Advisors

The Honorable Jeffrey Alker Meyer

U.S. District Court Judge

Judge Jeffrey Alker Meyer was sworn in as a United States District Judge on February 28, 2014. He graduated from Yale College in 1985, served as a Fulbright Scholar in Ecuador, and then graduated from Yale Law School in 1989. After graduating from law school, Judge Meyer served as a law clerk for Chief Judge James L. Oakes of the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit and for Associate Justice Harry A. Blackmun of the United States Supreme Court.

Judge Meyer began his practice career in 1992 as a staff attorney with Vermont Legal Aid and later as a corporate litigator from 1993 to 1995 in Washington, D.C. From 1995 to 2004, Judge Meyer served as an Assistant United States Attorney with the United States Attorney’s Office in the District of Connecticut. He then served in New York from 2004 to 2005 as Senior Counsel to the Independent Inquiry for the United Nations Oil-for-Food Program in Iraq.

From 2006 to 2014, Judge Meyer was a professor at Quinnipiac University School of Law, and from 2010 to 2014, he also served as a visiting professor at Yale Law School with the Yale Supreme Court Advocacy Clinic. Judge Meyer’s scholarship has focused on federal regulatory crimes as well as the extraterritorial application of United States law. His articles have appeared in the Georgetown Law Journal, the Minnesota Law Review, the Hastings Law Journal, the Pennsylvania Journal of International Law, and the Yale Journal of International Law. He presently co-teaches the Constitutional Litigation Seminar at Yale Law School.

Ronnell Higgins

Chief of Yale Police & Director of Public Safety at Yale

Chief Ronnell A. Higgins leads the Yale University Police Department, the nation’s oldest campus police department, established in 1894. Chief Higgins has been instrumental in designing and implementing strategies to reduce crime at Yale to the lowest levels since the department began reporting UCR Crimes in 1985.

Chief Higgins has a BS in Law Enforcement Administration from the University of New Haven and he is a 2006 graduate of the FBI’s National Academy. He holds a certiﬁcate in Law Enforcement Education from the University of Virginia; he successfully completed the FBI’s Law Enforcement Executive Development Seminar (LEEDS) in 2010 and the Crisis Leadership in Higher Education Seminar at the Harvard Graduate School of Education in 2011. In 2013, Chief Higgins was appointed by Governor Dannel P. Malloy to the Police Oﬃcers Standards and Training Council (POSTC) whose mission is to provide high-quality basic, advanced and specialized training to Connecticut police oﬃcers. He was appointed to the International Association of Chiefs of Police’s (IACP) Juvenile Justice and Child Protection Committee and recently served as President of the South Central Connecticut Chiefs of Police Association. Chief Higgins serves on the Executive Board for the National Organization of Black Law Enforcement Executives for Connecticut (NOBLE), and was named one of the state’s Top 100 inﬂuential African Americans by the Connecticut NAACP. Chief Higgins was appointed to the Connecticut Commission on Racial and Ethnic Disparities in the Criminal Justice System by the Senate Majority Leader of the Connecticut General Assembly and is the recipient of the Elm-Ivy Award honoring Yale and New Haven community members whose service strengthens the ties of the university and its hometown.

Remy Zimmermann

Retired Partner, Wiggin & Dana

Jeremy (“Remy”) Zimmermann is a Youth Court volunteer and judge. He is a retired litigation partner of the Wiggin and Dana law firm. Since retirement he has taught products liability law as an adjunct professor at Quinnipiac University and the University of Connecticut law schools. He has also been certified as an arbitrator by the American Arbitration Association and the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority.

Remy was born and raised in New Haven, CT. He graduated from Hillhouse High School, Brown University and Georgetown University Law Center. He has lived in Branford, CT for more than 30 years.
During his legal career, Remy tried more than 50 cases to verdicts in state and federal courts in disputes involving personal injury, employment termination, insurance coverage, legal malpractice, medical malpractice, product liability, price discrimination and breach of warranty. He has argued appeals before the Connecticut Appellate Court and Supreme Court and the United States Court of Appeals for the First and Second Circuits.

Remy is a member of the New Haven County Bar Association and the Connecticut Bar Association and a past member of the American Bar Association, the Product Liability Advisory Council and the United States Supreme Court Bar.

Megan Ifill

Youth Court Parent

Megan Ifill is originally from Trinidad and relocated from Manhattan in 2001. She worked at McKinsey & Company as Technology Buyer and Project Teams member; consulted at Choate as IT Project Manager and worked 15 years in New York global corporations in company-wide systems administration and implementation. Megan is currently in her third year serving on the Behavioral Health Advisory Council and second year on the Leadership Patient Experience Forum at YNHH. Megan is a member of the New Haven Citywide PTO and a parent leader at Teach Our Children.

