Although President Obama is several weeks into his term, he’s still updating his list of staffers and the latest round of appointees includes an out lesbian.
Late last month, Obama announced the names of 22 lawyers who would be joining the White House Counsel’s Office, and Alison Nathan, an openly gay fellow at New York University’s law school and a former assistant professor at Fordham University’s law school, was on the list.
Nathan and her fellow associate counsel staffers will advise the president on various legal issues.
Nathan is a 1994 graduate of Cornell University and received her law degree from the school in 2000. She taught civil procedure at Fordham from August 2006-08 and also conducted a seminar on the Supreme Court and the death penalty. Nathan was the 2008-09 Alexander Fellow at NYU.
Prior to entering the world of academia, Nathan was a litigation associate at Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale and Dorr LLP, where she focused on civil litigation, Supreme Court and appellate litigation, Constitutional law and habeas-corpus litigation in death-penalty cases.
In 2004, Nathan served as an associate national counsel for John Kerry’s presidential campaign, and last year was the national voter-protection senior adviser to the Obama campaign and sat on the campaign’s LGBT advisory board.
Nathan was recommended to the position through the Gay & Lesbian Leadership Institute’s Presidential Appointments Project.
— Jen Colletta