Name:		Ms. Elise Boddie
		Month:		September 2014
		Schools:		J.D., Harvard M.P.P, Harvard B.A., Yale
		Organization:		NAACP Legal Defense & Educational Fund, Inc.
		Title:		Director of Litigation

Elise C. Boddie is Director of Litigation of the NAACP Legal Defense & Educational Fund, Inc. (LDF) where she supervises a staff of twenty attorneys who litigate cases nationwide in the areas of political participation, economic justice, education, and criminal justice. Most recently, she helped supervise the LDF team that defended the Voting Rights Act in the U.S. Supreme Court in Shelby v. Holder and oversaw LDF�s advocacy in two other major Supreme Court cases, Fisher v. University of Texas, involving a constitutional challenge to race-conscious admissions at the University of Texas, and Magner v. Gallagher, a Fair Housing Act case regarding the availability of disparate impact claims.

Elise rejoined LDF in 2011, after teaching constitutional law, among other courses, at New York Law School and Fordham Law School. In her first LDF tour, Elise was Director of Education and an Associate Director of Litigation. From 1999-2005, she litigated complex affirmative action, employment, and school desegregation cases in the federal trial and appellate courts and has argued in the federal courts of appeal. She has also authored a number of amicus briefs in the U.S. Supreme Court and federal courts of appeal on a wide range of civil rights matters. As Education Director, Elise led a strategic planning process that culminated in LDF�s Opportunity to Learn Initiative and developed a program for counseling colleges and universities on compliance with the U.S. Supreme Court�s decision in Grutter v. Bollinger. She has appeared on television and radio programs regarding LDF�s work, including Up With Chris Hayes, Democracy Now, CNBC, Tavis Smiley, and CourtTV.

Elise graduated with honors from both Harvard Law School and Yale College and holds a masters degree in public policy from the John F. Kennedy School of Government. Following a clerkship for Judge Robert Carter in the Southern District of New York, Elise litigated at Fried, Frank, Harris, Shriver & Jacobson in its New York office as the first recipient of the Fried, Frank/LDF fellowship. Elise has published in the UCLA Law Review and the Iowa Law Review online journal, as well as Slate and the Chronicle of Higher Education. In 2012, the Law and Society Association awarded her the John Hope Franklin Prize for exceptional scholarship in the field of race, racism, and the law for her article, Racial Territoriality.

Before law school, Elise was a New York City Urban Fellow and also worked in New York City Mayor David Dinkins Office of City Legislative Affairs. She has served on the boards of the North Star Fund, the Passaic County Legal Aid Society and Planned Parenthood of Metropolitan New Jersey. She lives in Montclair, NJ with her husband and son and served on Montclair's School Integration Task Force.