bar Associations, Public Defender Organizations, and many other legal organizations. Wayne has served as an adjunct law professor at the University of Colorado where she taught trial advocacy for 22 years, she serves on faculty at the Trial Practice Institute at Harvard Law School, The National Criminal Defense College, and Cardoza Law School.

Ms. Wayne has been an advocate in all venues of the media addressing important issues confronting the criminally accused. She has been a legal analyst for numerous media outlets including, ABC, CBS, CNN, Al Jazeera, World Radio and Fox regarding high profile cases around the country. She is frequently quoted in print media such as the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Washington Post, Detroit Free Press, and the AP wire. Ms. Wayne testified before the United States Sentencing Commission in 2012 against the implementation of the Federal Sentencing Guidelines as mandatory. In 2005, Wayne was honored with the Robert J. Heeney Award, NACDL’s most prestigious recognition. Wayne is the Past President of NACDL, Past President of the National Foundation of Criminal Justice, and serves on numerous committees’ around criminal justice issues. Wayne is a member of the Colorado Supreme Court Standing Committee on Ethics. She is also a member of The Colorado Sentencing Reform Task Force. Wayne is a law graduate of Pepperdine University Law School, and an undergraduate degree in Psychology from the University of Colorado.

Ms. Williams has worked in the Office of the Federal Defender for the District of Arizona since 1994. Prior to her appointment as FPD in 2013, she had served as first assistant federal public defender since 2006. She led the Tucson Criminal Defense Unit and assisted in supervision of staff in district offices in Flagstaff, Phoenix, and Yuma, and an out-of-district office in Salt Lake City, Utah. Ms. Williams also helped manage the district’s Capital Habeas Unit. The Office of the Federal Defender for the Eastern District of California, which opened 1,966 new cases in fiscal year 2016, is headquartered in Sacramento and maintains a fully-staffed branch office in Fresno.

Ms. Williams began her career in public service in 1988 as an assistant public defender for Pima County Office of the Public Defender in Tucson, Arizona, where she handled felony cases including death penalty homicides, drugs, sex crimes, and child abuse. Prior to that, she worked as an associate attorney in San Diego, California, from 1986 to 1988. A Tucson native, Ms. Williams received her bachelor’s degree, summa cum laude, from Pittsburgh State University in 1982 and her J.D. from the University of San Diego Law School in 1985.”

Brett Willis has defending people since birth. His entire legal career has been dedicated to defending people who are accused of committing crimes. From 2005 to 2022 he worked as a Georgia Public Defender in Hall County. In 2022, he opened his own law firm.

He is a member of the inaugural class of Gideon’s Promise. At present, Brett serves as an instructor for: the Harvard Law School, the Georgia Public Defender Council, and GACDL’s Bill Daniel Program.

He is the author of Georgia’s only practice guide on defending against the charge of failure to register as a sexual offender. In 2008, Brett successfully challenged the constitutionality of the sex offender registration law as applied to homeless persons in Santos v. State, 284 Ga. 514 (2008).

In 2010, Brett was selected as one of ten Georgia lawyers under forty “On the Rise” in a review by The Fulton County Daily Report. In 2011, he was recognized for securing a dismissal for a woman accused of poisoning her husband with arsenic; the case had been slated to appear on TruTV. In 2013, he was featured in the HBO documentary Gideon’s Army. Also in 2013, he was awarded the prestigious Foot Soldier award by Gideon’s Promise. In 2014 Brett was named the Georgia Public Defender of the Year. He earned his J.D. from the University of Georgia (2003) and his Master of Laws from New York University (2004).