Moderator

Participants

• 
  Shannon Williams

  Panelist

  Shannon Williams leads ERA’s national partnerships across several high-impact campaigns. She directs Equal Pay Today, a campaign housed at ERA that fights for equal pay by addressing key contributors to the long-standing gender wage gap while engaging groups across women’s legal and advocacy sectors. She also manages the Women’s Agenda Initiative, mobilizing at the state and local level supporting civic engagement and advancing gender justice policy reform. Before coming to ERA, Williams was the Executive Director of The Black Church Center for Justice and Equality (BCC), focused on restoring the social justice tradition of the Black Church and engaging pastors to advance progressive policies for communities of color. Prior to BCC, Williams served as Director of Policy and Advocacy for The Urban League of Philadelphia, advocating for political equity and economic justice for African Americans.

• 
  Yu Gu

  Panelist

  YU GU is a multinational filmmaker and visual artist whose award-winning films explore the clash between individuals and systems of power. Her latest feature documentary, A Woman’s Work: The NFL’s Cheerleader Problem, world-premiered at the 2019 Tribeca Film Festival in competition. Variety hailed the film as, “Defiant...a tale of injustice that should speak to many.” Following screenings at over 15 film festivals, two jury awards and a college impact tour across the United States, the film was broadcast on PBS’ Independent Lens and released digitally in January 2021. Yu co-directed the feature documentary, Who is Arthur Chu? (Slamdance 2017, Hot Docs 2017, CAAMfest 2017 Centerpiece). Praised as “Raw, unfiltered and poignant” by Indiewire, the documentary won two festival grand jury awards and was broadcast on World Channel in 2018. She is directing Interior Migrations, an experimental project documenting the memories of migrant workers in Canada. The first 3-channel short documentary from this project premiered at the Art Gallery of Ontario’s Every.Now.Then: Reframing Nationhood exhibit and participated in The Public – Land and Body, a site-specific installation in Toronto. Yu’s work is supported by the Sundance Institute, ITVS, Tribeca Film Institute, Points North Institute, Hedgebrook and California Humanities. She was a directing fellow with Firelight Media and Film Independent and was awarded Best Emerging Filmmaker at the 2019 Los Angeles Asian Pacific Film Festival. Yu received her MFA in film production from the University of Southern California and a BA from the University of British Columbia. She is a Lecturer at Chapman University’s Dodge College of Film & Media Arts and USC’s School of Cinematic Arts. Yu is a proud member of Brown Girls Doc Mafia, Film Fatales and the Asian American Documentary Network.

• 
  Lacy Thibodeaux Fields

  Panelist

  Born and raised in Sulphur, Louisiana, Lacy has been dancing for 18 years with 9 years of studio training. From 2009-2011, Lacy was a NBA Golden State Warriors Dancer. She was an NFL Oakland Raiderette, former Miss New Orleans, and former Miss Louisiana Top-Ten Contestant within the Miss America Organization. Lacy began her dance career at 8 years-old by joining a competition dance team that performed hip hop, jazz, technique, lyrical, cheer, acrobatics and tap. At Sulphur High School, she was a Senior Captain and Choreographer for the Twisters Dance Team. She was awarded All-American Dancer by the National Dance Association in 2004. While obtaining her B.S. in Business Management and Entrepreneurship from Louisiana Tech University, she was a Senior Captain and Choreographer for the Regal Blues Dance Team. She was the first professional cheerleader since the industry’s inception in the early 1960s to speak out about illegal work conditions, wage theft and mistreatment. With attorneys from LVBH, she filed a class action lawsuit against the Oakland Raiders in January 2014. They reached a historic $1.25 million dollar settlement with the Raiders that was paid out to over one hundred cheerleaders who worked for the team.

• 
  Darci Burrell

  Panelist

  Darci is a partner of Levy Vinick Burrell Hyams LLP. Darci has practiced civil rights and public interest law since she graduated from UCLA Law School in 1995, beginning with a year serving as the Ruth Chance Law Fellow with Equal Rights Advocates. Darci then joined the NAACP Legal Defense Fund in Los Angeles as a staff attorney. Darci returned to the Bay Area in 1998 to serve as a Civil Rights Attorney with the U.S. Department of Education, Office for Civil Rights, enforcing laws against discrimination in education on the basis of race, ethnicity, age, gender and disability. Two years later, she joined Goldstein, Demchak, Baller, Borgen & Dardarian as a civil litigator involved in a variety of employment discrimination and wage and hour class action lawsuits. Prior to forming LVBH, she was a senior associate with the employment practice group of Boxer & Gerson LLP.