Genevieve is a graduate of Stanford Law School. She also received a master’s degree in Géographie Historique from Paris IV La Sorbonne (now Sorbonne Université) while living in Paris. Because of her Californian origin, she based her Paris master’s research on an ethnogeographic study of legalized home winemaking in San Francisco vs. Los Angeles under the Volstead Act during Prohibition. Her bachelor’s degree is from the University of California at Berkeley. She is a member of the New York and D.C. bars, as well as the D.C. Hispanic Bar Association. She finds justice litigation to be the perfect mix of her love of history, community and change.
Contact Genevieve: gfontan@aarp.org
Sam Gerleman
Samantha (Sam) Gerleman joined AARP Foundation after serving as a civil rights and employment fellow at Cohen Milstein Sellers & Toll PLLC where she challenged discriminatory housing and workplace practices through impact litigation. Prior to Cohen Milstein, Sam was a Stanford law fellow at Disability Rights Maryland, where she provided legal representation to youth with heightened behavioral needs and laid the groundwork for litigation and legislative efforts aimed at preventing youth with disabilities from entering Department of Social Services custody. Sam received her bachelor's degree, summa cum laude, in ethics and public policy, sociology and philosophy from the University of Iowa, where she graduated with university honors and honors in philosophy. She received her law degree with high pro bono distinction from Stanford Law School, where she was integrally involved in numerous student organizations as a law student, including the SLS First Generation Professionals (academic chair, mentor, cofounder), Law Students for Disability Rights (co-president), Stanford Lawyering for Reproductive Justice (outreach vice president), and Stanford’s Social Security Disability Pro Bono Project (student director). Sam was named one of D.C.’s “Top 40 Under 40” by The National Trial Lawyers.
Contact Sam: sgerleman@aarp.org
Dean Graybill
Dean Graybill is a lead attorney at AARP Foundation and has served over three decades the public interest realm. As a manager and litigator at the Federal Trade Commission, he oversaw enforcement actions against telemarketing schemes targeting seniors (e.g., Operation Senior Sentinel); brought cases against bogus health supplement sellers; and participated in antitrust matters involving high gasoline and health care prices. In a prior stint at the Foundation, he served six years as vice president of litigation. Dean is a graduate of the University of Pennsylvania Law School.
Contact Dean: dgraybill@aarp.org
Maame Gyamfi
Maame Gyamfi is a senior lead attorney at AARP Foundation. Maame is a health care expert who advocates nationwide for the rights of older adults with low to moderate income, addressing diverse issues that affect their daily lives and ensuring that they have a voice in the judicial system. She works on matters involving health law, civil rights, elder abuse, disability rights, consumer protection, and other public interest areas. Prior to coming to AARP Foundation, Maame was senior counsel at the Office of the Inspector General, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, where she worked on health care fraud and compliance matters. She also litigated criminal and civil cases as a special assistant United States attorney for the U.S. District Courts of the Southern District of Florida and the Eastern District of New York. Maame is a graduate of Georgetown University Law Center and the University of California at Berkeley.
Contact Maame: mgyamfi@aarp.org
Rachel N. Lokken
Rachel N. Lokken is an accomplished litigation attorney with extensive experience providing strategic representation to individual, corporate and public interest clients at the state and federal levels. Rachel’s legal practice has focused primarily on complex commercial litigation and business matters, appellate litigation, and constitutional compliance.
Rachel’s work ethic and dedication to her clients has led to her favorable litigation results and strategic settlements. Passionate about public interest work, she has a longstanding history of service as counsel in the areas of affordable housing for people with low to moderate income, child advocacy, music licensing, and domestic violence.
Rachel has served on the Supreme Court of New Jersey District X Fee Arbitration Committee as an appointed volunteer attorney and received her certificate in Diversity, Equity and Inclusion in the Workplace.
She received her law degree from the University of Michigan and her bachelor’s degree from Oberlin College.
Rachel is admitted in New Jersey and Illinois. She is currently supervised by members of the D.C. bar.
