A former assistant attorney general for civil rights will serve as the next executive director of the Williams Institute, officials announced Monday.
Jocelyn Samuels will replace the Williams Institute’s founding executive director, Brad Sears, who held the position for 16 years, July 1. The institute, which is based in the UCLA School of Law, researches the intersection of sexual orientation and gender identity and law and public policy.
Samuels served in President Barack Obama’s administration as the director of the Office for Civil Rights at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services since 2014. In this role, she helped enforce civil rights in health care agencies and developed regulations prohibiting sex discrimination in federally funded health care.
Prior to working at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Samuels headed the U.S. Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division, where she helped extend Title IX protections to LGBTQ individuals.
Before joining the Obama administration, she was the vice president for Education and Employment at the National Women’s Law Center.
Doug NeJaime, the institute’s faculty director, said Samuels’ work in the Obama administration drew on the Williams Institute’s research to implement new protections for LGBTQ people.
“Her extraordinary experience on questions of equality … including LGBT rights, is unmatched,” NeJaime said in a press release.
Samuels will join the institute June 5.