Our Team

Mari Newman, Board President

Mari Newman (she/her) is a civil rights and employment law attorney who has spent over twenty years advocating on behalf of the underdog and disenfranchised against corrupt government and corporations. She is a founding member of Newman | McNulty, LLC, a civil rights and employment law firm rooted in client-centered advocacy, movement lawyering, pro bono service, and representation of marginalized communities.

For over two decades, Mari Newman has litigated many of Colorado’s most challenging civil rights and employment cases, across a broad spectrum of issues. She achieved outstanding results for her clients, including many multi-million dollar verdicts and settlements, as well as meaningful changes in law and policy to prevent future wrongs.

Best Lawyers in America has named Mari Newman as Denver’s Lawyer of the Year for both Civil Rights Law and Employment Law – Individuals.

Mari Newman has received numerous awards for her work from organizations including the Southern Center for Human Rights, the ACLU of Colorado, the Colorado Trial Lawyers Association, the Colorado Women’s Bar Association Foundation, the LGBT Bar Association Foundation, the Colorado Press Association, and Colorado Super Lawyers, to name just a few.

Mari’s civil rights work extends outside the courtroom, where she serves on the Board of Directors for organizations including the Civil Rights Education and Enforcement Center, the LGBT Bar Association Foundation, and the Colorado Trial Lawyers Association. Mari Newman advocates in the legislature, writes and lectures, and marches for social justice.

Keshia Allen Horner

Keshia Allen Horner (she/her) is the founder of Mariposa Analytics, a company dedicated to helping organizations maximize their impact through insight, action, and evolution. Her passion for improving organizational performance stems from her upbringing, where her parents — both teachers — instilled in her the belief that knowledge is a gift to be shared in service of others.

Keshia’s desire to serve and make a meaningful impact led her to launch Mariposa Analytics. She rejects the notion that organizations seeking consulting services are broken. Instead, like most living things, organizations undergo growth and change, and the natural process of this growth calls for transformation to adapt to a new way of being. Keshia and her team at Mariposa Analytics believe in this process of evolution and transformation, working closely with each client to identify areas where transformation is needed. They develop personalized strategies to help each organization reach its full potential.

Keshia’s journey started as a government auditor, where she spent almost 14 years at both the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) and the City and County of Denver Auditor’s Office. She then spent over three years as the deputy director of a nonprofit organization. She holds a Master of Public Administration, as well as Bachelor of Arts degrees in Political Science and Public and Urban Affairs from Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University (Virginia Tech).

With her experience and expertise, Keshia brings the full breadth of her knowledge to help organizations develop actionable strategies, make structural improvements, and refine their operations to align service delivery with desired outcomes.

In her spare time, Keshia enjoys exploring the great outdoors, trying new foods, and traveling to new places with her family and friends. She loves nothing more than hitting the trails for a run, embarking on a camping trip, or simply taking in the beauty of nature. As a food enthusiast, Keshia also spends time cooking and sharing her culinary creations with loved ones during get-togethers, seeing food as an expression of culture, heritage, and love.

Alan Chen

Alan is a lifetime advocate for civil rights. His research includes federal remedies for civil rights violations, free speech doctrine and theory, and lawyering for social change. He is a past chair of the Association of American Law Schools Section on Civil Rights. In recent years, he has litigated several high-profile, pro bono civil rights cases in the federal courts, including two suits challenging so-called Ag Gag laws that criminalize efforts of activists and journalists to expose misconduct on factory farms, an excessive force case against law enforcement officers who used pepper spray to subdue peaceful environmental protesters, and a successful facial challenge to a Colorado law mandating that all students and teachers recite the Pledge of Allegiance in public schools. Since joining the University of Denver Sturm College of Law faculty in 1992, Alan has received awards for teaching, contributions to the law review and pro bono legal work. Before entering teaching, Alan was a civil liberties litigator with the ACLU’s Chicago office, focusing primarily on cases concerning the First Amendment, police misconduct, and privacy rights. Before that, he served as a law clerk to the Honorable Marvin E. Aspen, U.S. District Court judge for the Northern District of Illinois. Alan received his J.D. from Stanford University in 1985.