Contact Rachel: rlokken@aarp.org
Ali Naini
Ali Naini joined AARP Foundation after a career in the District of Columbia Attorney General’s Office and the nonprofit organization Mobilization for Justice (formerly “MFY”). Ali, who speaks English, Farsi and Turkish, has shown a keen interest in public policy since his early days at the University of Virginia. He researched microfinancing in Cairo and later worked with the Harlem Children’s Zone on health, financial and housing projects. In law school, he served as managing editor of the George Washington Law Review. He then earned his litigation stripes in a three-year stint at the D.C. Attorney General’s Office. He won four of four jury trials and 21 of 24 court motions, handling a wide variety of litigation tasks. In 2016, he again chose public interest work, serving as senior staff attorney at MFY’s Foreclosure Prevention Project in New York City. There, he tirelessly represented clients facing loss of their homes, handled individual cases, lobbied for reforms, and first-chaired a trial.
Contact Ali: anaini@aarp.org
Lauren Naylor
Lauren Naylor joined AARP Foundation after seven years at a plaintiff-side employment law firm representing federal and private sector employees in complex discrimination and retaliation matters. Lauren has represented employees before administrative bodies, including the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, and in state and federal courts. Lauren holds a bachelor's degree in political science and public administration from Rhode Island College. She earned her law degree from George Washington University Law School, where she received the Ogden W. Fields Graduate Award for Excellence in Labor Law.
Contact Lauren: lnaylor@aarp.org
Julie Nepveu
Julie Nepveu is a senior staff attorney at AARP Foundation. She advances the interests of older people nationwide in the areas of access to courts, consumer protection, mortgage and reverse mortgage servicing and foreclosure defense, fair housing, disability rights, and public utilities. Her work includes litigating cases, filing amicus briefs, drafting comments on proposed federal regulation and legislation, and providing support to AARP state office staff. Julie previously worked as staff attorney at the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law in the Housing and Community Development Project. Prior to that, she represented subsidized tenants with low income at Legal Services of Northern Virginia. She also served as a judicial law clerk at the U.S. Claims Court to the Hon. Thomas J. Lydon. Julie earned her bachelor's degree from the University of Vermont and her law degree from the University of Maine School of Law. The Maine State Bar Association honored her with its Pro Bono Award in 1991.
Contact Julie: jnepveu@aarp.org
Rebecca Rodgers
Rebecca Rodgers joined AARP Foundation after 10 years at Disability Rights Advocates, where she litigated complex disability rights class actions related to access to health care, emergency preparedness, transportation, and public programs and services. Her representative cases include lawsuits against the Metropolitan Transportation Authority that challenged their failure to make the New York City subway system accessible for people with mobility disabilities. Rebecca received her law degree from The George Washington University Law School and her bachelor's degree in art history from The George Washington University. She currently serves as the chair of the New York City Bar Association’s Disability Law Committee.
Contact Rebecca: rrodgers@aarp.org
Sébastien Monzón Rueda
Sébastien Monzón Rueda came to AARP Foundation after four years as a staff attorney in the Tenant Advocacy and Support Practice at Legal Counsel for the Elderly, where he represented older adults with low to moderate income in housing-related cases before the Superior Court of the District of Columbia. He also litigated reasonable accommodation cases and discrimination claims before administrative bodies, such as the D.C. Housing Authority and the Office of Administrative Hearings. Sébastien received his bachelor's degree from the University of British Columbia and his law degree, cum laude, from the University of the District of Columbia David A. Clarke School of Law. He clerked for the Honorable Tyrona De Witt and the Honorable Diane Lepley at the Superior Court of the District of Columbia. Sébastien is a board member of the Washington Council of Lawyers — the public interest bar association for D.C. — and serves as co-chair of its Advocacy Committee. He is fluent in Spanish.
Contact Sébastien: smonzonrueda@aarp.org
Stefan Shaibani
Stefan Shaibani is an alumnus of Stanford Law School, a former law clerk at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, and a former trial attorney at the U.S. Department of Justice, Commercial Litigation Branch. Stefan is an attorney at AARP Foundation, where he represents plaintiffs in disability, consumer and employment class actions.
Prior to joining AARP Foundation, Stefan operated a solo and small firm practice for 16 years representing plaintiffs in automobile negligence, premises liability, first-party insurance, and business tort cases in the D.C. metropolitan area. In this capacity, he conducted bench and jury trials, depositions, and mediations, and he worked with expert witnesses in fields such as orthopedics, neurosurgery, neurology, pathology, oncology, vocational rehabilitation, economics, accident reconstruction, and premises security. Stefan has represented many clients who sustained harms and losses, including older adults with low income and people experiencing homelessness, due to negligence of individuals and corporations defended by casualty insurers.
