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.
Lillian Kang is a Clinical Teaching Fellow and Supervising Attorney in the Health Justice Alliance (HJA) Law Clinic. Prior to joining HJA, Lillian worked as a staff attorney at the Homeless Action Center in Oakland and the Disability Advocacy Program of the Urban Justice Center in New York City. In those roles, she advocated for low-income and homeless individuals with their claims for Social Security disability and other public benefits. Lillian represented clients in administrative hearings, the Appeals Council, and district court, prioritizing barrier-free and trauma-informed advocacy. Lillian has also worked as a staff attorney for the Community Organization Representation Project at the Justice & Diversity Center in San Francisco. In that role, she advocated for local nonprofit organizations with pressing business law needs by placing cases with volunteer attorneys and organizing free legal clinics and workshops. As a law student, Lillian concentrated in Social Justice Lawyering, externed at the National Immigration Law Center as her placement for the Immigrants’ Rights Clinic, and served as the Submissions Editor for the Hastings Race & Poverty Law Journal. Prior to law school, Lillian worked with children and adults with disabilities at various organizations and received a Mental Health Rehabilitation Specialist certificate through Jump Start, a fellowship program in partnership with the Los Angeles County Department of Mental Health.
Lillian received her J.D. from the University of California, Hastings College of the Law, and her B.A. in Sociology and Disability Studies from the University of California, Los Angeles.
Daniella Blake-Aranbayeva serves as the Office Manager for several programs at Georgetown Law. She manages the day-to-day operations of the Health Justice Alliance Law Clinic, Georgetown’s DC Street Law Program, and the Racial Equity in Education Law and Policy Clinic. Prior to joining Georgetown Law, Daniella worked as a paralegal for an intellectual property law firm.
Daniella received her M.P.A and B.A. in Communications, Legal Institutions, Economics, and Government from American University.
Lisa Kessler is the Director of Operations for the Health Justice Alliance which includes direct oversight of programs associated with the clinic. Prior to joining the Health Justice Alliance, Lisa was an associate in CareFirst BlueCross BlueShield’s leadership development program, where she rotated through various business units to understand opportunities and challenges and contributed on high level strategic projects. Lisa previously worked at Georgetown Law as the program coordinator in the Community Justice Project, where she refined and enhanced the clinic’s work with nonprofit clients, and at LIFT-DC, where she trained and supervised college students working one-on-one with low-income community members to chart a path out of poverty. As an undergraduate, she interned at the Medical-Legal Partnership at Boston Medical Center, the founding site of the national medical-legal partnership network, where she assisted clients with housing issues negatively impacting their health.
Lisa received her Master’s in Business Administration from Georgetown’s McDonough School of Business. She received her undergraduate degree in Community Health and Spanish from Tufts University.