Hon. Dean Hansell is a California Superior Court Judge, appointed to the bench by Governor Jerry Brown
in 2016. He was a partner in the global law firm of Hogan Lovells, PLC.

Judge Hansell graduated with a B.A. cum laude from Denison University and a J.D. from the Northwestern University School of Law. Dean is a member of Phi Beta Kappa, Omicron Delta Kappa and Phi Delta Theta. He served on Denison’s Board of Trustees and currently serves on the Law Board of Northwestern Law School. In 2005 Dean was awarded the Alumni Citation by Denison and in 2024 was awarded the Service Award by Northwestern.

Judge Hansell serves as a member of the Governor’s Judicial Selection Advisory Committee. He also
serves as Chair of the California Judge’s Association Compensation and Benefits Oversight Committee,
and served as Chair of the Community Outreach Committee of the Los Angeles Superior Court and as a
member of the Executive Committee of the Los Angeles Superior Court.

Hansell was a Police Commissioner of Los Angeles, serving from 1997 to 2001. He also chaired the Los
Angeles Sheriff’s Civilian Oversight Commission Working Group.

He was previously President of the Los Angele Fire and Police Pension Board and President of Los
Angeles’s cable television commission (the Board of Information Technology Commissioners.) He
currently serves on the Board of Directors of the Library Foundation of Los Angeles and the Los Angeles
City College Foundation and the Board of Overseers of Hebrew Union College. He is a Life Fellow of the
American Bar Endowment. He serves on the Board of Governors of Hebrew Union College.

Judge Hansell’s prior public service include being Co-President of the Los Angeles LGBT Center, Co-
Founder and President of the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation Los Angeles (GLAAD) and
President of the Board of Advisors of the UCLA Fielding School of Public Health.

Judge Hansell has received various awards including the Distinguished Service Medal from the Board of
Police Commissioners of the City of Los Angeles, twice received the Co-President’s Award from the Los
Angeles LGBT Bar Association, the Founders Award from GLAAD, the Rabbi Erwin and Agnes Herman
Humanitarian Award from Congregation Beth Chayim Chadashim, the Liberty Hill Foundation Humanitarian Award and the Visionary Award from the Stonewall Young Democrats.

He has authored about 45 book chapters and articles and one reference book, The Law of Reinsurance
(West Publishing), currently in its 28 th edition.

Chanté Coleman is the Deputy Director of California ChangeLawyers, where she furthers the organization’s bold vision of a fully inclusive democracy. She leads the implementation of the 2024–2026 Strategic Directions, and through advocacy, movement lawyering, and the empowerment of the next generation of legal changemakers, she drives lasting, positive change for all Californians.

2021 Stevens Fellow from the University of Chicago currently a Judicial Law Clerk with Judge Jill Pryor at the Eleventh Circuit and previously clerked at the Arizona Supreme Court and the District Court for the District of Arizona.

2022 Stevens Fellow from the University of Georgia, currently working as a Judicial law clerk at the New Mexico Court of Appeals and previously was at the New Mexico Supreme Court.

2020 Stevens Fellow from the University of Virginia, currently a public defender and previously a law clerk to two federal judges, the Honorable L. Felipe Restrepo (3d Cir.) and the Honorable Martha Vázquez (D.N.M.)