As a Managing Assistant City Attorney for the City of Los Angeles, Anne Brown has overseen an annual outside counsel budget of up to $25 Million for the past 20 years. In that role she facilitates the selection, retention and maintenance of the law firms that partner with the City, keeping her client apprised of the status of contracts and expenditures. She recently expanded her duties by joining the Office’s Dispute Resolution Program where she provides General Counsel advice and is a part of the mediation team. She is also a member of the City Attorney’s Equity Panel and Criminal Justice Reform Working Group. Anne graduated cum laude from Brown University in 1984 with a bachelor’s degree in Cognitive Science. She continued on that fall to Stanford Law School where she was a writer and editor for The Stanford Law Review. While in law school, Anne was also active in the surrounding community, serving on the steering committee of the East Palo Alto Community Law Project. Upon graduation from law school in 1987, Anne joined the venerable Los Angeles law firm of Wyman, Bautzer, Kuchel & Silbert, where she was a litigator until the firm’s dissolution in 1991. Anne was then pegged by the masterful Johnnie L. Cochran to assist in the formation of his law firm’s entertainment division. During her years with The Cochran Firm, Anne not only handled entertainment work, but also the frequent criminal pleading or appearance necessitated by the office’s heavy caseload. After stints as legal consultant on the nationally syndicated legal talk show “Jones & Jury,” and as an editor of the Rulings column at The Daily Journal, Anne was invited to be a “visiting scholar” at Australia’s Bond University. She spent a semester there lecturing on alternative dispute resolution, her uncle, Alex Haley’s, novel, Roots, and on race, politics and American law. Anne returned to the U.S. with a thriving transactional entertainment practice, which continued until she joined the City Attorney’s Office in October 2001. Anne is active with the California Minority Counsel Program, and is a member of the LA County Bar Association, the Langston Bar Association, and Black Women Lawyers. She speaks frequently on matters of diversity and inclusion. She is working on her first book – a memoir.

Phillis Wheatley Peters was born in 1752 in West Africa. As a child, she was stolen and sold into slavery, and brought to North America. Phillis was bought by the wealthy Wheatley family in Boston. Phillis showed a natural aptitude for learning, and the Wheatley family, recognized her intelligence and encouraged her education. By the age of 13, Phillis started writing poetry. And in 1773, at the age of 20, she published her first volume of poems, “Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral,” becoming the first African-American woman to have a book published in the United States. Her work was praised by prominent figures of the time, including George Washington and Benjamin Franklin, and she gained significant recognition in England as well. Despite her achievements, Wheatley faced significant discrimination and prejudice due to her race and status as a formerly enslaved person. After the death of the Wheatley family, she married and struggled financially, and her literary career suffered as a result. Wheatley died at the age of 31, but her poetry continued to inspire generations of African-American writers and artists. Her works were also used in the anti-slavery movement in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. Wheatley’s legacy remains an important part of African-American literary and cultural history.