Stephen Dane

Steve is a civil rights leader in the fair housing, mortgage lending and insurance discrimination world. He has litigated a number of significant lending and insurance discrimination cases. Steve was lead counsel for the plaintiffs in the class-action litigation Toledo Fair Housing Center v. Nationwide Mutual Insurance Co. ($5.35 million settlement) and was co-counsel for the plaintiffs in HOME of Richmond v. Nationwide Mutual Insurance Co. ($100.5 million jury verdict). Steve has testified before both houses of Congress on mortgage lending discrimination issues, and is the author of many articles in the field, including Eliminating the Labyrinth: A Proposal to Simplify Federal Mortgage Lending Discrimination Laws, 26 U. Mich. J. L. Ref. 527 (1993); Disparate Impact Analysis in the Mortgage Lending Context, 115 Banking L.J. 900(1998); Application of the Federal Fair Housing Act to Homeowners Insurance, Chapter Two of Insurance Redlining (G. Squires, ed., 1997); and The Exposure of Securitization Trustees to Liability Under the Federal Fair Housing Act for Poorly Maintained Real Estate Owned Properties, Banking L. J. (Feb. 2014).

Steve has also litigated several accessible design and construction cases, such as National Fair Housing Alliance, Inc. v. A.G. Spanos Companies, 542 F. Supp. 2d 1054 (N.D.Cal. 2008), involving 82 multi-family projects constructed around the country since 1991, settlement valued at $15 million; and claims involving local and state governments’ failures to “affirmatively further fair housing” as a condition of their receipt of federal funding. See United States of America ex rel. Anti-Discrimination Center of Metro New York, Inc. v. Westchester County, New York, 495 F.Supp.2d 375 (S.D.N.Y. 2007); 668 F.Supp.2d 548 (S.D.N.Y. 2009).  Steve was also co-lead counsel in a successful fair housing challenge to Alabama’s immigration reform legislation, Central Alabama Fair Housing Center v. Magee, 835 F. Supp. 2d 1165 (M.D. Ala. 2011).

Steve is currently the owner of Dane Law, LLC, a firm dedicated to representing fair housing agencies, non-profits, legal aid organizations, and their clients. He is an honors graduate of The University of Notre Dame (B.S., Mathematics, 1978), and received his law degree from The University of Toledo College of Law (J.D., magna cum laude, 1981). He is a former law clerk to the Honorable Pierce Lively of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit. In 1998 Mr. Dane was selected as one of eight Lawyers of the Year by Ohio Lawyers Weekly, and is listed in The Best Lawyers in America® in the field of Civil Rights.

Steve is also editor of the Civil Rights Insider, the quarterly eNewsletter of the Federal Bar Association’s Civil Rights Law Section. In 2000, he received the Public Interest Award from a consortium of legal services organizations, including Advocates for Basic Equality and the Equal Justice Foundation. For 17 years Steve has served as Acting Judge of the Perrysburg, Ohio Municipal Court, and is a former Chairman of the Human Rights Commission of the Diocese of Toledo. Steve also served as President of the Toledo Bar Association in 2010-2011.

Amanda Francis Owen

Garfield Grant

Garfield Grant (he/him) serves as the Vice President of Finance and Administration for La Casa de Don Pedro’s in New Jersey. Garfield transitioned from the financial sector to non-profits because of their mission – to help others. He has a deep commitment to public service and working with community-based organizations. He has an extensive career as a non-profit executive leader with experience in finance, operations, information technology, facilities management, human resources, and administration, in addition to an extensive career in public accounting.

Most recently, Garfield served as Chief Financial Officer at non-profit organization in Morristown, NJ overseeing all financial, IT, payroll, and facilities management. Before relocating to New Jersey, Garfield served for 15 years in various progressive executive leadership roles at another non-profit organization. His roles included Interim CEO, COO, and Vice President of Finance and Administration. Garfield was an integral part of the executive leadership team responsible for forging numerous collaborations and management agreements with other non-profit organizations.

Garfield started his career in public accounting working for a large regional accounting firm as an auditor and tax accountant. He spent two and half years in that capacity before moving on to a smaller regional firm as a senior accountant involved in audits, reviews, tax preparation and financial and tax planning.

He is the recipient of the Six Sigma Green Belt (SSGB) certification program through Eastman Kodak Company (KODAK). He has served in the capacity as treasurer and board member of various organizations in Upstate New York.

Garfield holds a B.S. in Accounting & Finance from Rochester Institute of Technology. He holds an MBA in Finance from Medaille College.

