Speaker

Jocelyn Samuels is Vice Chair of the Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), appointed by President Biden in 2021 and confirmed for a second term ending in 2026. Prior to joining the Commission, she served as the Executive Director of the Williams Institute, the leading research center on sexual orientation and gender identity law and public policy. 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 where she supervised enforcement of civil rights laws through litigation, rulemaking, policy development, and public education across a range of civil rights issues 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.