Carole is a Principal at Levine Partners Consulting providing consulting services to nonprofit organizations. She has held senior management positions in four national nonprofits: the National PTA (Deputy Executive Director); Communities in Schools, National (Vice President of Expansion and Technical Assistance); The Family Resource Coalition (Director of Technical Assistance); and the National Lekotek Center (Director of Development and Communications).  Carole holds a BA from Washington University in education and political science, teaching certification and an M.Ed from National Louis University. She consults, trains, writes and speaks on issues of nonprofit development, often focused on work with underserved communities.  Carole also serves on the boards of local, national and international organizations.

Following a 30+-year career in litigation, David turned his attention to other matters, advocating for small donor financing of elections with a goal of reducing the role of big money in elections, transparency in government to improve accountability to the people, and judicial reform because judges matters in ways big and small to all of us. He has also been working on civil liberties issues (particularly police oversight) for many years as co-chair of Chicago Council of Lawyers Civil Liberties Committee. He continues to participate in all the foregoing activities through various organizations, including Reform for Illinois (aka.  Illinois Campaign for Political Reform), the Coalition for Police Contract Accountability, the Chicago Justice Project and Chicago Appleseed. Earlier in his career, his legal work focused primarily on Intellectual Property (IP) litigation, accounting malpractice cases, director and officer corporate cases and insurance coverage. In addition, he was part of the pro bono team of attorneys that successfully sued the State of Illinois to compel compliance with federal statutes requiring “Motor Voter” registration. He has also devoted significant time to improving judicial selection and protecting civil liberties as a former Board member (including a term as President of the Board) of the Chicago Council of Lawyers.

Megan a principal and founding member of O'Malley & Madden, P.C., concentrates her practice in the areas of civil rights and employment law. Her decision to focus exclusively in those areas is born of her unwavering commitment to employee rights and eliminating discrimination and retaliation in the workplace. Ms. O'Malley has successfully litigated hundreds of claims on behalf of victims of discrimination, harassment and retaliation. She has represented numerous whistleblowers in claims against their employers for retaliatory conduct. She has extensive trial experience before the federal and state courts and administrative agencies, and she has successfully argued before both the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals and the Illinois Appellate Court on behalf of employees. Although she primarily litigates cases in court, Ms. O'Malley also routinely counsels employees through career transitions and reviews, drafts and negotiates employment contracts, severance negotiations, and favorable non-compete agreements.

Ms. O'Malley is a former President of the National Employment Lawyers Association, Illinois Chapter and a past Chair of the Chicago Bar Association’s Labor and Employment Committee. She has been selected as a Leading Lawyer and an Illinois Super Lawyer in the area of employment law. Ms. O'Malley served as the Co-Chair of the Judicial Nominations Committee of the National Employment Lawyers Association for several years and is a co-founder of Courts Matter Illinois. She currently serves on the Board of the Chicago Chapter of the Federal Bar Association. Ms. O'Malley is licensed to practice before the United States Supreme Court, the Illinois Supreme Court, the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit, the United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois, and she is a member of the Federal Trial Bar.

Throughout an accomplished career in marketing and communication that gave voice to prominent commercial brands, Judith Myers (Judi) now speaks out for communities without one as an activist for social justice, particularly in the area of voting rights. 

Judi is a member of the Courts Matter Illinois Steering Committee, committed to promoting a fair and equitable judiciary. She is an Election Judge and a Deputy Registrar for Illinois, registering hundreds of high school students in Chicago public schools. She leads a Voting Rights and Protection Task Force for a suburban synagogue, where she has engaged in a multitude of voter outreach efforts, including the John Lewis Voting Rights Act campaign. In addition, Judi served on a citywide community service project to provide humanitarian aid to the elderly during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Judi is a dynamic leader in areas of marketing, branding, nonprofit and organizational change management. She has strategically guided Fortune 500s, national and global nonprofits and associations, including AT&T, RR Donnelley, National Parent Teacher Association and the Crohn’s & Colitis Foundation of America. For the last decade, she has worked with well-knowns clients, such as Takeda Pharmaceuticals, Becker Professional Education Services, Kinship United, HUB International and the Emergency Nurses Association, through her private consultancy. 

