Bios

NICHOLAS STEVENS, ESQ./PRESIDENT AND CHAIR OF BOARD OF DIRECTORS:

• Mr. Stevens is a partner and member of the executive committee at the law firm of Starr, Gern, Davison & Rubin, P.C., in Roseland, New Jersey (www.starrgern.com). He chairs the firm's Employment Department and co-chairs the firm's Alternative Dispute Resolution Department. He is also a mediator for the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and the Superior Court of New Jersey.
• Mr. Stevens was selected as a “Super Lawyer” for 2005, 2006, and 2007 by New Jersey Monthly magazine.
• He received his law degree from Emory University School of Law, where he was president of the Student Bar Association and Honor Court Prosecutor, received the Distinguished Service Award, and was selected by the University for inclusion in Who's Who Among Students in American Universities & Colleges. Mr. Stevens graduated from Duke University, where he was president of the Sigma Chi Fraternity and principal guitarist in the Duke University Jazz Ensemble. He now serves as president of the Duke Alumni Club of New Jersey.

DEBORAH J. FENNELLY, ESQ./VICE PRESIDENT

• Deborah Fennelly is a senior attorney at Legal Services of New Jersey (“LSNJ”), which coordinates the delivery of legal services to the low income New Jersey community. Since joining LSNJ in 1997, she has worked as a supervising attorney of the LSNJ statewide legal services hotline, represented low income clients in family law matters involving primarily domestic violence, custody and divorce, served as trainer in numerous LSNJ basic legal skills and substantive legal training sessions and created innovative self help materials for pro se litigants. She is serving her second term as a member of the Law School Education and Bar Education Subcommittees of the Supreme Court Committee on Women and the Courts and has served as law clerk to the Honorable Reginald Stanton, Assignment Judge of the Superior Court for Morris and Essex Counties, and as intern to the Honorable Robert Clifford of the New Jersey Supreme Court.
• Ms. Fennelly received her law degree from Seton Hall University School of Law in Newark, New Jersey, where she worked in the Disability Law Clinic and served as research assistant to former Congressman Peter Rodino. She graduated magna cum laude from the Hartt College of Music in West Hartford, Connecticut, where she received a Bachelor of Music in Voice Performance.

PAMELA LABAJ, ESQ./TREASURER

SIEGMAR SILBER, ESQ./SECRETARY

• Siegmar "Sig" Silber, Esq., is an attorney/artist. As an attorney, he practices in the intellectual property law firm of Silber & Friedman of Clifton, NJ, and has been in private practice since 1974. Mr. Silber came to the law after 11 years in various engineering and technical marketing positions. He is admitted to practice before the NJ Supreme Court, the US Patent and Trademark Office, and upper courts including the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit.
• Mr. Silber was educated in biochemical engineering at MIT and holds degrees from Columbia University, Yeshiva University Graduate School, and Fordham University Law School. After graduating from Fordham, he trained as a patent attorney at RCA Sarnoff Laboratories in Princeton, NJ. Today, Mr. Silber works in technologies as diverse as building materials and microwave components and manages a sizable trademark portfolio for his clients.
• As an artist, Mr. Silber began working in pastels and pen and ink in his early fifties. He has studied art at the Montclair Art Museum under master pastelist Catherine Kinkade and is an alumnus of her master class. His work has been in numerous group shows with Ms. Kinkade and her students and has been juried into the Celebration of Lawyers in the Arts shows in 2003 and 2005. His art draws on recurrent themes from his childhood in England and includes numerous landscapes from the Lake District and the Berkshires in Massachusetts. During 2006, Mr. Silber had a one-man show entitled Simple Pleasures, featuring 24 of his works.
• Mr. Silber is a member of Studio Montclair and the American Society of Botanical Artists; he is also Counsel to the Board of the latter.
• A longtime resident of Paterson, he was counsel to the Great Falls Development Corporation during a 10-year period that saw the restoration of the Rogers Locomotive Works and the relocation of the Paterson Museum. In the same period, he was an officer of and counsel to the Inner City Ensemble, which introduced inner-city kids to the world of dance.
• Upon the State takeover of the Paterson School System, Mr. Silber was appointed by New Jersey's Commissioner of Education to a four-year term on the Board of Education and chaired the Board's Finance Committee.
• As a child survivor, Mr. Silber has been active in local and national Holocaust affairs and is a founder and officer of the Kindertransport Association. His biographical/historical account is told in a recently published work entitled Six from Leipzig by Gertrude Dubrovsky, a New Jersey historical researcher. He is a frequent speaker about the Holocaust and has recently worked with Arts Power, a Montclair national touring company, explaining the Kindertransport to schoolchildren.
• Mr. Silber is married to the former Norma Livingstone and has three children - Rachel, David, and Miriam - and eleven grandchildren.

TRACEY I. BATT, ESQ./EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR: director@njvla.org

• NJVLA Executive Director Tracey I. Batt came to our organization following two years as Associate Director and Legal Services Manager at Philadelphia Volunteer Lawyers for the Arts. Prior to that, she practiced law for seven years at Weil, Gotshal & Manges LLP in New York, NY, concentrating her practice in the areas of copyright and music licensing law.
• Ms. Batt received an Outstanding Volunteer Service Award from New York's Volunteer Lawyers for the Arts in 2003.
• Ms. Batt holds a J.D. from the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law at Yeshiva University (magna cum laude, Order of the Coif, West Publishing Company Award, Law Review); an M.A. in Art History and Museum Studies from Virginia Commonwealth University; and a B.A. in Radio-Television-Film from Temple University (magna cum laude).
• Ms. Batt lectures extensively on copyright and music licensing law. She is a Board Trustee of the Bay-Atlantic Symphony and a contributing columnist to the National Law Journal.

THOMAS A. CROWELL, ESQ./EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR EMERITUS

• Thomas A. Crowell is an alumnus attorney of KMZ Rosenman, one of the United States largest law firms, where he practiced with the entertainment, intellectual property, and corporate law practice groups. Currently in private practice with his own firm, Mr. Crowell counsels clients on a wide range of entertainment law and intellectual property rights issues.
• In addition to his private practice, Mr. Crowell lectures nationally, teaching producers how to avoid common legal pitfalls in the film and television industry. He teaches a film law course at the School of Visual Arts, in New York, and has recently published a book on film law for Focal Press, The Pocket Lawyer for Filmmakers.
• Mr. Crowell received his Juris Doctorate degree from the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law, where he graduated cum laude, and was awarded membership in The Order of the Coif, the national legal honors society. Mr. Crowell earned his Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from New York University's Tisch School of the Arts in Film and Television Production. He is a member of the New York Bar Association, the New York County Lawyers' Association, the New Jersey Bar Association, and the Copyright Society of the United States of America. He serves as a member of the Board of Directors for the Academy Award® qualifying festival, The Black Maria Film Festival.