25th Annual Jefferson Fordham Society Awards

The 2022 Jefferson Fordham Awards luncheon will take place at Maggiano's Banquets, 111 W. Grand Avenue, Chicago on Friday, August 5 at noon CDT. 

Tickets can be purchased through the 2022 ABA Annual Meeting website, or contact Marsha Boone for more information.

We look forward to seeing you there! 

Keynote Speaker

• Jocelyn Benson, Michigan Secretary of State 

2022 Jefferson Fordham Award Honorees

Lifetime Achievement Award Recipients

• James Charles Hanks, West Des Moines, IA
• Edward A. Thomas, Rancho Mirage, CA 

Advocacy Award Recipient

• Thomas W. Mitchell, Boston, MA

Up Comer Award Recipient

• Anamaria Hazard, Atlanta, GA 

Law Office Accomplishment Award Recipient

• City Of Evanston Law Department, Evanston, IL

Elizabeth Clark Fellowship Recipient

• Monique Puentes 

Tributes

• Dentons congratulates Anamaria Hazard
• The City of Evanston congratulates the City Of Evanston Law Department
• The Cook County Bar Association congratulates the City Of Evanston Law Department
• Ahlers Cooney P.C. congratulates Jim Hanks
• The National Hazards Mitigation Association congratulates Ed Thomas
• Colleagues from The Center for Heirs' Preservation,  the Section of State and Local Government, and the Uniform Law Commission congratulate Thomas Mitchell 

Jocelyn Benson

Jocelyn Benson is Michigan's 43rd Secretary of State.

In this role, she has ensured elections are secure and accessible, and dramatically improved Secretary of State driver and customer experiences for all Michiganders.

Benson oversaw Michigan’s 2020 presidential election, which drew record-breaking turnout – 5.5 million voters – and was the most secure election in state history. She implemented new voting rights for all eligible Michiganders prior to the election, including the right to vote absentee, and oversaw more than 250 audits after the election, all of which affirmed its integrity and accuracy.

Benson also transformed the customer service operations of the Secretary of State’s office. She doubled the number of services available online, installed more than 160 self-service stations statewide, mostly at grocery stores, and ended the take-a-ticket-and-wait system that had resulted in hours-long lines at offices for years. Now, most transactions are conducted without an office visit at all and when residents do visit an office, they are in and out in an average of 20 minutes or less.

A graduate of Harvard Law School and expert on civil rights law, education law and election law, Benson served as dean of Wayne State University Law School in Detroit. When she was appointed dean at age 36, she became the youngest woman in U.S. history to lead a top-100, accredited law school. She continues to serve as vice chair of the advisory board for the Levin Center at Wayne Law, which she founded with former U.S. Sen. Carl Levin. Previously, Benson was an associate professor and associate director of Wayne Law’s Damon J. Keith Center for Civil Rights.

Benson is the author of State Secretaries of State: Guardians of the Democratic Process, the first major book on the role of the secretary of state in enforcing election and campaign finance laws. She is also a co-founder and former president of Military Spouses of Michigan, a network dedicated to providing support and services to military spouses and their children.

In 2015, she became one of the youngest women in history to be inducted into the Michigan Women’s Hall of Fame.

James Charles Hanks

James Hanks is a retired shareholder with the Des Moines, Iowa firm of Ahlers & Cooney, P.C. The Firm represents a large number of local government bodies, including cities, counties, airports, special use districts, school districts, community colleges, and area education agencies.  For twelve years, Jim represented the Governor of the State of Iowa in labor negotiations on behalf of the Executive Branch of the State.  The principal emphasis of his practice was in employment, local government, and educational law, and, in the course of his career, he negotiated over 1,000 collective bargaining agreements.

Mr. Hanks is a Phi Beta Kappa graduate and was a Rhodes Scholar nominee of the University of Iowa. He received his law degree with high distinction from the College of Law of the University of Iowa. Jim is past Chair of the Council for the American Bar Association Section of State and Local Government Law. He is also past Chair of the Council of School Attorneys for the National School Boards Association, and, in 2018, he received the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Council.

In his forty-three years of practice, Mr. Hanks was a presenter on a variety of governmental and employment topics to more than twenty-five national and state organizations. He is the author of  several publications of the American Bar Association Section of State and Local Government Law: “School Bullying” (First Edition, 2012, and Second Edition, 2015), a contributing author to “Serve and Protect” regarding law enforcement issues which is scheduled to be released in October of 2022, and the editor of and a contributing author for “School Violence:  From Discipline to Due Process.”

Edward A. Thomas

Ed Thomas is an expert on collaborating with communities and people to help prevent the foreseeable processes of nature becoming disasters. He has worked on response & recovery operations from about two hundred disasters, assisting individuals, businesses, farms, and communities to carefully craft inclusive and acceptable efforts to recover as quickly as possible, while striving to mitigate, modify or relocate damaged properties and develop environmentally acceptable development.

