Board of Trustees

Catherine Weiss is Chair of the Lowenstein Center for the Public Interest and a partner at Lowenstein Sandler.  She both directs and participates in the firm's pro bono practice, which dedicates more than 20,000 hours each year to impact litigation, individual representation, and transactional work for nonprofits and microbusinesses. 

Before joining Lowenstein Sandler, Catherine served as director of the Division of Public Interest Advocacy in the New Jersey Department of the Public Advocate.  She supervised a staff of lawyers, policy analysts, and investigators working to protect and advance the public interest through a coordinated program of research, reporting, advocacy, and litigation.

Before entering state government, Catherine was Deputy Director of the Democracy Program at the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU School of Law where she worked principally on voting rights.  For more than a dozen years previously, she worked in the national office of the ACLU, serving as director of the ACLU Reproductive Freedom Project from 1997-2002 and as its litigation director for the preceding five years.  Catherine has also worked as a consultant to civil rights and human rights organizations and taught as an adjunct professor at Rutgers Law School in Newark.She clerked for Judge Alvin Rubin of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit.  She holds both a law degree and a master’s degree in political science from Yale. 

Vanessa Lucas is the Managing Attorney of the Newark office of Kids in Need of Defense (KIND). She joined KIND’s Newark team in 2016 having previously worked with KIND as a Pro Bono Coordinating Attorney in the New York office. She is a former Assistant Clinical Professor of Law at Northwestern University School of Law. Vanessa originated and supervised the Bluhm Legal Clinic’s and Children and Family Justice Center’s Immigration practice focusing on legal representation for women, children and adolescents seeking refuge in the U.S. Prior to her tenure at Northwestern, she worked as a Staff Attorney at the Association of the Bar of the City of NY, coordinating pro bono services for the Cancer Advocacy and Elder Law Programs. She began her legal career as a Litigation Associate at Proskauer in New York. Vanessa also served as Vice President of the Advisory Board of Directors of the Young Center for Immigrant and Refugee Children. She received her B.A. from Yale University and her J.D. from Fordham University School of Law. She is a native of San Juan, Puerto Rico. She is admitted to practice law in New York and Illinois.

Distinguished Clinical Professor of Law, Annamay Sheppard Scholar, and Director of the Child Advocacy Clinic, Rutgers Law School. Professor Mandelbaum earned a B.S. from Brandeis University, a J.D. from American University, Washington College of Law, and an LL.M. from Georgetown University Law Center. She has devoted her career to working with children and families and has extensive experience in clinical legal education.

Professor Mandelbaum began her legal career as a staff attorney at the Child Advocacy Unit of the Legal Aid Bureau in Baltimore. She then went to the Georgetown University Law Center where, with another professor, she created a clinical program addressing the legal needs of families living in poverty. Prior to coming to Rutgers, she was an associate clinical professor at the University of California, Hastings College of the Law, where she taught in the Civil Justice Clinic, Hastings’ clinical program.

As founding director of the Rutgers Child Advocacy Clinic (CAC) in 2000, Professor Mandelbaum designed and developed a unique clinical program, aimed at comprehensively addressing the needs of low-income children and their families. The CAC provides representation to abused and neglected children, undocumented immigrant children, and low-income children with disabilities. Professor Mandelbaum created the Aging Out Project, a statewide community education effort that informs older youth transitioning out of foster care about their rights and entitlements. In the area of immigration, she co-leads a project that provides representation to children in New Jersey’s foster care system who are in need of an immigration attorney. Professor Mandelbaum’s scholarship focuses on the legal representation of children, the rights of siblings to maintain their relationships, child welfare law and policy, and issues at the intersection of family and immigration law.

Saul Martinez spent over 20 years building and leading research teams at Wall Street institutions. Most recently, Saul served as Managing Director, Head of US Large Capitalization Banks, Equity Research, at UBS. Previously, Saul led the Latin American Financial Institutions equity research team at JPMorgan. In these roles, Saul analyzed and engaged with many of the largest banks and financial institutions in the US, Mexico, Brazil, Colombia, Peru, Chile, and Argentina. In addition, at both UBS and JPMorgan, Saul was involved in efforts to recruit, retain and advocate for employees from underrepresented groups. Since leaving UBS in July 2021, Saul has advised both large and small organizations. Saul is a member of the Financial Accounting Standards Advisory Council (FASAC), an advisory body to the Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB). He also currently serves as an advisor to Eurasia Group, the world’s leading political risk research and consulting firm, on financial sector policy issues and he advises numerous small companies on strategy and financial planning.

Saul graduated summa cum laude with a Bachelor of Arts in Political Science from the University of California, Los Angeles and holds a Master’s in Public Affairs from the Princeton School of Public and International Affairs (Princeton University).

Sergio is an advocate for immigrant youth in NJ and is excited to join the vital efforts of the NJCIC. He is from Mexico and New Jersey, and he loves to cook Mexican food like chilaquiles, tacos, and tostadas. He graduated in 2019 with a degree in chemistry from New Jersey City University. Sergio is currently a graduate student in the Cell & Developmental Biology PhD program at Rutgers University – New Brunswick. He is a former Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) recipient and is a proud first-gen immigrant in science. Outside of lab, Sergio enjoys running, playing Mario Kart, and dancing!

Doug Bishop is a Family Physician and the Assistant Medical Directory of Zufall Health Center, a Federally Qualified Health Center in North and Central New Jersey. In his more than a decade at Zufall he has cared for large numbers of immigrant and underserved patients throughout the state. Doug has lectured and published widely on issues of refugee and immigrant health, particularly involving child migration from Central America. He received a BA from Amherst College and MD from UMDNJ-Robert Wood Johnson Medical school before completing training in Family Medicine at Thomas Jefferson University Hospital. He is a Clinical Instructor of Family Medicine at Rutgers-Robert Wood Johnson Medical School and works as a residency preceptor for several Family Medicine residencies.