Current ACLU of Massachusetts members who have paid their dues within the past 15 months are eligible to vote for the organization’s Board of Directors.
Rules and Guidelines
To vote in the 2024 election for ACLU of Massachusetts Board of Directors, please access our digital ballot.
Select up to 11 candidates for election to the ACLU of Massachusetts Board of Directors. Each elected representative will serve a three-year term, ending in 2027.
The deadline for casting ballots is June 10, 2024.
If you have questions about voting in the board election or the Annual Meeting, please contact the ACLU of Massachusetts Board Administrator at sspencer@aclum.org.
Notice to all Class A Members: The ACLU of Massachusetts will have its Annual Meeting of Members on Wednesday, June 12th, 2024 at 6pm via Zoom. Please email boardelections@aclum.org 21 days in advance if you would like to attend.
Candidates' Statements
The Nominating Committee offers the following slate for election to a three-year term on the ACLU of Massachusetts Board of Directors.
- Helena DaSilva Hughes
- Samuel M. Gebru
- Daniel L. Goldberg
- Justice Geraldine S. Hines
- Hannah L. Kilson
- Kim V. Marrkand
- Suma V. Nair
- Alexandra Piñeros Shields
- Kevin Prussia
- Patrick Shin
- Kate Warren Barnes
Helena DaSilva Hughes (1st term)
President & CEO, Immigrants’ Assistance Center
Helena is an experienced Executive Director with a demonstrated history of working in the individual and family services industry. Skilled in Nonprofit Organizations, Immigration Law, Volunteer Management, Public Speaking, and Media Relations. Strong business development professional with a Bachelor of Science Degree with a focus in Business Administration/Legal Studies from Newbury College.
Samuel M. Gebru (1st term)
Managing Director, Black Lion Strategies; Professor of the Practice of Political Science at Tufts University’s School of Arts and Sciences
Samuel M. Gebru is a social entrepreneur, community organizer, educator, advocate, and policy analyst with over 17 years of political and nonprofit experience in the United States and East Africa.
He is the Managing Director of Black Lion Strategies, a social impact and public affairs consulting firm, where he works with a range of businesses, nonprofit organizations, advocacy coalitions, government officials, and others committed to social and economic justice and opportunity. Samuel is also a Senior Advisor at deWit Impact Group, Professor of the Practice of Political Science at Tufts University’s School of Arts and Sciences, and Senior Fellow at the Center for State Policy Analysis at Tufts University’s Jonathan M. Tisch College of Civic Life.
An experienced leader, connector, and professional troublemaker, Samuel has devoted over half of his life to creating and shaping initiatives, building partnerships and coalitions, and advocating for public policies that advance opportunity and justice for all.
Daniel L. Goldberg (2nd term)
Senior Counsel, Morgan Lewis
Daniel L. Goldberg has a broad commercial litigation practice with a focus on antitrust, intellectual property, and franchise cases, and tries cases and argues appeals in courts around the country. He has acted as lead national and regional litigation counsel in complex franchise matters and has served as lead litigation counsel for the New England Patriots and the Boston Red Sox. He has both jury and bench trial experience in a wide variety of cases.
Justice Geraldine S. Hines (Ret.) (2nd term)
Former Justice of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court
Geraldine S. Hines is a retired Justice of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court. Justice Hines began her judicial career in 2000, as a judge on the Superior Court where she served for 12 years before being appointed to the Appeals Court in 2013. Governor Deval Patrick appointed her to the state’s highest court in 2014. At the time of her appointment, she was the first African American woman to serve on the Court in its three hundred- and twenty-two-year history. While on the SJC, Justice Hines authored important decisions in the area of criminal law, including Commonwealth v. Warren, recognizing that a black man’s flight from the police in Boston “might just as easily be motivated by the desire to void the recurring indignity of being racially profiled as by the desire to hide criminal activity.”
Hannah L. Kilson (2nd term)
Partner, Nolan Sheehan Patten LLP
Hannah L. Kilson concentrates her practice at Nolan Sheehan Patten LLP on real estate transactions in the area of affordable housing and community development. She represents nonprofit and for-profit developers, borrowers and lenders in real estate transactions involving various financing sources. Hannah is experienced in structuring multi-family, mixed-income and mixed-use developments utilizing commercial financing coupled with federal and state low-income housing tax credits, historic tax credits and state public financing through the Department of Housing and Community Development’s Mass Docs financing programs.
She is experienced in all stages of commercial real estate transactions, including land acquisition and disposition matters, leasing, and permitting. Over the last several years, Hannah and her colleagues at NSP have represented several housing authorities located in the Greater Boston area in the redevelopment of their federal public housing stock through the creative use of HUD’s rental assistance demonstration program and federal low-income housing tax credits. She represented one of the first developers to receive financing under the Massachusetts Housing Finance Agency’s Workforce Housing Program.
Kim V. Marrkand (2nd term)
Member / Founder & Co-chair, Insurance Practice at Mintz
Kim is the founder and Chair of Mintz’s Insurance Practice. She specializes in representing and advising insurers and reinsurers on the business and legal implications of a variety of complex coverage issues.
