Staff

Lewis Gordon, Director

Lewis Gordon is a Harvard graduate with nearly thirty years of experience as a lawyer. Following a federal court clerkship, Mr. Gordon entered private practice in Alaska in 1982. He successfully defended environmentalists and environmental organizations from intimidation lawsuits, and represented them in environmental litigation as well. From 1989-94, while the managing partner of the Anchorage firm of Ashburn & Mason, Mr. Gordon served on the nine member plaintiffs’ steering committee that managed the massive litigation arising from the grounding of the Exxon Valdez.

In 2003, Mr. Gordon was invited to be a Wallace Stegner Center Fellow for a year at the University of Utah’s S. J. Quinney College of Law, as well as an adjunct professor of law (Environment and Human Rights). He founded EDLC that same year.

Fernanda Venzon, Staff Attorney

Fernanda Venzon joined EDLC as a full-time staff attorney in 2011, after two years of working with EDLC as an independent consultant. Her role includes helping local lawyers develop legal strategies, drafting amicus curiae briefs, and conducting research on the applicable national and international frameworks in a range of cases in Latin America in which local communities have been affected by natural resource development projects.

Ms. Venzon holds advanced degrees from Brazil and the United Kingdom in international law, environmental management, and development management, and has a wealth of experience in the human rights and environment area. Prior to joining EDLC, she served as the Executive Director of the Sierra Madre Alliance in Mexico, where she formulated land claims under international human rights frameworks for Tarahumara indigenous communities. She also worked in the Brazilian Amazon, providing legal advice and education on environmental law to traditional peoples living in protected areas.

Consultants

Monti Aguirre

Monti Aguirre is a veteran environmental human rights campaigner who has worked for the past two decades in Latin American countries in support of indigenous peoples’ rights. She performs outreach to NGOs and others in the Global South to identify and develop new case and project opportunities for EDLC and the law firms, and to provide ongoing liaison and resource services to the lawyers and the clients.

Ms. Aguirre was born and raised in Colombia. She holds a bachelor’s degree in anthropology and a master’s degree in environmental education and conservation from New York University. Ms. Aguirre is completely fluent in English and Spanish, and proficient in Portuguese. She has worked for many years at International Rivers in support of local movements for the protection of rivers.

ISABELA FIGUEROA

Isabela Figueroa is a Brazilian/Ecuadorean lawyer specializing in indigenous peoples’ rights and extractive industries. She has completed legal studies in Brazil, Ecuador, the United States, and Canada, and has worked with a number of indigenous organizations from Amazon Basin countries to raise awareness and advocate for indigenous rights. Ms. Figueroa was the lead lawyer in Ecuador’s first successful indigenous case against an oil company, and provided legal advice to communities affected by mining concessions on their lands. She represented the Indigenous Council of Roraima in part of its long and ultimately successful battle to obtain title to Raposa Serra do Sol indigenous land in Brazil. Ms. Figueroa lives in Colombia, where she continues her work as a public interest lawyer.

BRANT McGEE

Brant McGee received his law degree from Boston University Law School in 1977, having earlier graduated from Lewis and Clark College and served in Vietnam as a combat medic. He was a felony trial lawyer for five years for  the Alaska Public Defender Agency before entering private practice as a civil litigator. In 1984, Mr. McGee was appointed the first director of Alaska’s new Office of Public Advocacy, an agency tasked with child advocacy, criminal defense, and public guardian functions. Since his retirement in 2004, he has studied international human rights law in the LL.M. program at Columbia Law School; served in Afghanistan as an advisor to the public defender office established by the International Legal Foundation; and worked for EDLC and other organizations on issues of community participation in environmental decision-making and corporate responsibility.

- Durwood Zaelke, Founder and Past President, Center for International Environmental Law