"Out to Vote" Film Screening & Panel Discussion

Gilda R. Daniels serves as a Professor of Law at the University of Baltimore School of Law. She is a nationally recognized voting rights and election law expert. She is a former Deputy Chief in the Department of Justice, Civil Rights Division, Voting Section. Professor Daniels has more than two decades of voting rights/election law experience. She has investigated, negotiated and litigated cases involving the Voting Rights Act of 1965, the National Voter Registration Act and other voting statutes.  She is the author of UNCOUNTED: Voter Suppression in the United States (NYU Press) released in January 2020.

She is also the Director of Litigation for Advancement Project’s National Office, which is a multi-racial civil rights organization. She supervises attorneys in four program areas: Power & Democracy (voting rights), Opportunity to Learn (education), Justice (policing and criminalization) and Immigrant Justice (immigration). She has drafted and participated in amicus briefs filed in the United States Supreme Court, frequently consults on voting rights issues, and is well published. Her scholarship focuses on the intersections of race law and democracy. Her law review articles have appeared in Cardozo Law Review, Indiana University Law Review (Indianapolis), Denver Law Review, New York University Journal of Legislation and Public Policy. Her writings have also been published in the Huffington Post and various other publications. She has been quoted in the Washington Post and interviewed for NPR’s All things Considered.

She is a sought after consultant and expert, as well as, a frequent contributor for media and conference panels. She lectures on voting issues on university campuses and various organizations ranging from the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), the American Constitution Society to her local church. Prior to beginning her voting rights career, Daniels was a staff attorney with the Southern Center for Human Rights representing death row inmates and bringing prison condition cases in Georgia and Alabama. She clerked in the United States Circuit Court of Appeals, Eleventh Circuit with the Honorable Joseph W. Hatchett and is a graduate of New York University School of Law, where she was a Root Tilden Scholar and Grambling State University. She has a website, www.gildadaniels.com that promotes her scholarship and voter education.

Samuel George is the Bertelsmann Foundation’s Global Markets and Digital Advisor. Since joining Bertelsmann Foundation in 2012, his work has focused on economics, politics, the digital revolution, and daily life with a specific emphasis on where these issues intersect.

His multimedia approach features documentary film, animated video, and written analysis. Samuel’s documentaries bring viewers up close and personal to people and communities facing the challenges and opportunities of the 21st century, offering candid perspectives that allow viewers to draw their own conclusions. Samuel’s written work has also sought to highlight global crossroads. His publications investigate the global impact of the digital revolution, arguing that a successful digital transition requires an inclusive conversation. This work builds upon previous research that contextualized trends in emerging markets, while underscoring the importance of international economics to the transatlantic community.

Samuel is from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania and holds a master’s degree in international politics and economics from Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) in Washington. He is currently completing a PhD at that same institution.

Nicole Hanson-Mundell is an expert on criminal justice policy and reentry navigation in Maryland with over ten years of experience in the field. She currently serves as the Executive Director of Out for Justice, a returning citizen, member-led nonprofit organization working to reform local and statewide reentry policies. Nicole leads Out for Justice by advancing its mission to engage, educate and empower those with criminal records to lead policy reform in Maryland.

In this role, Nicole organizes large-scale expungement clinics, co-sponsors Baltimore’s annual All Night Resource Clinic, creates and manages coalitions such as the Maryland Women’s Pre-release Coalition, and has led a statewide campaign to ensure that every pretrial facility in Maryland has access to the ballot. In her voting work, Nicole has orchestrated voter registration opportunities for returning citizens, leading to over 400 returning citizens registering to vote during the 2020 general election. She has also served as an absentee ballot designee for over 85 Baltimore City detention center residents. Nicole also led Out for Justice in a collaboration with Morgan State University to conduct a reentry health needs assessment research project in Baltimore City. These efforts landed her two features in Forbes magazine where she was listed as one of the top five people in the country to make an impact during the midterm elections. The second feature captured her historic work during the 2020 general elections where the Maryland State Board of Elections was unprecedentedly mandated to engage currently and formerly incarcerated citizens.

Nicole’s unique advocacy approach is to “stay close to the ground”, articulating the needs of marginalized people in policy spaces which garnered her a seat as the only impacted Black woman on Governor Hogan’s Gang Task Force. She believes that the services and activities provided by Out for Justice are an efficient way for her to connect the policy work with grassroots, service-oriented efforts. Her passion for reentry work comes from her own life experience, which she harnesses as a tool to advocate for effective and practical legislation that positively impacts the community that she serves. 

Sean Morales-Doyle serves as the acting director in the Democracy Program, where he focuses on voting rights and elections. He advocates for pro-voter reforms like automatic voter registration and voting rights restoration while fighting back against voter suppression efforts in the courts. Morales-Doyle is a seasoned litigator with experience in civil rights and constitutional matters, as well as a background in labor and employment law.

Prior to joining the Brennan Center, Morales-Doyle was a shareholder at Despres, Schwartz & Geoghegan, Ltd., in Chicago. He litigated all manner of civil rights and constitutional matters and represented workers and unions in a wide variety of labor and employment cases.

Morales-Doyle earned both his undergraduate and law degrees from Northwestern University. After law school, he served as an assistant attorney general for the State of Illinois in the Special Litigation Bureau, where he investigated and litigated cases involving consumer fraud and false claims. He then served as a law clerk to Hon. William J. Hibbler of the United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois.