Our Team
Alexander Chen
Founding Director
Alexander Chen (he/him) is the Founding Director of the LGBTQ+ Advocacy Clinic at Harvard Law School, where he also teaches Gender Identity, Sexual Orientation, and the Law. His work focuses on expanding the rights of LGBTQ+ people through impact litigation and policy advocacy at both the national and local levels.
At Harvard, his cases include Amaya Cruz v. Miami-Dade County, a federal suit on behalf of three trans young people arrested while participating in Black Lives Matter protests and subjected to degrading treatment while jailed; Hersom v. Crouch, a constitutional challenge to West Virginia’s refusal to change trans people’s birth certificate gender markers; and Lopez v. NYC Department of Homeless Services, a settlement that secured landmark reforms in the New York City shelter system for trans residents.
Previously, Alexander worked at the National Center for Lesbian Rights, where he helped litigate the trans military cases Doe v. Trump and Stockman v. Trump, the landmark Ninth Circuit trans prisoner surgery case Edmo v. Corizon, and co-drafted AB 2119, a bill that made California the first state to mandate access to gender-affirming care for trans foster youth.
Alexander attended Oxford University (B.A. 2009), Columbia University (M.A. 2012), and Harvard Law School (J.D. 2015), where he was the first openly trans editor of the Harvard Law Review. He clerked on the Ninth Circuit for the Hon. M. Margaret McKeown, and in the Southern District of California for the Hon. Gonzalo P. Curiel. Alexander has been named one of Forbes’ 30 Under 30 in Law & Policy, and one of the 40 Best LGBTQ+ Lawyers Under 40 by the National LGBTQ Bar Association. He also co-founded the National Trans Bar Association and co-authored the Trans Youth Handbook.
Alexander is admitted to practice in California, Massachusetts, and New York.
Deborah Lolai
Clinical Instructor
Deborah Lolai (she/her) is a Clinical Instructor at Harvard Law School’s LGBTQ+ Advocacy Clinic. She brings almost two decades of experience in community organizing, policy making, direct legal services, and teaching on a range of social justice issues with a focus on policing, mass incarceration, and gender and sexuality to her role. Deborah is one of the leading experts in the area of representing LGBTQ people in criminal cases and improving conditions of confinement for TGNCNBI people.
Deborah was a public defender at The Bronx Defenders for nearly a decade, where she represented thousands of clients. She was the Founding Director of the LGBTQ Defense Project, the first project of its kind in the country at a public defense organization. In that role, she represented LGBTQ clients in direct legal services, advocated for policy changes impacting criminalized LGBTQ people, and offered training and technical assistance for organizations striving to better serve LGBTQ communities. Deborah was amongst the first appointed members of the NYC Board of Correction Task Force on Issues Faced by TGNCNBI People in Custody in 2019, and co-authored the first report of the Task Force published in August, 2022. In addition to her work on the Task Force, Deborah has worked on many successful legislative and policy campaigns improving the experience of criminalized LGBTQ people.
Deborah has been an Adjunct Assistant Professor at Columbia University School of Social Work since 2019, where she teaches three courses: Advocacy, Contemporary Social Issues, and LGBTQ Communities. Deborah’s publications can be found in the Tulane Journal of Law and Sexuality, The New York Law Journal, and Bustle Magazine. Deborah is the proud recipient of the Community Excellence Award by the LGBT Bar Association of Greater New York in 2021, the New York State Bar Association’s Award for Outstanding Achievements in Promoting Standards of Excellence in Mandated Representation in 2020, and the New York Law Journal Trailblazers Award in 2019.
Andy Izenson
Staff Attorney
Andy Izenson (they/them) is a passionate advocate for queer families and for their transgender community. As an attorney, mediator, educator, and practitioner of community justice models, Andy brings a varied skillset, radical compassion, and an anti-oppressive and antifascist lens to engage with family, community, organizational, and large-scale conflict. They have taught for many years on family creation and communication, cultural competency in serving queer, trans, and polyamorous clients, and prison abolition and transformative community building at venues including the New York State Bar Association, the LGBT Bar Association, the Family and Divorce Mediation Council, Columbia University, Harvard Law School, and Yale Divinity School. Andy is a member of the LGBTQI Family Professionals of New York, the LGBT Bar Association of Greater New York, the Family Law Institute of the National LGBT Bar Association, and has long served on the board of the NYC National Lawyers Guild, including most recently a three-year term as president, and the board of their Renewal synagogue, Kol Hai. Andy’s publications include the Advocate, the Queer Magic Anthology, the Texas Journal on Civil Liberties and Civil Rights, the After Marriage Equality Collection, and the Brill Journal of Religion and the Arts, and they live on a trans commune on Lenape land in the Hudson Valley of New York.
Maya Satya Reddy
Clinical Fellow
Maya Satya Reddy (she/her) is the Harvard Law School’s LGBTQ+ Advocacy Clinic’s Clinical Fellow, where she works on a self-designed project to protect the rights of, and promote the inclusion and well-being of, LGBTQ+ student athletes through litigation, legislative advocacy, and policy advocacy/public education.
Maya is a queer South Asian former professional golfer, LGBTQ+ athlete activist, Athlete Ally Ambassador, founder of the Queer Asian Social Club, and graduate of the University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School. During her time as a law student, she co-designed and developed the first ever South Asian Law Student’s Association symposium on the 100thanniversary of United States v. Thind; edited the University of Pennsylvania’s Journal of Constitutional Law; served as co-president of Penn Law Lambda; and authored two pieces defending trans athletes in the University of Pennsylvania Regulatory Review and with Teach for America.
Previously Maya worked for the National Center for Lesbian Rights, Lambda Legal and the Philadelphia Legal Assistance where she represented clients at administrative hearings before an Unemployment Compensation Board of Review referee
As an LGBTQ+ athlete activist, Maya has developed Pride programming with the Billie Jean King Leadership Institute and Athlete Ally for the 2021 golf US Opens; she has participated as a panelist and keynote speaker for the film Changing the Game with Amy Poehler’s Smart Girls and Hulu; and she was involved with the amicus brief in Dobbs v. Jackson on behalf of female athletes. As the founder of the international collective, the Queer Asian Social Club, Maya has developed programing and partnerships to empower and foster community through LGBTQ+ Asian/Pacific Islander/Southwest Asian/Desi visibility.
Clinic students attend First Event, one of the longest running conferences in the U.S. for transgender and gender expansive people (Boston Park Plaza Hotel, January 31, 2020).
“Clinic in a Minute”: A clinical student shares their reflections on their experience in the Clinic.
Clinical Students
The Clinic is part of the Legal Services Center of Harvard Law School, a community law office and clinical teaching site of the law school. Clinical students join the Clinic to engage in legal advocacy on behalf of the LGBTQ+ community, in partnership with community-based and advocacy organizations.
For information about how to enroll in the Clinic as a current Harvard Law School student, please click below.