Shanta Driver
UEAALDF National Director

UEAALDF's National Director, Shanta Driver, has been organizing for civil rights for the last 25 years. She graduated in Psychology and Social Relations from Harvard in 1975, and graduated from Wayne State University Law School in 2002. Ms. Driver is currently an attorney at Scheff and Washington, a leading Detroit civil rights and labor law firm.
      Ms. Driver directed the successful student-intervenor defense in Grutter v Bollinger, the University of Michigan Law School affirmative action case. Relying on many of the arguments presented by the student defendants, the Supreme Court, in a historic victory for affirmative action and integration, ruled to uphold affirmative action at the University of Michigan Law School. Building on the recent Supreme Court victory, UEAALDF is now developing a legal challenge to California’s anti-affirmative action constitutional amendment, Proposition 209, while preparing challenges to Ward Connerly’s campaign to overturn the Supreme Court’s decision through state ballot initiatives.
      Ms. Driver is also the national spokesperson for the Coalition to Defend Affirmative Action and Integration and Fight for Equality By Any Means Necessary (BAMN). BAMN spearheaded the organizing of the 50,000 person March on Washington to Defend Affirmative Action and Save Brown v Board of Education on April 1, 2003. This march was the most integrated march ever in the history of this nation. BAMN is currently organizing a national campaign to defeat Ward Connerly’s attempt to reverse the civil rights movement’s victory in Grutter v Bollinger.
 

Donna Stern
Treasurer, Fundraising Coordinator

      Donna Stern serves as an administrator, treasurer and fundraising coordinator for UEAALDF and worked as a paralegal on the student intervenors' legal team during the Grutter trial. A long-time political and union activist, she has worked as a unit clerk at the Detroit Medical Center for 20 years, where she has led campaigns against racist and sexist discrimination in the workplace, fought for democracy and membership control within her union, and has been a strong advocate for workers rights on the job.