Christopher Meade ’96 was appointed principal deputy general counsel of the Treasury in 2010 and has served as acting general counsel since last June. In a statement, Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew said that Meade’s “impressive grasp of a wide set of legal and policy matters ranging from the tax code to terrorism finance has been and will be vital as we move forward with initiatives of immense scope and complexity.”

Jenny Yang ’96 was a partner at Cohen Milstein Sellers & Toll. Specializing in civil rights class actions and wage and hour collective actions, she worked on cases such as Beck v. The Boeing Company, in which she successfully represented more than 28,000 female employees alleging sex discrimination, and also helped represent 1.5 million women in WalMart Stores Inc. v. Dukes, the biggest discrimination class action in history. Previously, Yang served as a senior trial attorney in the Civil Rights Division of the Department of Justice.

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Named a 2013 Soros Justice Fellow by the Open Society Foundations, Barden will work with the Pennsylvania Health Law Project to develop and implement model policies and practices to give former inmates better access to health care, building on opportunities provided by the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA).

Although the ACA will expand Medicaid eligibility and establish state-based health insurance exchanges that will improve health care for former prisoners, barriers to access still exist, Barden says. She points to multiple studies indicating a correlation between increased health care access and decreased recidivism. “Anything that assists the reentering population with basic needs and reinforces their ties to the larger community is likely to help people stay out of jail.”

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After 10 months of preparing to buy Ocean Village, a 1,100-unit affordable-housing complex in Far Rockaway, Queens, NYU Law Trustee Ronald Moelis ’82 and his firm, L+M Development Partners, were scheduled to close on the very day Sandy touched ground in New York City.

The buildings had already been in distress from mold and disrepair. But then Sandy buried the transformers under 51 inches of saltwater. “That meant no lights, no heat, no running water,” says Moelis. Approximately 100 families remained despite the order to evacuate. “Most were elderly or challenged, and there was a lot of distress,” he adds. Generators were brought in.

Ultimately, L+M went ahead with the closing less than a month later, and renovations on 350 vacant apartments and the building exteriors began almost immediately, financed largely through a Citigroup fund that encourages investing in affordable housing.

Three years ago, Moelis funded the Moelis Institute for Affordable Housing Policy, part of NYU’s Furman Center for Real Estate and Urban Policy. The institute aims to improve affordable housing policies and programs by providing research, data, and rigorous evaluation of innovative practices. Ocean Village will put such policies to the test.

“The storm made this area incredibly visible, which is both good and bad,” Moelis says. “We now have the opportunity to be visible in a positive way. We are trying to bring in resources to enhance the property, including food, security, and social services as well as open space, all things missing in this community.”

Poor timing could turn out well for Ocean Village after all.

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Republicans had balked when Barack Obama recess-appointed two stalled nominees in 2012, but eventually agreed to Hirozawa and another nominee as replacements, creating a full Senate-confirmed NLRB for the first time since 2003.

At his confirmation hearing, Hirozawa focused on the mission at hand: “I once heard another employee described as pro-act. Not pro-union or pro-management, but pro-act, dedicated solely to advancing the policies and purposes of the National Labor Relations Act, without regard for the identities or alignments of the parties. That has always struck me as an apt term of praise for an employee of the board, and that is what I will aspire to.”

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More than 1,400 members of the BSA’s National Council, composed of volunteer leaders across the country, voted on the resolution. The measure was an about-face from a hard-fought Supreme Court case 13 years earlier, Boy Scouts of America v. Dale. The justices then ruled 5–4 to uphold the BSA’s freedom of association—or, more accurately, its freedom not to associate with gays.

Perry says that the wide margin—61 percent supported the resolution—surprised him, adding, “I also was proud of our people. We had people who opposed us, who made forceful arguments about this. They immediately rolled up their sleeves and said, ‘OK, decision made. Let’s get to work.’”

Perry sees the development as a means of moving forward: “Did we have gay kids in the family? Yes, we did. Have we now gone to a more honest place? Yes, we have. By doing this, we upheld our standard that a Scout is honest.” He freely acknowledges that the continued ban on gay and lesbian Scout leaders leaves many external factions still critical of the BSA. “We had no illusions about satisfying the outside world,” he says. “This was the Scouting family making a decision. I hope that people will understand what it’s really like to be in the Scouting organization. There are no kinder, more considerate people on the planet than those Cubmasters, den leaders, and Scoutmasters who are dealing with kids that have challenges—divorce, poverty, abuse, and everything else. I hope this decision will enable more people to join.”

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The confirmation capped a remarkable year for Foxx, a rising star in the Democratic Party. He delivered nationally televised remarks in primetime on the opening night of the September 2012 Democratic National Convention. Earlier that spring, he also addressed the JD graduates and their guests at NYU Law’s 2012 convocation with a humorous and inspiring description of his persistent efforts to land the convention for Charlotte less than one year after becoming mayor. The convention netted $91 million in new spending for North Carolina.

Since graduating from NYU Law himself, Foxx has worked not only in private practice but also in every branch of the federal government: He served as a law clerk for Judge Nathaniel Jones of the US Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit, a trial attorney for the Civil Rights Division of the Justice Department during the Clinton administration, and a staff counsel to the House Judiciary Committee. He is the third member of his 1996 Root-Tilden-Kern class to join the Obama administration in 2013 and joins Seth Harris ’90, acting secretary of labor, in Obama’s cabinet. At this rate, Foxx should consider changing his title to secretary of career acceleration.

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