Staff
Yael Cannon is an Associate Professor 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.
Amy Saji is a second-year Supervising Attorney and Clinical Teaching Fellow in the Health Justice Alliance (HJA) Law Clinic. Prior to joining HJA, Amy worked as a special education attorney at the Center for Children’s Advocacy (CCA). In her role, Amy dedicated herself to ensuring that youth of color and students with disabilities had equitable access to quality education services, despite their zip code. Amy provided legal services, training, systemic, and legislative advocacy by partnering with state, district, medical, and community partners to ensure holistic representation. In addition, she co-supervised legal interns in CCA’s legal clinic with UConn School of Law, mentoring students sitting in the seat she herself once sat in. Amy also worked as a staff attorney at Greater Hartford Legal Aid in its housing unit and assisted clients with housing conditions and eviction matters.
During law school, Amy externed with the DC Office of Police Complaints, UConn’s Office of Institutional Equity, National Legal Advocacy Network, and CCA’s Medical-Legal Partnership. She served as President of the UConn Public Interest Law Group, Assistant Managing Editor of the Connecticut Public Interest Law Journal, and was the Special Education Teaching & Research Assistant. Prior to law school, Amy interned at congressional, political, and community organizations, and her research in political science has been presented and placed at conferences.
Amy earned her Juris Doctorate and BA in Honors Political Science from UConn and UConn School of Law in a total of six years, in its inaugural cohort of the Accelerated Program in Law.
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.