Thomas Kelley

Throughout Tom’s long career of practicing law, he has gained a national reputation for protecting the rights of news and media organizations to speak and publish freely. He has successfully represented numerous news and media outlets including NBCUniversal, Inc., The Denver Post, and Gawker Media. Chambers USA describes him as “a go-to guy in libel defense and media litigation in Colorado and nationally. His ease in the courtroom, and excellent judgment are singled out” by clients, and the Media Law Resource Center has stated that his “lifetime of advocacy for reporters and editors is an inspiration to us all.”

Currently, Tom is Counsel at Killmer, Lane & Newman, LLP, where he focuses primarily on representing individuals for social justice advocacy and pro bono work. He was previously Senior Counsel at Ballard Spahr, LLP. Tom also serves as Fellow Emeritus for Litigation Counsel of America, and has held numerous esteemed positions in the past, including Governing Board Member for the Colorado Bar Association, President of Media Law Resource Center’s Defense Counsel Section, and President and Board of Directors member of the Colorado Freedom of Information Coalition. Tom has received numerous recognitions for his work, including being named Law Week Colorado Lawyer of the Year in 2013, and receiving First Amendment Lawyer of the Year designations in 2011, 2012, and 2015 by The Best Lawyers in America®. In 2018, he received a First Amendment Leadership Award from Media Law Resource Center in recognition of his career-long accomplishment of protecting the rights of news operations. He has been ranked in the top tier nationally by Chambers USA in First Amendment Litigation for over a decade.

Tom holds a B.A. from Amherst College and a J.D. from the University of Denver Sturm College of Law.

Bill Lann Lee

Bill has been a civil rights attorney for more than 40 years with expertise in challenging employment discrimination and disability access. From December 1997 to January 2001, Bill served as Assistant Attorney General for the Civil Rights Division in the United States Department of Justice in the Clinton Administration, as the nation’s top civil rights prosecutor. He has brought disability access cases against Netflix to obtain closed captioning on behalf of the National Association of the Deaf, and against Burger King and Walmart on behalf of individuals who use wheelchairs for mobility. His employment discrimination work includes prosecution cases against Wet Seal, Costco, Best Buy, Abercrombie & Fitch, and McCormick & Schmick’s.

Before joining CREEC, Bill was a shareholder at Lewis, Feinberg, Lee & Jackson, P.C. in Oakland, CA, and previously a partner at Lieff, Cabraser, Heimann & Bernstein, LLP.  Earlier in his career, he spent 18 years as an attorney with the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund and headed the Legal Defense Fund’s western regional office in Los Angeles. Bill earned his Bachelor of Arts from Yale University and his law degree from Columbia University School of Law. Bill is admitted to practice in California and New York (inactive).

When not busy fighting injustice, Bill spends time reading history, biographies, and science fiction. He’s an avid traveler and especially loves visiting his grandson, Oliver.

Mark Lindsay

Mark is a Director of the Healthcare and Pharmaceuticals practice area of The Livingston Group LLC. Mark served on President Obama’s Transition Team and in President Clinton’s White House as Assistant to the President for the Office of Management and Administration.  His areas of responsibility included the White House Military Office, which managed Air Force One, the White House Communications Agency, the Medical Unit, and Camp David; running the White House Operations; and the Executive Office of the President’s Office of Administration, which was responsible for finance, information systems, human resources, legal/appropriations and security.  Mark’s office was responsible for the logistics of all domestic and international Presidential travel and special air missions.   President Bill Clinton selected Mark to be the operational lead for the White House’s 2001 transition preparation and execution.  Prior to his appointment to the White House, Mark served as senior legislative aid and counsel to Congressman Louis Stokes (D-OH).  He worked closely with Democrats and the Congressional Black Caucus on a number of business and economic issues. Mark was a member of Senator Hillary Clinton’s Minnesota Finance Committee for her 2008 Presidential campaign.  Before joining The Livingston Group, Mark was with UnitedHealth Group, one of the world’s largest healthcare companies, where he held a number of senior positions including President of the AARP Pharmacy Services Division and Vice President of Public Communications and Strategy. Mark holds a B.A. from Macalester College in St. Paul, Minnesota; a J.D. from Case Western Reserve University School of Law; an M.A. in International Affairs from Georgetown University; and a graduate degree from the Advanced Management program at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton Business School.  He is a member of the District of Columbia Bar.