Indiana attorney Duran Keller received the National Consumer Law Center’s 2025 Rising Star Award. Keller was recognized with the Rising Star award for work representing individuals and classes of people damaged by credit reporting agencies and debt collectors in his solo practice. Keller founded Keller Law in his hometown of Lafayette, Indiana, in 2014. He…
Erin Witte, Director of Consumer Protection for the Consumer Federation of America (CFA), received the National Consumer Law Center’s 2025 Rising Star Award. Prior to joining CFA, Witte was an assistant attorney general for the Commonwealth of Virginia, where she litigated consumer protection cases in Virginia state and federal courts. She also worked in private…
Nationally renowned consumer lawyer Leonard A. Bennett received the National Consumer Law Center’s 2025 Vern Countryman Award. Founding Partner of the Virginia law firm Consumer Litigation Associates, Bennett has been a fierce consumer advocate for decades, winning multimillion-dollar judgments against payday loan businesses, debt collectors, credit reporting agencies, and scam lenders. He also devotes considerable…
Daniel J. Schneider is supervisory attorney at Legal Action Chicago, where he oversees complex litigation and policy initiatives focused on assisting and removing barriers for people in poverty, particularly in the areas of housing, consumer rights, and public utilities. In 2023, Daniel helped to secure groundbreaking discount rates for 1 million-plus Illinois gas utility customers, and he…
Janet Varnell is the managing partner of Varnell & Warwick. The 2024 winner of NCLC’s prestigious Vern Countryman Award, she is an expert expert in consumer class actions, she also handles civil rights, worker’s rights, environmental protection, and other high-impact public interest litigation. She has prosecuted a variety of multi-million-dollar disputes with governmental entities and companies such as AT&T,…
Annie Rodriguez is a staff attorney in the Housing and Consumer Unit at Jacksonville Area Legal Aid in Florida, focusing on preserving homeownership for people with low incomes and protecting low-income people with medical debt. Her work has included mortgage and reverse mortgage foreclosure and servicing claims, debt defense, auto sales and finance, consumer counterclaims in…
Jessica Ranucci is a supervising attorney in the New York Legal Assistance Group’s Special Litigation Unit, which focuses on federal court class actions benefitting low-income consumers. She has successfully litigated cases related to student loans, predatory for-profit schools, and debt collection with multi-million dollar judgments. She has served on two U.S. Department of Education negotiated rulemaking…
Ariel Levinson-Waldman is founding president and director-counsel of Tzedek DC, a public interest center headquartered at the University of the District of Columbia. Under his leadership, Tzedek DC has provided free legal help to more than 2,000 D.C. households facing debt collection, consumer, or credit problems. In 2016, Ariel was appointed by Chief Judge Merrick Garland…
Oregon solo practitioner Kelly Jones has helped obtain millions of dollars in relief for injured Oregonians in federal and state court, in both individual and class action litigation. The central focus of his practice has been on consumer protection, civil rights, and class action litigation, representing Oregonians who have been injured by the unlawful conduct of banks,…
Kathleen Hyland, assistant attorney general in the Consumer Protection Division of the Maryland Office of the Attorney General, has served as president of the board of directors of the Maryland Consumer Rights Coalition and as Maryland state chair of the National Association of Consumer Advocates. She has championed critical consumer protection legislation, drafting legislation to…
Colin Harnsgate was recognized with the Rising Star award for his work as senior staff attorney in Bankruptcy and Consumer Units at the Volunteer Lawyers Project in Boston, where he focuses on debt collection, eviction defense, and affirmative consumer litigation. He was recently appointed to the Massachusetts Access to Justice Commission, which seeks to improve access…
David Sugerman currently serves on the executive committee of Public Justice and teaches as adjunct faculty at Lewis & Clark Law School. He has dedicated decades of his career to representing consumers in Oregon, focusing on complex litigation, including consumer protection and civil rights class actions, mass torts, and mass arbitrations. David served as lead…
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