Talk Justice: Episode 66

Featured Guests

Leslie Powell-Boudreaux is the Executive Director of Legal Services of North Florida (LSNF). Leslie has worked as Senior Attorney of LSNF’s Pensacola office, where her primary areas of practice were housing and consumer issues; and representation of victims, including children within the dependency system and victims of domestic and sexual violence. She was also a Senior Attorney with Legal Services of Greater Miami’s Employment and Economic Security unit. Under her leadership in Pensacola, the United Way of Escambia County recognized LSNF as its 2015 and 2017 Partner Agency of the Year. The Escambia Santa Rosa Bar Association awarded Leslie with its Community Service Award in 2015. Leslie received her undergraduate degree from North Carolina State University and her Juris Doctor from the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill School of Law.

Leslie serves as President of United Partners for Human Services and Vice-President of the Florida Civil Legal Aid Association. She is also appointed to the Florida Courts Technology Commission and the Judicial Management Committee’s Access to Justice Workgroup by the Chief Justice of the Florida Supreme Court and to the Voluntary Bar Liaison Committee of the Florida Bar.

Mark Sloan is Harris County, Texas’ Coordinator for Homeland Security & Emergency, serving more than 4.8 million incredibly diverse residents and covering more than 1,770 square miles. Because of Harris County’s large population, port operations, transportation infrastructure, and concentration of petrochemical plants, the Department of Homeland Security has identified Harris County as a Tier 1 region. To meet the growing expectations of emergency management, Sloan is streamlining regional emergency response coordination through the use of automated flood warning systems, traffic management systems, broadcast media capabilities, first responder and community alerting, GIS mapping systems, and regional interoperable communications.

As the director of Harris County Citizen Corps, an innovative, award-winning public preparedness initiative, recognized as a National Best Practice, he coordinates all aspects of the program. Working with a team of county technology experts, he developed one of the first websites devoted to the sharing of community preparedness volunteer opportunities and tracking of volunteer hours. The site links users to the most helpful and informative websites on citizen preparedness throughout the country. Since 2002, over 20 million individuals have visited the website (www.harriscountycitizencorps.com) and over 51,000 have completed the Community Emergency Response Team (CERT) training course.

During the Katrina relief effort at the Astrodome, Sloan was assigned to the Unified Command to coordinate volunteers. During the 21 days more than 60,000 volunteers received various assignments that helped over 65,000 evacuees from New Orleans. On September 9, 2005, Sloan was recognized for his efforts by ABC Nightly News as the Person of the Week and received the Special Award: Texas’ Response to Katrina Evacuees at the 2006 National Hurricane Conference in Orlando in recognition of his leadership and coordination.  Mark was also honored with “The President’s Call to Service Award” in September of 2007 recognizing the accomplishments of the Harris County Citizen Corps and for coordinating the volunteer response during the Katrina relief effort.

In the fall of 2008, Sloan was also recognized by the Houston Texans football team on Reliant Stadium’s 50-yard line and later received the John C. Freeman Weather Museum’s Hurricane Hero Award for his exemplary leadership during Hurricane Ike.

In November of 2010 the Department of Homeland Security appointed Mark to serve on the State, Local, Tribal, and Territorial Government Coordinating Council that coordinates critical infrastructure protection guidance and strategies across all levels of government.

He is a member of the San Jacinto Type III All-Hazards Incident Management Team.

Sloan is a board member of both the Southeast Texas Regional Advisory Council and Big City Emergency Managers, where he serves as the Chair.

In 2018, the Emergency Management Association of Texas (EMAT) named Sloan the recipient of the “Lou Harrell” Emergency Management Coordinator of the Year award.

Sloan is also a member of the National Homeland Security Consortium.

Since 2008 as EMC, he has led the organization in over 240 EOC activations some of which include Hurricanes Ike, Bill, Harvey, Imelda, and Laura, Winter Storm Uri, numerous floods and other weather events, Super Bowls, World Series and other special events as well as COVID-19.     

Shrushti Kothari is the Disaster Grants Program Counsel in the Office of Program Performance at Legal Services Corporation (LSC). She previously served as Project Manager of National Disaster Content and Resources and as a Staff Attorney in the Disaster Relief Unit at Lone Star Legal Aid in Houston, TX. She also served as a Subject-Matter Expert and Content Manager for LSC’s multi-partner Legal Aid Disaster Resource Center website and the Disaster Assistance Recovery Tool. Ms. Kothari is a member of the American Bar Association’s Standing Committee on Disaster Response and Preparedness and the Vice Director of Implementations ABA Young Lawyers Division’s Disaster Legal Services Program.

Host

Lynn Jennings serves as the Vice President for Grants Management at the Legal Services Corporation (LSC).  In this capacity, she has responsibility for planning, developing, and implementing systems for LSC’s nationwide grant-making and grants management.  Ms. Jennings focuses on promoting effective and efficient delivery of legal services to the low-income individuals and families, ensuring sound fiscal and management oversight, and ensuring compliance with the LSC Act, other governing provisions of the law, and LSC’s guidelines, policies, and grant conditions.

Prior to joining LSC, Ms. Jennings served as the Executive Director of Big City Emergency Managers, Inc. (BCEM).  Since 2005, the BCEM has brought together the directors of emergency management from the largest, most at-risk cities from across the country to foster the development and growth of robust and nimble emergency management operations in the nation’s largest, most at-risk metropolitan jurisdictions so that the country is better positioned to prevent, protect against, mitigate, prepare for, respond to and recover from major incidents and catastrophic emergencies.

Previously, she served as Executive Vice President at the Council for Excellence in Government (Council) where she directed the Council’s homeland security and emergency preparedness initiatives. In that capacity, she oversaw the development and implementation of a Public Readiness Index (PRI) to measure individual and family readiness. She also led the various leadership and performance programs at the Council including the Excellence in Government and DHS Fellows programs. In this role, she was responsible for the programming and execution of programs that graduate more than 220 Federal managers each year.

Ms. Jennings also served as the Director of Strategic Initiatives at the CNA Corporation, a non-profit corporation that provides high-level, in-depth research and analysis to inform public sector decision-makers in a number of important areas including homeland security.

She has extensive public sector experience and has served in a number of senior-level positions in the federal government, including Acting Assistant Secretary for Policy in the U.S. Department of Labor, General Counsel of the U.S. Merit Systems Protection Board, and Chief of Staff to the Chief Operating Officer of the U.S. Agency for International Development. Ms. Jennings also has experience in the White House’s Office of Presidential Personnel as a Search Manager for key presidential appointments in both national security and domestic policy.

She earned a bachelor’s degree, cum laude with honors, in political science from the University of Rochester and a J.D. from the Columbus School of Law, the Catholic University of America.