With the start of our new fiscal year, we are excited to welcome four new members of our Board of Directors!
Barbara A. Bertini
Legal Aid Chicago
Barbara is the Director of Pro Bono & Community Partnerships Practice Group at Legal Aid Chicago and oversees the agency pro bono program where she supports volunteers, manages resources, and ensures it aligns with organizational priorities and goals. Barbara also manages relationships with law firms and corporate legal departments to expand pro bono opportunities. She supervises practice group staff for a variety of agency legal projects, including community legal clinics and court-based help desks. Barbara has also served as agency representative on the Cook County Justice Advisory Council 2023 Racial Equity Cohort.
Barbara is an attorney with several years of holistic experience in the criminal justice system, ranging from work as a police officer to legal representation for post-conviction relief. Various stakeholders have encouraged her to work towards criminal justice reform. She hopes to help level the playing field and allow equal access to justice for all. Barbara received her Juris Doctor and Bachelor of Science in Criminal Justice from Yale University from Northeastern University.
Julian M. Dibbell
Mayer Brown LLP
Julian is a Partner at Mayer Brown and leverages his deep understanding of contemporary technological developments to help clients develop, buy, and sell technology products and services. For more than a decade, Julian has advised clients on a range of complex commercial transactions, involving IT outsourcing, digital platform and other hosted service agreements, business process outsourcing, facilities management outsourcing, data center leasing, technology licensing, cloud computing, and privacy and security issues. He has represented companies in many different industries, including financial services, health care, insurance, food and beverage, audit and assurance, publishing and information technology. Julian is the host of Mayer Brown’s Tech Talks Podcast, which provides insight on legal issues relating to technology & IP transactions and touches on relevant and timely topics.
While in law school, Julian was a staff member of the University of Chicago Law Review and co-founder of the Law and Technology Society. Mayer Brown sponsored Julian as a PILI Graduate Fellow at Lawyers for the Creative Arts before joining the firm. He received his Bachelor of Arts from Yale University and his Juris Doctor from The University of Chicago Law School.
Brandon E. Peck
Peck Ritchey, LLC
Brandon is a Partner with Peck Ritchey, LLC where he represents individuals, families, financial and medical institutions. Brandon advises fiduciaries charged with the administration of estates and trusts as well as guides them through the probate process. He vigorously represents all parties in contested guardianships including minors and disabled adults. For the past five years, Brandon has been selected by his peers in multiple statewide surveys of Illinois attorneys as a “Super Lawyer”, an attorney to whom other attorneys would refer their family. From 2015-Present he has also been selected by Leading Lawyers Magazine as a top emerging lawyer in Elder Law, Trust, Will and Estate Planning. He also was a contributor to the book Alzheimer’s and the Law, which was published by the American Bar Association in 2013.
Brandon is an active member of the Chicago Bar Association, currently serving on its Board of Managers and having served as Chair of the Young Lawyers Section from 2018-2019. He lectures frequently in the areas of trust and estate litigation, guardianships, special needs and estate planning before his colleagues and other professionals, including at The Chicago Bar Association, National Academy of Elder Law Attorneys, as well as numerous hospitals, nursing homes, assisted living facilities and community organizations. Brandon received his Juris Doctor and Bachelor of Arts in Political Science from the University of Illinois, Champaign-Urbana.
Elise Tincher
University of Chicago Law School
Elise is the Associate Director of Public Service and Pro Bono at the University of Chicago Law School. Immediately before joining the University of Chicago Law School, Elise was the Associate Director of Pro Bono & Programs at the Chicago Bar Foundation (CBF), where she oversaw the court-based Cook County Legal Aid for Housing and Debt (CCLAHD) program, as well as led the CBF’s pro bono efforts, working with lawyers, firms, corporations, the courts, and pro bono and legal aid organizations to maximize the impact of pro bono work.
Prior to joining the CBF, Elise served as Pro Bono Counsel at Kirkland & Ellis LLP where she managed the pro bono program in Kirkland’s Chicago and California offices. Before joining Kirkland, Elise began her legal career as a Staff Attorney at Legal Aid Chicago, working first in the Family Law Group with a focus on representing domestic violence survivors, and then in the Consumer Practice Group during the height of the mortgage foreclosure crisis. She received her Juris Doctor from the University of Wisconsin and a Bachelor of Arts in English and French from the College of Wooster.