Judi has served as a Board Director with the American Marketing Association for many years. She is currently a mentor with several women-based organizations. 

Jan is a retired Licensed Psychologist and Licensed Clinical Social Worker who had 40 years of clinical experience in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Early in her career, she developed and directed a low/no cost counseling center for the uninsured at a neighborhood agency, followed by being the Director of The Rape and Sexual Assault Center. She had a successful private practice for thirty years, specializing in multiple areas, including treating post-traumatic stress disorder. When she and her husband moved to Chicago in 2016 to be closer to family, it became an opportunity to begin her second career as a volunteer in the fight for social justice. Jan is a team builder who is very interested in building partnerships in the community. As National Council of Jewish Women’s Co-State Policy Advocate IL, with the support of both NCJW Illinois sections, she began two coalitions, Promote the Vote Illinois, and Promote Equity Illinois in order to join forces within the community to have the greatest voice possible in fighting voter suppression and the threat of losing civil rights. Both coalitions quickly grew to have over thirty organization coalition partners and many supporting organizational partners. Only a team, a very large one, can make a difference.

Seymour J Mansfield was a lawyer in the active practice of law for 50 years. He was licensed in Illinois and Minnesota and admitted to practice before the United States Supreme Court, in the state and appellate courts and federal courts and circuit courts of appeal of Minnesota and Illinois and admitted before numerous other federal district courts involving particular matters. As a young Legal Aid lawyer, Seymour was on the Board of the Chicago Council of Lawyers when it established the first public evaluation of Judges in 1971 in Illinois. The former Executive Director/Chief Counsel, Mid-MN (Civil) Legal Services (MMLA) and founder, The Fund for Legal Aid, he was nationally acclaimed as a Legal Aid pioneer for his MMLA restructuring plan legally avoiding 1980’s LSC Act (heavily restricting LSC-funded legal aid’s types of clients and cases). Seymour was a founding partner of Mansfield Tanick & Cohen (Minneapolis, MN) for nearly three decades. He was a nationally recognized leading litigator of ground-breaking impact and class cases in consumer protection, federal housing law, racial employment discrimination and a certified employment and commercial litigation lawyer. He served as outside counsel to a publicly held (NASDAQ) medical device company, on its board and as chair of its executive committee. He was recognized by MMLA & the Bar Association for his Lifetime Achievements for justice (Honoree 2009). Seymour served on the Boards of the Chicago Council of Lawyers, the Minnesota County and State Bar Associations and was a member of the American Bar Association House of Delegates. He is a former board director, outside legal counsel and member, Bet Shalom Congregation, Minnetonka, MN; a former board director, Interfaith Action of Greater St. Paul; founder & former Coordinator, Twin Cities Urban Youth Pickleball; former Chair of the MN Legislative Team and now member, Generation Atomic (seeking to end the state ban on new nuclear energy plants). Seymour was a former charter member of the new J-Street MN Chapter and is an active member of Americans for The Peace Now (APN) and the New Jewish Narrative (formed by the merger of APN and Ameinu). In July 2024, Seymour and his wife Susie returned to their hometown of Chicago (living in South Loop) to be with his family, grandson, sisters and old and new friends. Since then, he has become an active member of Jewish Council on Urban Affairs (Chicago); Illinois Nuclear Warriors; the National Council of Jewish Women (Chicago & Northshore), and the Steering Committee for Courts Matter. Seymour was very politically active as a volunteer canvasser on the ground and in phone banking in several states for the Democratic Party in the November 2024 election. He has taken the lead in putting together a small zoom opposition group of friends opposed to the Trump Administration, and he is a member of the Indivisible Chicago Alliance. 

Bio to come

Jacalynn “Jax” West is a longtime Illinois community advocate, organizer, and public servant with deep roots in DuPage County. She currently serves as Chief of Staff to State Representative Diane Blair-Sherlock and has spent years supporting civic engagement, community outreach, and grassroots advocacy across Illinois. Jax is also known for her work organizing around issues including reproductive rights, LGBTQ+ equality, environmental stewardship, and social justice. She is an advocate for the wrongfully accused.  A lifelong DuPage County resident, she brings a strong commitment to transparency, public service, and community-centered leadership to her work with Courts Matter Illinois.