Speaker

Jocelyn Samuels joined the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) as a Commissioner on October 14, 2020, and on July 14, 2021, was confirmed for a second term ending in 2026.  Immediately prior to joining the Commission, she served as the Executive Director and Roberta A. Conroy Scholar of Law at the Williams Institute, focusing on legal strategies to attain equality for sexual and gender minorities.  During the Obama administration, she served as the Director of the Office for Civil Rights at the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services and as the Acting Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights at the U.S. Department of Justice. In these capacities, she supervised enforcement of civil rights laws through litigation, rulemaking and policy development, and public education and was an architect of numerous government policies applying federal law to remedy discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity.  She previously served as a Vice President of the National Women’s Law Center, Labor Counsel to Senator Edward M. Kennedy, and a senior attorney at the EEOC in the Office of Legal Counsel.  She received a J.D. from Columbia Law School and a B.A. from Middlebury College.