Leadership

Simon Gertler (President) is an associate attorney at Maier Pfeffer Kim Geary & Cohen, LLP, where he provides general and litigation counsel to tribal clients. Before returning to his hometown of Oakland, CA to join MPKGC, Simon worked in Indian law across Turtle Island. Simon’s undergraduate coursework in Native American Studies at U.C. Berkeley led him to pursue a law degree from the Indian Legal Program at Arizona State University. Outside of his Indian law classes, Simon gained experience working for the Indian Law Resource Center in Montana, an Indian law firm in Alaska, and the U.S. Department of Justice Environment and Natural Resources Division, Indian Resources Section in Washington, D.C. Simon completed his final semester of law school studying indigenous law at the University of Victoria, British Columbia. Simon began practicing law in Colorado, where he represented tribes in water rights litigation throughout the Southwest. He later joined a national Indian law firm in Sacramento where he litigated a broad range of cases for tribal clients.
Current Term: 2020-2023 (appointed October 6, 2021 to fill vacancy).

Shunya D. Wade (Vice President) is a human rights attorney and indigenous rights consultant. She holds a Juris Doctor from UC Irvine Law, an L.L.M in European and International Human Rights at Leiden University, and has been licensed to practice in the State of California since 2019. A woman of Black-Native American heritage, Ms. Wade has ancestry in the Muscogee (Creek) Nation of Oklahoma. She has worked in Native American spaces since age 18. While attending the University of California, she co-founded the UCSD Inter-tribal Resource Center before becoming the President of the Native American Student Alliance. While in law school, Ms. Wade was a legal intern for the Morongo Band of Mission Indians and interned in UCI’s International Human Rights Litigation Clinic. She was a board member of UCI’s Native American Law Student Association (NALSA) and in that capacity organized legal symposiums from 2016 - 2017 focusing on indigenous and international issues, growing her international network of other indigenous advocates and lawyers. Since graduating Ms. Wade went into private practice in 2018 at Klinedinst PC eventually returning to public interest in 2020 joining Legal Aid Society of San Diego—all while continuing her pro bono work with indigenous peoples. Ms. Wade lives on the Morongo Indian Reservation with her family. In 2022 Ms. Wade received an L.L.M in European and International Human Rights Law from Leiden University where she wrote her Master’s Thesis “Protection of Indigenous Peoples Rights in the Commodification of their Intangible Cultural Heritage: Approaches and Best Practices for the Inter-American System.” Ms. Wade’s research focuses on indigenous sovereignty and economic development. Currently, Ms. Wade acts as the Executive Director of Indigenous Rights Advocacy Group an international indigenous rights NGO that provides education opportunities and consultancy services to indigenous groups and communities.
Current Term: 2022-2025. Newsletter/Legal Journal Committee Co-Chair.

Grace Carson (Secretary) (Yavapai/Chiricahua Apache) serves as a Skadden Fellow for Tribal Law and Policy Institute. Her Skadden Fellowship project is focused on developing a restorative justice program for tribal communities that channels harm-doers away from incarceration and fines, and towards rehabilitation, community involvement, and healing. This project builds on the foundation already established by Tribal Healing and Wellness Courts by incorporating Peacemaking—a tribal practice that repairs intercommunity harm that has been committed. Carson graduated the University of Denver with a BA in Political Science and Journalism (2019), and graduated UCLA School of Law with specializations in Critical Race Studies, Public Interest Law and Policy, and International and Comparative Law (2022). Her current research and scholarship is focused on ethnic studies, critical Indigenous studies, decolonization theory, and abolition theory.
Current Term: 2022-2024 (appointed to fill vacancy). Pathway to Law and Scholarship Committee Co-Chair; Newsletter/Legal Journal Committee Co-Chair.

Nazune Menka (Treasurer) (Denaakk'e & Lumbee) currently serves as a Lecturer and Tribal Cultural Resources Policy Fellow at UC Berkeley School of Law. As a graduate of the University of Arizona James E. Rogers College of Law’s Indigenous Peoples Law & Policy (IPLP) program her areas of interest include Indigenous nation building, advocating for international human rights and for the economic success of tribal governments, and litigating in state, federal, and tribal courts. Ms. Menka also currently serves on the Board of Directors for the Society for the Advancement of Chicanos & Native Americans in Science (SACNAS), and is Of Counsel at Rosette, LLP. Before entering the legal profession, Ms. Menka researched the intersections of Indigenous knowledge, resiliency, traditional food systems, and transboundary pollution as well as the impacts of abandoned mining sites on public health receiving her M.S. in Soil, Water & Environmental Science from the University of Arizona in 2014.
Current Term: 2022 (appointed February 29, 2022 to fill vacancy). Finance Committee Chair.