Ed, a widely published author, and frequent lecturer is the President Emeritus of the Natural Hazard Mitigation Association. He is an elected Fellow of the American Bar Association (ABA) Foundation, a member of the ABA Disaster Response and Preparedness Committee. In addition, Ed is an active member of the Climigration Network. He is a member of the National Institute of Building Sciences, the Floodplain Management Association, and the Association of State Wetland Managers. The City of Rancho Mirage appointed Ed to serve as a Technical Advisor to their Emergency Preparedness Commission. He also serves as the Senior Legal Liaison to the Association of State Floodplain Manager’s No Adverse Impact Committee. During his career in HUD and FEMA, Ed collaborated closely with individuals, companies, non-profit organizations local communities developing safe and affordable housing, and results oriented Floodplain Management and Hazard Mitigation. He worked closely disaster survivors on about two hundred disasters and emergencies, serving as the President’s representative, the Federal Coordinating Officer, dozens of times.

Ed is currently serving as a Technical Advisor to the Coachella Valley Disaster Preparedness Network. He also is one of the editors & authors of the recently published ABA Community Resilience Handbook.

He manages a private practice of Law, Edward A. Thomas Esq., LLC and recently relocated, with his wife, from the floodplain of beautiful Marina Bay, Massachusetts to live in lovely [and Earthquake prone] Rancho Mirage, California.

Thomas W. Mitchell

Thomas W. Mitchell is a professor at Boston College Law School, where he is the holder of the Robert F. Drinan, S.J. Endowed Chair and the director of an initiative that addresses land and housing challenges facing disadvantaged families and communities. Prior to joining Boston College, he served on the faculty of Texas A&M University School or Law and the University of Wisconsin Law School as a full professor with a chair in law. He is a national expert on property issues facing disadvantaged families and communities and has published leading scholarly works addressing these matters.

Professor Mitchell has done extensive law reform and policy work, most prominently serving as the principal drafter of a widely adopted uniform real property act named the Uniform Partition of Heirs Property Act (UPHPA) that is designed to substantially enhance the ability of disadvantaged families to maintain ownership of their property. States with a majority of the U.S. population have enacted the UPHPA into law. In 2021, the Uniform Law Commission accepted another proposal Professor Mitchell developed to address a different tenancy-in-common ownership problem, and this likely will result in another uniform act being promulgated. He also has helped to develop federal policy proposals, working with some in Congress and others in the United States Department of Agriculture, to help disadvantaged farmers and property owners.

In 2020, he was named 1 of 21 recipients of the MacArthur Fellowship in recognition of the substantial impact his overall professional work has had in assisting disadvantaged farmers and property owners, people who are disproportionately but not exclusively African American and other people of color. He is the only lawyer in his MacArthur Fellowship class. In 2021, he was awarded the Howard University Alumni Award for Distinguished Postgraduate Achievement, an award that Thurgood Marshall and Vice-President Kamala Harris, among other Howard luminaries, also have received. In 2021 as well, The Journal of Black Innovation named Professor Mitchell aa 1 of the 50 most important African Americans in infrastructure to recognize that his work protecting property rights for people of color helps create a more just and equitable infrastructure system. He is a previous recipient of the Elizabeth Hurlock Beckman award, a national award he received for the substantial work he has done mentoring law students who have then worked as lawyers to advance social justice.

Professor Mitchell is a graduate of Amherst College, the Howard University School of Law, and the University of Wisconsin Law School where he received an LL.M. (masters of law) and served as a William H. Hastie Fellow.

Anamaria Hazard

Anamaria Hazard is a managing associate at Dentons US LLP in the Public Policy group. Anamaria’s practice focuses on Municipal Law, Commercial Real Estate, and Zoning, Planning, and Land Use matters. She has represented market rate and affordable housing developers, and the Atlanta Housing Authority to develop affordable and mixed income, mixed use and residential developments in metro Atlanta.  Anamaria previously served as an Assistant City Attorney for the City of Atlanta where she advised the Department of City planning, Mayor and Council on affordable housing, zoning, permitting, historic preservation, transportation planning, and housing and urban development matters. Anamaria helped to develop several City of Atlanta policies including the affordable housing and short-term rental ordinances.

Monique Puentes 

Monique Puentes graduated from the University of Florida Levin College of Law in 2021. Monique also attended the University of Florida where she received her Bachelor of Arts (2017). During law school, Monique participated in complex federal litigation with the Southern legal counsel, served as a certified legal intern with the Virgil Hawkins Immigration Clinic, was the President of the Latino Law Student Association, served as a Guardian Ad Litem Volunteer, and went on to spend two semesters with the Hillsborough County Aviation Authority. Monique earned a Book Award in Trial Practice.

Monique received the Ethos of Excellence Scholarship Award, the highest merit scholarship award offered by the Levin College of Law, the Scanziani Family’s Esperanza Garcia-Loynaz Memorial Scholarship, and the Florida Bar Foundation Fellowship.

She is now working as an associate with Murray, Morin, & Herman PA where she has litigated aviation and premises liability matters for various corporations and local government agencies.  Currently she also coaches 8-11 year old softball at her local little league where she grew up playing.