Nineteen New Jerseyans have been appointed by the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights to its New Jersey State Advisory Committee.
The Commission on Civil Rights is an independent, bipartisan agency charged with monitoring federal civil rights enforcement. Congress directed it to establish advisory committees in all 50 states and D.C. The latest cycle of New Jersey appointees were announced in September.
Most of the committee's members are being reappointed to posts they already held. The new appointees include Joan Garry of Montclair, a noted gay and lesbian rights activist who raised funds for Barack Obama's 2008 campaign, as well as Beth Ann Jones of West Deptford and Frank Tinari of Florham Park, a former mayor. David Oakley and Beth Sheehan weren't reappointed.
The appointees, who receive two-year, unpaid terms, are:
- Chairman: William J. Stephney, 48, of Randolph Township ... Reappointment, though he's new to being chairman ... President of Joseph Media since 2005 ... Has previously run music companies Def Jam Recordings, SOUL Records and Stepsun Music ...President of E-Line Ventures video game developer ... He's been on the advisory committee since 2008.
- Leanna Y. Brown, 75, of Chatham ... Reappointment; used to chair the committee ... Former member of the state Senate and Assembly ... Former member of the Casino Control Commission.
- Richard F. Collier Jr., 60, of Montgomery Township ... Reappointment ... Lawyer since 1975 with a private practice in Somerset ... President of the Legal Center for the Defense of Life, a nonprofit whose volunteer attorneys provide pro bono legal advice and representation in matters involving abortion and euthanasia.
- Jane R. Dunhamn, 61, of Plainsboro ... Reappointment ... Staff member at the New Jersey Council on Developmental Disabilities, handling cultural diversity and outreach ... Member of the National Minorities with Disabilities Coalition.
- Sherine El-Abd, 64, of Clifton ... Reappointment ... Egyptian born American citizen who immigrated to the United States in 1965 ... President of the New Jersey Federation of Republican Women ... Board member at the Arab American Institute.
- Lora L. Fong, 54, of Edison ... Reappointment ... Senior corporate counsel at New York based Salesforce.com ... Formerly worked at Greenbaum, Rowe, Smith & Davis and at Sills Cummis Epstein & Gross ... Member of the Rutgers University Board of Trustees ... Legal counsel to the New Jersey chapter of the Organization of Chinese Americans.
- Brian M. Gaffney, 49, of Morristown ... Reappointment ... Executive producer of Fox News Channel's documentary unit ... Used to work at ABC News and NBC News, started his professional career as an attorney at Kelley Drye & Warren.
- Joan M. Garry, 53, of Montclair ... Appointment ... Adjunct professor at the University of Pennsylvania's Annenberg School for Communications ... Through a 1993 court challenge, became New Jersey's first lesbian to adopt her partner's biological children ... Co-chaired the National LGBT Finance Committee for Barack Obama's campaign for president ... Executive director of GLAAD, a gay rights organization, from 1997 through 2005 ... Was part of the management team that launched MTV in 1981.
- John J. Hart, 44, of Lumberton ... Reappointment ... Associate director for the Walter Rand Institute for Public Affairs at Rutgers University in Camden since 2005 ... Former deputy chief of staff for the state Department of Human Services and former executive for Virtua Health System.
- Shavar D. Jeffries, 35, of Newark ... Reappointment ... President of the Newark Advisory School Board ... Associate law professor at Seton Hall Law School ... From 2008 through 2010, was counsel to state Attorney General Anne Milgram ... Former board president for the TEAM Academy Charter School in Newark, which he helped found ... Former president of the Boys and Girls Club of Newark.
- Beth Ann Jones of West Deptford ... Appointment.
- Lawrence S. Lustberg, 54, of Chatham Township ... Reappointment ... Chairs the criminal defense department at the Gibbons law firm in Newark ... Director of the John J. Gibbons Fellowship in Public Interest and Constitutional Law ... Member of Common Cause New Jersey, The Fund for New Jersey and the Education Law Center ... Adjunct assistant law professor at Rutgers and Seton Hall ... Assisting in gay-marriage lawsuits pursued by Lambda Legal, others.
- Clement A. Price, 64, of Newark ... Reappointment ... History professor at Rutgers-Newark ... Board of Governors Distinguished Service Professor at Rutgers, one of the highest faculty honors at the university ... Director of the Rutgers Institute on Ethnicity, Culture, and the Modern Experience ... Chaired Barack Obama's transition team for the National Endowment for the Humanities.
- Saulo Santiago, 36, of Jersey City ... Reappointment ... Attorney at the Newark office of the National Labor Relations Board.
- Judd A. Serotta, 38, of Cherry Hill ... Reappointment ... Partner in the commercial litigation group of the Blank Rome law firm ... President of the Philadelphia chapter of the Federalist Society for Law and Public Policy Studies ... Pro bono general counsel of the Tri-County Vaad Hakashruth, which certifies kosher eating establishments in South Jersey.
- Morris G. Smith, 49, of Collingswood ... Reappointment ... Attorney ... Represented the New Jersey Black Issues Convention in a letter brief it filed as part of Abbott vs. Burke litigation ... Formerly Camden's city attorney.
- Frank D. Tinari, 67, of Florham Park ... Appointment ... Mayor of Florham Park from 2004 to 2007, councilman from 1993 to 2003 ... Economics professor at Seton Hall University ... Trustee at the Legal Center for the Defense of Life in Morristown since 2002.
- Jackson Toby, 85, of Highland Park ... Reappointment ... Retired Rutgers University sociology professor ... Used to direct the Institute for Criminological Research on the Central Jersey campus.
- Peter W. Wood, 57, of West Windsor ... Reappointment ... President of the Princeton-based National Association of Scholars, which according to a 2008 New York Times story was created in 1987 to counter attacks on Western culture and values ... Author of A Bee in the Mouth: Anger in America Now and Diversity: The Invention of a Concept, the latter of which won the Caldwell Award for Leadership in Higher Education from the John Locke Foundation.
