MN Attorney General Keith Ellison (Co-chair)

Keith Ellison was sworn in as Minnesota’s 30th attorney general on January 7, 2019. From 2007 to 2019, Ellison represented Minnesota’s 5th Congressional District in the U.S. House of Representatives. He served for 12 years on the House Financial Services Committee, where he helped oversee the financial services industry, the housing industry, and Wall Street, among others. Before being elected to Congress, Attorney General Ellison served four years in the Minnesota House of Representatives. Prior to entering elective office, he spent 16 years as an attorney specializing in civil-rights and defense law, including five years as executive director of the Legal Rights Center.

MN Department of Public Safety Commissioner John Harrington (Co-Chair)

John Harrington was appointed by Governor Tim Walz in January 2019 to serve as the Commissioner for the Department of Public Safety for Minnesota. Prior to becoming the Commissioner of Public Safety, Harrington served as the Chief of the Metro Transit Police 2012-2019, helping to create the Homeless Action team and increasing diversity from 5-50%. Commissioner Harrington is a former member of the Minnesota Senate who represented District 67, which includes the East area of Saint Paul. Harrington was the 39th Police Chief for the city of St. Paul Police Department serving from 2004-2010 where he began his police career in 1977. As St. Paul Police Chief, Harrington tackled some of the city's most difficult problems, resulting in the development of programs that greatly reduced domestic violence and gang involvement. He also increased the diversity of the police department by 40 percent and worked with the private sector to increase police resources helping to found The Police Foundation and Shop with Cops.

Medaria Arradondo, Minneapolis Police Chief

Chief Medaria Arradondo is the 53rd Chief of the Minneapolis Police Department. He joined the MPD in 1989 as a patrol officer in the 4th Precinct and worked his way up the ranks before being appointed the Inspector of the First Precinct in 2013. He also served as a School Resource Officer, Northside beat officer, the Commander of the Internal Affairs Unit, Deputy Chief, and Assistant Chief, before being nominated as Chief by the mayor in 2017. Chief Arradondo actively sits on several community boards and is a member of several national and international police associations. Arradondo is a courageous public servant and change agent with a demonstrated talent for building mutually-respectful and trusting relationships with community members and professional policing teams. He served as MPD’s liaison for the National Initiative for Building Community Trust and Justice Organization, overseeing the execution of initiatives on procedural justice, implicit bias, and reconciliation training. His works has helped positively transforming the MPD culture and position the Department as a national leader in police service excellence.

Chanda Smith Baker, Minneapolis Foundation

Chanda Smith Baker, who joined The Minneapolis Foundation in 2017, is a results-driven leader with 25 years of nonprofit and community experience. She oversees the Foundation’s Community Impact team and its competitive grant making program, which distributes $5 million to $7 million every year to transform education, foster economic vitality, and promote civic engagement in greater Minneapolis-St. Paul. In addition, she provides strategic direction and leadership to the Foundation’s community initiatives and partners with its donors, as well as organizations and leaders across the city and state, to increase their alignment and collective impact. Before joining the Foundation, Chanda spent 17 years at Pillsbury United Communities, where she served in a variety of positions before assuming the role of President and CEO in 2011.

Clarence Castile

Clarence D. Castile has been a resident of the Saint Paul Midway community for over 40 years. He is passionate about assisting in developing policies and procedures for the protection of our law enforcement communities, and most especially the citizens.  Mr. Castile lost his nephew, Philando Castile to gun violence in July 2016.

Elizer Darris, ACLU

After being sentenced to natural life in prison as a juvenile and violently struggling for years in adult facilities, Elizer Eugene Darris fought to turn his life around.  Self-education became his vehicle of self-discovery and through it, his life was redeemed.

Currently, he serves on multiple Boards and advocates for social justice and criminal justice reform.  He is the Field Organizer with the American Civil Liberties Union of Minnesota (ACLU-MN) and leads the Smart Justice Campaign.

Matt Gottschalk, MPCA, former Chief, Staples MN

Director Matt Gottschalk has worked in law enforcement for 18 years and currently serves as the Director of Public Safety for the City of Corcoran. He has previously served the communities of Mankato and Staples. He holds a Master’s Degree in Public Administration from Hamline University and serves on the executive boards of the Minnesota Chiefs of Police Association and Hennepin County Chiefs of Police Association. As a police leader, Director Gottschalk has dedicated his efforts to the implementation of community-oriented governance across Minnesota.

