The Leadership Conference Announces New Senior Staff Members

WASHINGTON – Today, The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights and The Leadership Conference Education Fund announced the addition of four new senior staff members: Mike Zubrensky, Chief Counsel and Legal Director; Helaine Greenfeld, Senior Leadership Conference Fellow in the Policy Department; Shin Inouye, Director of Communications and Media Relations; and Karely Hernandez, Communications Manager.  

“I am proud to welcome our new senior staff members, all of whom bring a wealth of knowledge and experience to our outstanding team,” said Wade Henderson, president and CEO of The Leadership Conference and The Education Fund. “As we enter these unprecedented and unpredictable times, our organizations remain committed to ensuring that equal protection under the law and access to equal opportunity remain bedrock American principles.”

Mike Zubrensky is the Chief Counsel and Legal Director.  Between 2010 and January 2017, he served as Deputy Assistant Attorney General in the Office of Legal Policy at the U.S. Department of Justice, where he assisted with the vetting, nomination, and confirmation of President Barack Obama’s judicial nominees. From 2003 to 2010, he served as Senior Counsel to Senator Dick Durbin, D. Ill., on the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee. From 1995 to 2002, Zubrensky worked in the Civil Rights Division of the U.S. Department of Justice, where he served as Counsel to the Assistant Attorney General and as a senior trial attorney in the Employment Litigation Section. He was a law clerk for U.S. District Judge John W. Reynolds in the Eastern District of Wisconsin from 1994 to 1995. Zubrensky is a graduate of Stanford Law School and Harvard University.

Helaine Greenfeld is the Senior Leadership Conference Fellow in the Policy Department, working on judicial nominations. She was most recently Counsel to Attorney General Eric Holder at the U.S. Department of Justice, and has 12 years of experience at the Department, including as a Deputy Associate Attorney General and Deputy Assistant Attorney General, working on nominations, civil rights and other matters.  She also served as Nominations Counsel to Senator Patrick Leahy, D. Vt., at the Senate Judiciary Committee from 2001 through 2006.  Greenfeld is a graduate of Yale University and the Georgetown University Law Center.

Shin Inouye is the Director of Communications and Media Relations. As an appointee in the Obama Administration, Inouye served the last two years as Press Secretary and Acting Senior Advisor for Intergovernmental and External Affairs at U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. Prior to that, he worked for six years as the Director of Specialty Media for the White House Office of Communications, serving as a spokesman for media outlets that serve the AAPI, Faith, LGBT, Native American, Rural, Veterans and college communities, among others. He previously worked on the 2008 Obama for America campaign, and was Communications Director for Congressman Jerrold Nadler, D. N.Y., and a Senior Legislative Communications Associate at the ACLU’s Washington office. He graduated with departmental honors from the Johns Hopkins University.

Karely Hernandez is the Communications Manager. She most recently served on the Hillary for America campaign. There, she worked closely with the Coalitions press team as a national Hispanic media associate for the general campaign and as a Hispanic media spokesperson for the coordinated campaign in North Carolina. Prior to that, she worked for Senator Harry Reid, D. Nev., where she served as Press Secretary for Hispanic media.  Born in Los Angeles, California, Hernandez is a graduate of the University of California, Santa Barbara, with a degree in Global and International Studies.

The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights is a coalition charged by its diverse membership of more than 200 national organizations to promote and protect the rights of all persons in the United States. The Leadership Conference works toward an America as good as its ideals. For more information on The Leadership Conference and its 200-plus member organizations, visit www.civilrights.org. 

The Leadership Conference Education Fund builds public will for federal policies that promote and protect the civil and human rights of all persons in the United States. For more information on The Leadership Conference and its 200-plus member organizations, visit http://leadershipconferenceedfund.org/.

###