Name Geri Palast | Role Defender | |
Education Stanford University, New York University School of Law | ||
Geri Palast is the Managing Director of the Israel Action Network (IAN). IAN is the joint initiative of The Jewish Federations of North America and the Jewish Council for Public Affairs to defend Israel's legitimacy, change the conversation about Israel and work towards the two state solution. She has extensive experience organizing and leading broad-based national grassroots political, legislative and issue campaigns. She has taught at universities, and she is an attorney.
Contents
She is the sister of investigative journalist Greg Palast.
Early life, education, and family
Palast is a graduate of Stanford University with honors, and graduated as a Root Tilden Public Service Law scholar from NYU Law School. She is a member of the California and Washington DC Bars. She received a certificate in Non-Proft Management from Georgetown University, and is an attorney.
Career
Palast has also served as the national Legislative and Political Director of Service Employees International Union (SEIU) and established and ran the Washington office of the National Employment Law Project (NELP). She has consulted with and served on numerous boards of NGOs, currently the National Institute on Money in State Politics and CFE. From 1993-2000, she served as the Assistant Secretary of Labor for Congressional and Intergovernmental Affairs under President Bill Clinton.
In 2000, she became the founder and executive director of two nonprofit organizations, Justice at Stake, a national judicial reform advocacy organization, and the Campaign for Fiscal Equity (CFE).
Campaign for Fiscal Equity
The CFE is a not-for-profit advocacy organization seeking to protect and promote the constitutional right to a sound basic education for all public school students in the State of New York. During her tenure, CFE won CFE v. State, the landmark lawsuit that challenged New York's school finance system. The organization now oversees implementation of the laws and reforms that resulted from the case, ensuring the right to a sound basic public education for children in New York State. In 1995 the Court of Appeals held that the State Constitution requires the state to provide all necessary resources to achieve these results.
Israel Action Network
Geri Palast currently works as the Managing Director for the Israel Action Network. The IAN was created by the Jewish Federations of North America, an American Jewish umbrella organization, to "mobilize communities to counter the Assault on Israel’s Legitimacy". It is a strategic initiative that defends Israel's right to exist as a democratic Jewish state within the North American Jewish community. It advocates, "security for two states for two peoples."