State Sen. Bill Ingebrigtsen (R - Douglas/Otter Tail counties)

Bill is a 34-year veteran of the Douglas County Sheriff’s Office, including 16 years as the Douglas County Sheriff. Bill is now serving his 3rd term in the Senate District 8, which includes communities across Douglas and Otter Tail counties.

Honorable Mark Kappelhoff, MN Fourth Judicial District

Mark J. Kappelhoff is District Court Judge on the Fourth Judicial District Court in Hennepin County, Minnesota. He serves as the Chair of the Hennepin County District Court’s Equal Justice Committee and Co-Chair of the Domestic Violence Steering Committee. Before being appointed to the bench, Judge Kappelhoff spent nearly two decades as a federal prosecutor in the Civil Rights Division of the U.S. Department of Justice, where he served in a number of senior leadership positions, including Deputy Assistant Attorney General and Chief of the Criminal Section. In these positions, he enforced the civil rights laws related to policing practices, hate crimes, and human trafficking. Among his responsibilities, he oversaw the Department’s criminal and civil investigations in Ferguson Missouri, Baltimore, Maryland, and other police departments around the country. He also worked on the Justice Department’s police accountability and criminal justice reform efforts, played an instrumental role in the Department’s efforts to secure passage of the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act, and co-chaired the Attorney General’s Advisory Group on racial disparities in federal sentencing.

Dr. Brittany Lewis

Dr. Brittany Lewis is a well-respected community engaged scholar, thought leader, author, professor, and youth action research team leader known for bringing those most often locked out of local decision making processes to the action research table. Dr. Lewis is the Founder and CEO of Research in Action, an urban research consulting firm, and is currently a Senior Research Associate at the Center for Urban and Regional Affairs (CURA) at the University of Minnesota where she is the Principal Investigator of the Illusion of Choice: Evictions and Profit in North Minneapolis report and the Co-Principal Investigator on the recently published report entitled: The Diversity of Gentrification: Multiple Forms of Gentrification in Minneapolis and St. Paul. Dr. Lewis uses a critical race and gender studies lens when looking at the intersections of poverty, urban housing, policing, and community economic development.

State Rep. Rena Moran (DFL - St. Paul)

Representative Rena Moran is the Chair of the Health and Human Services Policy Committee of the Minnesota House of Representatives. She has represented the St. Paul communities of Frogtown, Summit-University, Rondo, Thomas-Dale, and the North End since 2010. As a legislator, she has focused on protecting child welfare, enacting criminal justice reform, and fighting for affordable housing and economic opportunity for all. Moran formerly served as House Deputy Minority Leader and is the current Chair of the People of Color and Indigenous (POCI) Caucus and the United Black Legislative Caucus. She holds a B.S. in Early Childhood Education from Southern Illinois University and is the Director of Prevention Initiatives and Parent Leadership at Minnesota Communities Caring for Children. Moran is a graduate of the Bush Foundation Fellowship, Humphrey Policy Fellowship, and Henry Toll Fellowship. On a national level, Moran serves as Executive Secretary of the National Black Caucus of State Legislators, Midwest Region Coordinator for the National Organization of Black Elected Legislative Women, and as the Minnesota State Director for both the Women Legislators’ Lobby and the National Foundation for Women Legislators. She is a proud mother of seven and grandmother of eight.

Justin Page, Mid-Minnesota Legal Aid/Minnesota Disability Law Center

Justin Page is a staff attorney with Mid-Minnesota Legal Aid/Minnesota Disability Law Center. His practice focuses on disability access and discrimination litigation. He has successfully represented individuals with disabilities in a wide range of disability related cases involving public accommodations and governmental entities. Prior to joining the Minnesota Disability Law Center, he was a law clerk for Judge Pamela Alexander, Fourth Judicial District of Minnesota, and worked as a legislative aide to the late U.S. Senator Paul Wellstone.