Her breadth of experience includes representing insurers with respect to coverage issues involving pollution, environmental, bad faith, tobacco, construction defect, product liability, directors and officers, bankruptcy, asbestos, and emerging risks. Kim represents cedants and reinsurers in disputes and litigation with respect to the applicability and/or scope of coverage under treaties or facultative certificates. Her practice also includes representing insurers in state, bankruptcy, and federal courts across the country.
Suma V. Nair (1st term
Chief Fiduciary Officer, Fiduciary Trust
Suma oversees Fiduciary Services for Fiduciary Trust Company and its New Hampshire affiliate, Fiduciary Trust of New England. She also leads the firm’s trust and estates legal department. She enjoys using her and the broader firm’s extensive trust and estates expertise to effectively protect and serve clients’ interests today as well as across generations.
Prior to joining Fiduciary Trust, Suma was a Director in the Private Client and Trust practice group of Goulston & Storrs PC and served as a member of its Executive Committee. During her sixteen years at G&S, she focused on providing sophisticated estate and tax planning advice to high-net-worth individuals and families, including counseling clients on charitable giving and family and tax matters involving business and wealth succession planning.
In addition to service on the ACLU Foundation of Massachusetts and serving as Chair of its Nominating Committee, Suma is also Vice President of the Boston Bar Association, and is a Fellow of the American College of Trust and Estate Counsel.
Alexandra Piñeros Shields (2nd term)
Visiting Professor of the Practice of Racial Justice, Heller School at Brandeis University
Dr. Alexandra Piñeros Shields is an Associate Professor of the Practice of Racial Equity. She brings over 30 years of experience working to advance the human and civil rights of oppressed communities through innovative practices that create spaces and processes for deep meaningful civic participation and democratic decision-making. The frameworks and strategies that she has developed and facilitated have enabled institutions and community groups to collectively co-create and implement practices of shared power and decision-making with marginalized individuals. Her model of diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging has led to significant successes within organizations, across coalitions, as well as in the public sector in the areas of immigration and criminal justice policy reform.
Because her model is rooted in civil rights leader Ella Baker’s teaching, “people can think and act for themselves,” Dr. Piñeros Shields sees herself as a Midwife for Power. She uses lessons from the field to create life-giving pedagogies and practices that she shares with her students. In addition to serving on the Board of ACLU of Massachusetts, Dr. Piñeros Shields serves as Chair of the Board of the Massachusetts Budget and Policy Center, and serves on the Board of Philanthropy Massachusetts.
Kevin Prussia (2nd term)
Partner, WilmerHale
Kevin Prussia is a partner in the firm’s Litigation/Controversy Department, a member of the Intellectual Property Litigation and Trial Practice Groups, and a member of the firm’s Management Committee.
Mr. Prussia is an experienced litigator and trial lawyer, with significant experience representing leading life sciences and technology companies in major disputes involving intellectual property and other commercial matters. Mr. Prussia has experience across every aspect of trial and appellate practice, including bench and jury federal trials, International Trade Commission investigations, Patent Trial and Appeal Board proceedings, and appeals to the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit and the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts. He is a true “stand-up” litigator who has handled challenging witness examinations and oral arguments for clients in high stakes litigations. He has successfully tried cases to verdict and has counseled numerous clients through complicated settlement discussions.
Patrick Shin (1st term)
Vice Dean and Professor of Law, Suffolk Law School
Professor Patrick Shin is a graduate of Dartmouth College, where he received his A.B. summa cum laude with High Honors in Philosophy and was elected to Phi Beta Kappa, and of Harvard Law School, where he received his J.D. cum laude and served as an editor of the Harvard Law Review.
After law school, Professor Shin completed judicial clerkships in the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit, and he worked for several years as a litigation associate in the Boston office of Hale and Dorr LLP (now WilmerHale). He then returned to Harvard University to earn his Ph.D. in Philosophy before joining the faculty at Suffolk Law.
Professor Shin teaches Torts, Employment Discrimination, and Jurisprudence. In 2011, he received the Cornelius J. Moynihan Teaching Award. His current scholarship focuses on philosophical dimensions of problems in antidiscrimination law and on issues surrounding the meaning and value of diversity, equality, and equal treatment.
Kate Warren Barnes (2nd term)
Kate is a social worker and a relentless champion for social justice who has worked to build a more equitable world using policy advocacy to dismantle systemic oppression. For over a decade, Kate has utilized roles in government affairs combined with an inclusive leadership style, to promote movement building in community with children and families to improve health and wellbeing. Examples of this include Kate’s service in policy and government affairs roles at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Boston Children’s Hospital, the National Association of Social Workers, Massachusetts Chapter, and Harbor Health Services.
In service to her community, Kate also serves as a licensed foster care provider and volunteers on several nonprofit board including the American Civil Liberties Union Massachusetts, and Project Bread, a statewide nonprofit working to solve and prevent hunger in Massachusetts.
As a curious lifelong learner and believer that education is a form of liberation, Kate serves as an adjunct professor at Boston University’s Graduate School of Social Work and is a doctoral student at the Sacred Heart University School of Social Work.