Contact Stefan: sshaibani@aarp.org
Mary William
Before joining AARP Foundation, Mary William worked as a housing attorney, providing direct client services at both the Neighborhood Legal Services Program in Washington, D.C., and Mid-Minnesota Legal Aid in Minneapolis. She has represented defendants in eviction cases concerning nonpayment of rent and lease breaches. She also litigated affirmative cases on behalf of tenants who were locked out of their homes or seeking repairs. Prior to her work in housing litigation, Mary was an attorney at Rainbow Health (then known as JustUs Health) in St. Paul, Minnesota, where she represented clients appealing the denial of Social Security benefits. She received a bachelor's degree in international relations from the University of Rochester and a law degree from the University of Minnesota Law School.
Contact Mary: mwilliam@aarp.org
Vickie Williamson
Vickie Williamson joins AARP Foundation as a lead attorney with over two decades of experience as a litigator. She began her career at a legal services organization in New York City that represented people with HIV positive who had low income. Her work there encompassed an array of issues, including housing, immigration and benefits.
As she moved into private practice, Vickie represented tenants seeking to retain protected status in their apartments under the rent stabilization and rent control laws of New York City. She worked to include protections under those laws for domestic partners, as same-sex marriage had not yet been recognized in that jurisdiction, and sought to obtain reasonable accommodations for disabled tenants.
After several years practicing, Vickie chose to concentrate her career on protecting worker’s rights, recognizing that the ability to work and earn income is essential to people’s livelihood and trajectory of wealth throughout their lives. Over the past 20 years, Vickie has represented private sector, federal sector and congressional employees in matters involving discrimination, harassment and retaliation. She has litigated matters in an array of venues, including administrative agencies, federal agencies, state and federal courts across the country, and the Office of Congressional Workplace Rights.
In private practice, Vickie’s most recent position was as a partner at a plaintiff-side employment law practice. Immediately prior, Vickie was a staff attorney at the Office of Employee Advocacy at the United States House of Representatives, where she worked to protect the rights of congressional staffers, with an emphasis on obtaining protections for disabled staffers throughout the COVID-19 pandemic.
Vickie provides volunteer legal services with frequency, including Pandemic Legal, where she represents people who have developed COVID-related disabilities, and the Legal Network for Gender Equity, an arm of the National Women’s Law Center. She is also on the board for First Shift Justice Project, an organization that protects the rights of working parents in the DMV area. She is an active member of the National Employment Lawyer’s Association (NELA), as well as the Metropolitan Washington Lawyer’s Association (MWELA).
She received her bachelor’s degree from Florida International University and her law degree from the City University of New York School of Law, and she is admitted to practice in New York and the District of Columbia.
When she’s not working, Vickie spends time with her two teenage children and her beloved dog, Murphy.
Contact Vickie: vwilliamson@aarp.org
David Yellin
David Yellin joined AARP Foundation as a lead attorney with over a decade of litigation experience at all levels. Most recently, David he spent six years working at Rising for Justice, where he provided direct representation to hundreds of clients facing eviction and housing insecurity in the District of Columbia. He also and taught clinical students at Georgetown Law, The George Washington University Law School, and UDC Law School as director of the Housing Advocacy and Litigation Clinic.
David also has worked on a variety of complex civil matters and white collar criminal defense matters at a litigation boutique in D.C. and at Fried, Frank, Harris, Shriver & Jacobson LLP in New York. In addition, he and has taught Evidence as an adjunct professor at the University of Maryland Francis King Carey School of Law.
David spent two years clerking for Judge Paul W. Grimm in the United States District Court for the District of Maryland, in Greenbelt. DavidHe received his bachelor’s degree, magna cum laude, from Colgate University, a master’s of Sciencedegree with honors in comparative politics from the London School of Economics and Political Science, and his J.Dlaw degree, magna cum laude, from Georgetown University Law Center. He David lives in Bethesda, Maryland, with his wife and two sons.
Contact David: dyellin@aarp.org