Katie Self

Former President, National Association of Youth Courts

Katie Self was the executive director of Teen Court of Sarasota, Florida from 1989 to 2015. She was the first president of the National Association of Youth Courts from 2007 to 2009. She was also the first president of the Florida Association of Teen Courts and helped expand youth courts to 51 Florida counties. The U.S. Department of Justice Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention asked her to consult on a task force and the National Association of School Resource Officers has asked her to lead workshops for its members. In 2011, the Florida Bar Foundation awarded her their Medal of Honor in recognition of her service.

Laoise King

Education Policy Consultant

Laoise King is an Education Law and Policy expert with over fifteen years of experience in the practice of law, non-profit management, municipal government, legislative advocacy and education policy. Most recently, King served as Vice President of Education Initiatives at United Way of Greater New Haven where she was responsible for community investments, partnerships and programs related to education. King led the development and implementation of United Way’s education initiatives and agenda, including overseeing the expansion of the Boost! Initiative. King came to United Way after serving the City of New Haven in various capacities. She was Chief of External Affairs for New Haven Public Schools, Deputy Chief of Staff to Mayor John DeStefano, Jr., and Assistant Corporation Council for the City of New Haven. King previously prosecuted child abuse and neglect cases for the City and County of Denver and served as staff attorney for the National Association of Council for Children in Denver, Colorado. King received her Juris Doctor from University of Denver Sturm College of Law and her B.A. degree from University of Massachusetts, Amherst. She is admitted to the Connecticut, New York and Colorado State bars.

William S. Kalinowski, CPA

Partner, Burzenski & Company

William S. Kalinowski, CPA, joined Burzenski & Company in 1994. In January of 2014 he was named a partner with the firm. He concentrates his efforts on the accounting, audit, attestation and planning areas of practice. Mr. Kalinowski specializes in the areas of nonprofit and governmental engagements. His governmental experience encompasses supervising municipal, nonprofit and HUD projects receiving federal and state assistance. He is a Summa Cum Laude graduate from the University of New Haven, where he earned a Bachelor’s degree in Financial Accounting. He also serves on the Board of Directors of Artspace, Inc. of New Haven and as the vice-chairman of the Town of Cheshire’s Youth Service Commission. He is a member of Connecticut Society of Certified Public Accountants and American Institute of Certified Public Accountants.

Ronald A. Netter

Ronald Netter, a 40-year resident of the New Haven area, is a retired businessman specializing in doing turn-arounds for small, service-oriented businesses. He is also a certified mediator with an emphasis on mediating tenant-landlord issues in public and subsidized housing. His philanthropic activities include current board involvement with Fellowship Place (past president), Yale School of Music, Selfhelp Community Services (NYC), and Leukemia/Lymphoma Society of Ct (past officer). He resides in East Haven and hobbies include skiing, hiking, tennis, biking, chamber music. An active Quaker, he volunteers in the state and federal prisons as a mentor and facilitator of anger-management classes.

Professor Lloyd D. Grieger

Assistant Professor of Sociology and Global Affairs, Yale University

Lloyd D. Grieger is Assistant Professor of Sociology and Global Affairs at Yale University. A social demographer, he received his PhD in Sociology and Public Policy in 2010 from the Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy at the University of Michigan. He also received an MA (statistics) and an MPP (social policy analysis) from the University of Michigan.

Professor Grieger’s research and teaching interests include: social welfare policy; social program participation; poverty, affluence and inequality; adolescent relationships and behaviors; the families of adolescents; social demography; and quantitative methods. He is the Director of Graduate Studies at the Jackson Institute for Global Affairs and Faculty Fellow of the Center for Research on Inequalities and the Life Course.

Professor Grieger has held research positions at the U.S. Department of State (Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor), the United Nations (Demographic and Social Statistics Bureau), the Urban Institute, the (U.S.) National Poverty Center, and the Southern African Labor and Development Research Unit at the University of Cape Town.

Amanda Oakes

Associate at Shipman and Goodwin

Amanda Oakes is a graduate of the University of Virginia School of Law. While attending law school, Amanda served as an editor of the Virginia Tax Review, Admissions & Recruitment Chair for the Black Law Students Association, and finalist in the Thurgood Marshall Mock Trial Competition. She recently served as a law clerk for the Honorable Jeffrey A. Meyer of the District of Connecticut. She is licensed to practice in Connecticut.

Benjamin W. Cheney

Associate, Wiggin & Dana

Benjamin Cheney is an associate in Wiggin & Dana‘s Litigation Department and is a member of the Medical Malpractice Defense Practice Group. Ben’s practice focuses primarily on the representation of hospitals and health care providers in complex cases alleging professional negligence.

Ben joined Wiggin and Dana following a clerkship with the Honorable Bethany J. Alvord in the Connecticut Appellate Court. He earned his J.D. with honors from the University of Connecticut School of Law, where he was the Lead Articles Editor for the Connecticut Law Review and received the Connecticut Judges Association award for his commitment to public service and academic excellence. Ben graduated from Lewis and Clark College with a B.A in Sociology and Anthropology.

Ben is admitted to practice in Connecticut and Massachusetts. He is a member of the American Bar Association, the Connecticut Bar Association and the New Haven County Bar Association.

Brianna Carmon & Anthony Torres

Youth Court Representives