(Washington, D.C.) – The Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law announced today that Deepak Gupta of the public interest law firm Gupta Wessler, Marilyn McClure-Demers of Nationwide Mutual Insurance Company, Roscoe Jones Jr. of Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher LLP, Beatryx Epps Washington of the O.C. Tanner Company, and Sharon Werner of PNC Financial Services, have been appointed to its advisory board of directors with current board member Danielle Holley-Walker of the Howard University School of Law becoming an executive committee member.
The appointments expand the national Lawyers’ Committee advisory board of directors to 213 members and expand the executive board to 17 members.
“We welcome the addition of these exemplary leaders, each of whom brings a commitment to racial justice that our nation so desperately needs,” said Damon Hewitt, acting president and executive director of the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law. “The national Lawyers’ Committee is steadfast in its dedication to securing equal justice for all and working with our nation’s leading attorneys to mobilize the private bar in service of our mission. With these new additions to our dynamic and increasingly diverse advisory board and executive committee leadership, we will be better positioned to make a positive impact during this critical time in our nation’s history.”
The additions to the executive committee and advisory board of directors are listed below:
- Deepak Gupta is the founder of Gupta Wessler PLLC, a Washington, D.C. public-interest law firm that concentrates its efforts on Supreme Court and appellate litigation on civil rights issues. Before founding the firm, Mr. Gupta was senior counsel for litigation and senior counsel for enforcement strategy at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.
- Marilyn McClure-Demers is vice president and associate general counsel at Nationwide Mutual Insurance Company, a fortune 100 Insurance and Financial services company, located in Columbus, Ohio. Marilyn is responsible for strategic oversight for all corporate, intellectual property, and class action litigation and serves on Nationwide’s Social Justice Taskforce. She is a past fellow of the Leadership Council for Legal Diversity and was the recipient of the 2020 LCLD Rick Palmore Award. She is a past president of the Ohio Women’s Bar Association.
- Sharon Werner is the chief operating officer in the Corporate Responsibility Group at PNC Financial Services in Pittsburgh, Penn. Prior to joining PNC, Ms. Werner served as the chief of staff to U.S. Attorneys General Eric Holder and Loretta Lynch.
- Beatryx Epps Washington is senior vice president, general counsel & corporate secretary at O.C. Tanner Company, a technology and services company based in Salt Lake City, Utah. Among other activities and affiliations, Ms. Washington serves on the board of directors of Ballet West and is a proud member of the Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, Incorporated.
- Roscoe Jones Jr. is counsel in Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher LLP’s Washington, D.C. office, where he is a member of the firm’s Public Policy, Congressional Investigations, White Collar Defense and Investigations, and Privacy, Cybersecurity, and Consumer Protection Practice Groups. Prior to joining Gibson Dunn, Mr. Jones served for almost a decade in various high-level roles on Capitol Hill, most recently as chief of staff to U.S. Rep. Abigail Spanberger (D-Va.), and as legislative director to U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.).
- Danielle Holley-Walker is the dean and professor at Howard University School of Law. She has served as dean of the law school since 2014. Prior to joining Howard, Dean Holley-Walker served as associate dean for academic affairs and distinguished professor of law at the University of South Carolina and also worked in private practice.
Learn more about the Committee and our board here.
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About the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law – The Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law (Lawyers’ Committee), a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization, was formed in 1963 at the request of President John F. Kennedy to involve the private bar in providing legal services to address racial discrimination. The principal mission of the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law is to secure, through the rule of law, equal justice for all, particularly in the areas of voting rights, criminal justice, fair housing and community development, economic justice, educational opportunities, and hate crimes. For more information, please visit https://lawyerscommittee.org.
