The Board of Directors of the Civil Rights Education and Enforcement Center (CREEC) is thrilled to announce Martie Lafferty as CREEC’s new Executive Director, effective September 27, 2021. Martie succeeds founders and Co-Executive Directors Amy Robertson and Tim Fox, who will continue their service to CREEC as board members and co-counsel.
We are very excited about CREEC’s future under Martie’s leadership. We have witnessed Martie’s commitment to disability justice through her work as the Director of CREEC’s Accessibility Project for the past two years. During that time, she has developed the project, expanded CREEC’s reach, and fostered strong relationships with clients and partners. With over 20 years of disability rights legal experience, Martie has worked to improve accessibility across the country, including fighting for effective communication in multiple settings and furthering physical accessibility, access to programs and services including courts, prisoners’ rights, parental rights, and safe addiction recovery through education, advocacy, and litigation.
Martie will continue and expand on the work that Tim and Amy started when they founded CREEC in 2013. To name just a few, CREEC’s accomplishments over the past eight years include:
- Reaching settlements ensuring accessible curb ramps with the cities of Colorado Springs, San Jose, Denver, Portland, Boston and Seattle;
- Securing effective communication for Deaf and Hard of Hearing people from defendants including Harvard, MIT, the Ball Arena in Denver, Colorado Department of Corrections, and individual business and medical providers; and
- Exposing and fighting civil rights abuses in the immigration detention system through a nationwide class-action suit against Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the Department of Homeland Security.
We look forward to continuing to expand our impact in the years to come. Martie also brings to CREEC an exuberant warmth and passion that will guide us well through this new chapter.
Amy and Tim co-founded CREEC with a vision. Building on their years of class action litigation for plaintiffs with disabilities against major corporations, they grew CREEC to a thriving nonprofit. Under their leadership, CREEC established the Immigration Detention Accountability Project and the Accessibility Project, and expanded CREEC’s mission to include extensive community outreach, education, and proactive investigation on behalf of immigrants with disabilities and disabled community members across the country. This spring, Amy and Tim concluded that two introverted lawyers had taken CREEC as far as they could and, with hard work and insight from board and staff, began the process of searching for an Executive Director with real nonprofit management experience. They are thrilled to hand the reins to Martie, who has all those skills and a wealth of civil rights and disability rights experience as well.
Amy and Tim will return to private practice, where they will continue to co-counsel with — and exchange restaurant recommendations with — their former CREEC colleagues.
The Board looks forward to this new chapter in CREEC’s future! We invite you to join in celebrating Martie by emailing info@creeclaw.org.
Mari Newman
President of the Board
Civil Rights Education and Enforcement Center