Lauren Goschke is a descendant of the Pechanga Band of Luiseno Indians and is in-house counsel at Southern California Edison. She received a B.A. in Anthropology and a B.S. in Environmental Science from U.C. Berkeley, a M.S and a M.P.P from Oregon State University, and her law degree and certificate in Indian law from the University of Colorado Law School. While in law school Lauren served as the President of NALSA, the Executive Editor of the Colorado Natural Resources, Energy, & Environmental Law Review, and a student attorney in the American Indian Law Clinic. She also clerked at the Native American Rights Fund in Boulder, Colorado, the Solicitor’s Office at the Department of Interior in the Division of Indian Affairs in Washington D.C., and at Sonosky, Chambers, Sachse, Miller & Munson in Anchorage, Alaska. Prior to law school Lauren was a forester for the U.S. Forest Service in Idaho.
Current Term: 2020-2023. Fundraising Committee Co-Chair; Pathway to Law and Scholarship Committee Co-Chair.

Mica Llerandi is Diné/Navajo and the San Manuel Band of Mission Indians Director of the UCLA Tribal Legal Development Clinic at UCLA School of Law. She previously served as a Senior Attorney at California Tribal Families Coalition and Staff Attorney at California Indian Legal Services in the Escondido Office. She received her Bachelor of Arts in Religious Studies from Yale University and her Juris Doctor and Certificate in Indigenous People’s Law and Policy from the University of Arizona. Mica worked on multiple Indian Reservations in Arizona; first on the Navajo Nation as a Staff Attorney and Domestic Violence Project Director with DNA-People’s Legal Services, then as a Deputy Community Prosecutor on the Gila River Indian Community, and lastly, as a Guardian ad Litem on the Salt River Pima-Maricopa Indian Community. In 2016, she moved to California and joined Children’s Legal Services of San Diego where she represented children in dependency proceedings in San Diego County.
Current Term: 2020-2023.

Xavier Barraza is an enrolled member of the Hopland Band of Pomo Indians; his grandmother was Marie Arnold-Lincoln of Hopland, and his grandfather, Nelson Hopper of Big Valley. Xavier is a Senior Associate Attorney at Peebles Kidder Bergin & Robinson, LLP and the current president of the Native American Bar Association of Washington, DC. He has over 10 years of policy and legal experience representing tribal governments. His broad expertise encompasses Indian housing, tax, finance, lands, natural and environmental resources, economic development, tribal codes and ordinances, litigation, and veterans’ affairs. Xavier was born in Sacramento and raised on his tribe’s reservation in Hopland, CA. He is a proud alumnus of Sherman Indian High School, a Native American boarding school in Riverside, CA.
Current Term: 2021-2024. Member Engagement and Recruitment Committee Co-Chair.

Cheyenne Sanders is a citizen of the Yurok Tribe. Her family descends from the Village of Weitchpec and the House of Tse-kwel. Cheyenne currently serves as an in-house attorney focusing on litigation and government for a Southern California tribe. Cheyenne’s professional experience includes appellate litigation, ordinance drafting, and service as a tribal court judge. In addition to serving on CILA, Cheyenne serves on her Tribe’s economic development board, as a board member of Native Action Network, and as an Executive Committee member for the Washington State Bar Association’s Indian Law Section. Cheyenne is a graduate of Cornell Law School and a PLSI alum. This is Cheyenne’s third term on the CILA Board of Directors.
Current Term: 2022-2025. Conference Committee Chair; Fundraising Committee Co-Chair.

Jenny Patten Magallanes is San Carlos Apache and Native Hawaiian from Oakland, California. She currently serves as counsel in the American Indian Law and Policy group at Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld LLP. In this role, she advises Tribal governments and enterprises on regulatory and economic development issues, including land use, gaming, and rights-of-way issues. She also supports litigation on Tribal issues in federal court, and advocacy before Congress and with federal agencies. She graduated from Columbia Law School in 2013 and as a law student was involved in Columbia NALSA, National NALSA, and competed in the National NALSA Moot Court Competition. Prior to law school, she worked in health care and attended the Harvard School of Public Health (SM) and Stanford (BA).
Current Term: 2022-2025. Member Engagement and Recruitment Committee Co-Chair.