Staff
Yael Cannon is a Professor of Law at Georgetown University Law Center, where she is the Legal Director of the Georgetown University Health Justice Alliance (HJA), and directs the HJA Law Clinic. HJA is a medical-legal partnership between Georgetown University Law Center and Medical Center to develop the next generation of leaders in law and medicine to address legal barriers to health and well-being for children and families living in poverty. Professor Cannon previously taught at the University of New Mexico (UNM) School of Law, where she was an Associate Professor and taught in the Community Lawyering Clinic, through which her students represented low-income patients of the UNM Medical Legal Alliance. At UNM, Professor Cannon helped to secure a $2.6 million grant from the W.K. Kellogg Foundation to develop the UNM Child and Family Justice Initiative, a partnership with the UNM Health Sciences Center to pursue justice, racial equity, health, and well-being for vulnerable children and families. She co-chaired the New Mexico legislature’s J. Paul Taylor Early Childhood Taskforce aimed at developing a comprehensive behavioral health system of care for young children and served by appointment on the New Mexico Supreme Court’s Children’s Court Rules Committee. Professor Cannon previously taught as a Practitioner-in-Residence at the American University Washington College of Law in the Disability Rights Law Clinic. Before teaching, Professor Cannon worked as a Senior Attorney at the Children’s Law Center in Washington, D.C., where she provided legal services at a Children’s National Medical Center pediatric clinic as part of a medical-legal partnership and engaged in policy advocacy on behalf of children and families living in poverty.
Professor Cannon graduated with distinction from Stanford Law School and summa cum laude from the University of Maryland with B.A. degrees in History and African American Studies. Her research focuses on the ways in which the law, in collaboration with other disciplines, can be used to advance health and justice for children and families living in poverty.
Marta Beresin is the Deputy Director of Georgetown Law Center’s Health Justice Alliance Law Clinic. Throughout her legal career, Professor Beresin has worked at the intersection of child welfare and family homelessness. At the Washington Legal Clinic for the Homeless, Professor Beresin represented homeless families in shelter, housing, disability rights, and public benefits cases, and advocated locally for budget and policy initiatives to serve her clients’ interests such as affordable housing and a more robust TANF program. She also trained and supervised pro bono attorneys and engaged in community education, outreach, and organizing of shelter residents to assist their efforts to create a more just, respectful, and supportive homeless services continuum of care in Washington, DC.
Early in her career, Professor Beresin represented children in child abuse and neglect cases and parents experiencing homelessness in family law matters. Most recently, she served as the Legal and Policy Director for Break the Cycle, a national non-profit focused on teen dating violence, where she created a partnership with two DC school-based health centers to screen and refer high school students in need of protection orders and related legal matters.
Professor Beresin has testified before the DC Council and Congress and provided commentary related to family homelessness on Pacifica Radio, NPR Morning Edition, and other news outlets. She has spoken at national conferences and Symposiums and written about the devastating impact of the separation of children from their families due to housing insecurity and homelessness.
Professor Beresin received her J.D. with honors from George Washington University Law School and a B.A. in Political Science from Penn State University.
Hawah Cyllah is a Supervising Attorney and Clinical Teaching Fellow in the Health Justice Alliance (HJA) Law Clinic. Prior to joining HJA, Hawah worked for the U.S. Department of Labor as a Presidential Management Fellow on health law and benefits issues. Prior to DOL, she worked for DC’s Office of the Attorney General in their Consumer Protection Division to protect the rights of DC consumers.
Hawah earned her J.D. from Georgetown Law. While in law school, she worked full-time for Families Against Mandatory Minimums (FAMM) on compassionate release cases at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. At FAMM, she supervised legal interns and worked directly with incarcerated people and their families to advocate compassionate release for people who were sick and elderly. During her time as a student, Hawah was also a Georgetown Law Public Interest Fellow and the Notes Editor for the Georgetown Law Journal of Law & Modern Critical Race Perspectives. She was also a fellow with Harvard and Howard Law School’s Justice Initiative, a fellowship for social justice-oriented law students and practitioners. Prior to law school, Hawah worked as FAMM’s lead fundraiser for four and a half years.
In her free time, Hawah enjoys indulging in DC’s vibrant food scene with friends, visiting local galleries and museums, and perusing the poetry section of her favorite bookstores. Hawah grew up in the DC area, has been a mentor to DC youth, and is multilingual.
Ramy Andil serves as the Office Manager for three of Georgetown Law’s clinical programs. He manages the day-to-day operations of the Health Justice Alliance Clinic, Georgetown’s DC Street Law Program, and the Racial Equity in Education Law and Policy Clinic. Prior to joining the clinics team, Ramy worked in the Georgetown Law Copy and Mail Center as a customer service assistant.
Ramy received his B.A. in Psychology from Georgetown University’s main campus in 2021.