Patina Park, Minnesota Indian Women's Resource Center

Patina Park is Mnicoujou Lakota and is the President/CEO of the Minnesota Indian Women's Resource Center (MIWRC), a 35-year culturally grounded nonprofit agency dedicated to providing holistic, multi-service programming grounded in traditional teachings that help to heal, preserve, and strengthen Native American women and their families from the multi-generational trauma impact of settler colonization. Upon graduating from Hamline Law School in 2001, Ms. Park focused her early legal career on advocating for Native American families involved in child protection and private custody cases throughout Minnesota in both state and tribal courts. Ms. Park previously served as an appellate court judge for the Prairie Island Sioux Community and taught Children and the Law and Federal Indian Law at the former Hamline University School of Law, now Mitchell Hamline School of Law. She is married to a 25-year veteran of the St. Paul Police Department and has two children, who like her, are on the autism spectrum.

Brian Peters, Minnesota Police and Peace Officers Association

Brian Peters became the Executive Director of the Minnesota Police and Peace Officers Association (MPPOA) in June 2019. Prior to becoming the Executive Director, Peters lead Target Corporations Global Crisis Management, Threat Assessment and Travel Security Program.  Before leaving Target for the MPPOA, Peters served on Target’s Executive Services Team tasked with the Safety and Security of Target’s top Executive Leadership Team. Prior to joining Target, Peters served as a Commander in the City of Brooklyn Center.  He joined the department in 1998 as a Community Service Officer, Patrol Officer, sergeant and Commander. Peters is a graduate from the University of St. Thomas with a master’s degree in Police Administration and also has a bachelor’s degree in Political Science from the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities.  Peters is a graduate of the FBI National Academy session 251.

Sara Rice, Mille Lacs Band Police Chief

Sara Rice is Chief of Police and an enrolled member of the Mille Lacs Band of Ojibwe. Rice the joined the Mille Lacs Band Police Department in 2001, serving as a Police Officer and Conservation Officer prior to being named Interim Police Chief in 2016 and receiving permanent appointment as Chief in January, 2018. Rice is also a member of the Minnesota POST Board. Rice has lived her entire life on the Mille Lacs Reservation. She attended Onamia High School, received her law enforcement degree from Central Lakes College, and earned a bachelor of arts degree in organizational behavior from the College of St. Scholastica. She leads a full-time police department of 23 full-time, POST-certified officers that dates back to 1984. The Mille Lacs Band Police Department has law enforcement authority under federal, state and tribal law.

Mark Rubin, St. Louis County Attorney

Mark S. Rubin was elected St. Louis County Attorney in 2010, after serving as a prosecutor in the office for more than 30 years, handling major criminal cases, including officer involved shootings. Mark is a graduate of the College of St. Scholastica and Hamline University School of Law, now Mitchell Hamline. In 2011, Mark was honored with the Julius Gernes Minnesota State Bar Association Prosecutor Award for Excellence. In 2012, he was awarded the M.A. Johnson Distinguished Service Award by the Minnesota County Attorneys Association, the award demonstrating significant leadership and a commitment to striving to improve the quality of justice while increasing and enhancing public awareness of the office of County Attorney. Mark also enjoys an AV Preeminent Rating from Martindale Hubbell, the highest possible rating in both legal ability and ethical standards. As County Attorney, Mark has been a state-wide co-leader on the issue of protecting girls who have been sexually trafficked, resulting in the successful passage of the Safe Harbor Act. Mark and his wife Nancy reside in Duluth. They have two sons, Anthony and Jeremy, a daughter in-law, Dr. Amanda Webb-Rubin, and two beautiful grandchildren, John Angelo and Julia Lynn.

Kevin Torgerson, Olmsted County Sheriff

Kevin Torgerson currently serves as the Olmsted County Sheriff, Rochester, Minnesota. Sheriff Torgerson began his law Enforcement career with the Hennepin County Sheriff’s Office, Minnesota and has been serving continuously in law enforcement since 1980.  He served in the Detention, Warrants, Courts/Bailiff and Radio (Dispatch) Divisions. In January of 1986, Torgerson transferred to the Olmsted County Sheriff’s Office working in every capacity the Office served its communities. Sheriff Torgerson rose in ranks from deputy, Sergeant and to Captain before being sworn in January 6th, 2015. Torgerson is married with two adult children, one in the medical field and one in education.

Dr. Artika Tyner

Dr. Artika R. Tyner is a passionate educator, author, sought after speaker, and advocate for justice. At the University of St. Thomas, Dr. Tyner serves as founding director of the Center on Race, Leadership and Social Justice and law professor. She is committed to training students to serve as social engineers who create new inroads to justice and freedom.