Susan E. Stokes has been FLAG’s Executive Director since November 2005. She joined FLAG in January 2002 and became its Legal Director in June 2002. Susan’s work at FLAG has included supervising its litigation, including serving as lead counsel for the Campaign for Family Farms in the pork checkoff litigation, Michigan Pork Producers Association v. Campaign for Family Farms, 348 F.3d 157 (6th Cir. 2003), and authoring many of FLAG’s amicus briefs. Her work has also focused on all aspects of corporate consolidation in agriculture and contract farming. Susan has been a frequent presenter on agricultural issues and co-authored “The Eighth Circuit Grants Corporate Interests a New Weapon Against State Regulation in South Dakota Farm Bureau v. Hazeltine,” 49 S.D. Law Rev. 795 (2004). Prior to joining FLAG, Susan was a partner at the law firm of Sprenger & Lang, where she focused on civil rights class actions in the employment arena. While at Sprenger & Lang, Susan was lead counsel on groundbreaking employment discrimination class cases, including Beckmann v. CBS, 192 F.R.D. 608 (D. Minn. 2000), and Kosen v. American Express Financial Advisors. Before moving back to Minnesota to join Sprenger & Lang, Susan was a civil litigator at the San Francisco law firm of Pillsbury Madison & Sutro (now Pillsbury Winthrop). After leaving the Iron Range where she grew up, Susan received her B.A. from St. Olaf College in 1984 and her law degree from the University of Minnesota Law School in 1989. She is admitted to practice in numerous district and appellate courts, including the United States Supreme Court. Susan was named a “Super Lawyer” by Minnesota Law & Politics from 2000 to 2005, and was selected as one of Minnesota’s top 40 appellate lawyers in 2005.
Lynn A. Hayes was a founding attorney at FLAG. After 16 years, she left FLAG in the spring of 2002 to move to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. In early 2006, FLAG welcomed Lynn back as senior staff attorney and, beginning September 2006, she began serving again as FLAG’s program director. Lynn worked for the Office of the Monitor for three years, reviewing African-American farmers' claims in the racial discrimination case against USDA, Pigford v. Veneman. During her tenure at FLAG, Lynn was lead or co-counsel in several lawsuits, including Coleman v. Lyng (national class action lawsuit against the Farmers Home Administration); the Minnesota Milk Producers Association’s challenge to federal milk marketing order provisions; and the pork checkoff case, among others. She has presented hundreds of workshops for farmers and their advocates on agricultural credit, contract-farming, environmental, commodity pricing, and anti-trust issues. She has assisted farm organizations in developing proposed regulations and legislation at both the state and federal levels in many of these same issue areas. Lynn received her B.A. in English from Coe College in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, and her J.D. from Columbus School of Law, Catholic University of America, in Washington, D.C.
Stephen Carpenter has been a staff attorney at FLAG since 1993. He is a graduate of Drury College in Springfield, Missouri, and of Stanford Law School. At Stanford he was active in the East Palo Alto Community Law Project, was a Stanford Law Review executive editor, and later received a Skadden Fellowship which brought him to FLAG.
Stephen's work at FLAG has centered on debtor-creditor issues, disaster assistance, guaranteed loans, discrimination in agricultural lending, federal commodity and conservation programs, sustainable agriculture, and the problems of farmers contracting for livestock production. Since January 2000, he has served as Senior Counsel in the Office of the Monitor in the Pigford case.
Stephen has conducted frequent FLAG trainings for farmers, advocates, and attorneys and has authored and edited several FLAG materials and publications. He is also author of "Discrimination in Agricultural Lending," Clearinghouse Review (1999); "Farm Service Agency Credit Programs and USDA National Appeals Division," Drake Journal of Agricultural Law (1998); co-author, along with Randi Ilyse Roth, of "Family Farmers in Poverty: Guide to Agricultural Law for Legal Services Practitioners," Clearinghouse Review (1996), and is the author of "Farm Chemicals, Soil Erosion, and Sustainable Agriculture," Stanford Environmental Law Journal (1994).
Karen Krub first came to FLAG in 1995 as a summer intern, primarily exploring production contract issues. She then received a Skadden Fellowship which allowed her to return as a staff attorney in September of 1996. Since joining FLAG, Karen has worked primarily in the areas of administrative law, agricultural credit, disaster assistance, and farmer-owned agricultural business development.
Karen grew up in the Skagit Valley of northwestern Washington, but not on one of the area’s many farms. Instead, her family fished for salmon in the coastal waters of Washington and Alaska. Although at ten she had big plans for a boat of her own, Karen continued with school, earning a B.S. in Resource Development from Michigan State University in East Lansing, Michigan, in 1991, and graduating from Yale Law School in 1996.
Jennifer Jambor joined FLAG as a staff attorney in the summer of 2007. Before moving back to Minnesota to join FLAG, Jennifer was an associate at the Oakland and San Francisco based law firm of Leonard Carder, where she focused on using litigation, alternative dispute resolution, and community organizing to help employees and unions advocate for workers’ rights. Prior to working at Leonard Carder, Jennifer was a Field Attorney for the National Labor Relations Board.
After leaving the Twin Cities where she grew up, Jennifer received her B.A. degree from Mills College in Oakland, California in 1995 and her J.D. degree (Summa Cum Laude) from Golden Gate University in San Francisco in 2001.
Currently, Jennifer is the contact person for FLAG's recent publication, The Farmers' Guide to Wind Energy.
Hli Xyooj Staff Attorney and
Hmong Community Outreach Coordinator
Ms. Xyooj joined Farmers’ Legal Action Group in 2006 as the Hmong Community Outreach Coordinator and has since become a Staff Attorney. In her position, Hli is helping to forge contacts with the Hmong farming community so FLAG may better serve Hmong American farmers. Hli’s outreach work includes being part of the planning committee for the annual Minority and Immigrant Farming Conference in St. Paul, providing technical assistance to Hmong American farmers, and staying current on issues affecting these farmers and their communities. She is actively establishing connections with and distributing educational materials to Hmong American farmers and service organizations across the United States, as well as coordinating the translation of selected FLAG legal publications into the Hmong language.
Hli earned her undergraduate degree with majors in International Relations, Political Science, and Asian Studies with a concentration in Southeast Asia from the University of Wisconsin–Madison in 1999. She graduated from Hamline University School of Law in 2007 (where she also obtained her Certificate in Dispute Resolution from the Dispute Resolution Institute) and completed her Master of Business Administration degree from Hamline University School of Business in December 2008.
Hli was born in Thailand but raised in Minnesota. Her family has had a long tradition of gardening. Her mother and grandmother continue to maintain a backyard garden for Hmong herbs and lemon grasses and rent land for vegetable gardening annually.
Amanda joined FLAG as a staff attorney in January 2011. Prior to joining FLAG, she served as a judicial law clerk for U.S. Magistrate Judge Franklin L. Noel and U.S. District Judge Ann D. Montgomery in the District of Minnesota. During her clerkships, Amanda worked on a wide variety of cases, including contract disputes, civil rights litigation, administrative appeals, and First Amendment claims. In addition, Amanda has significant experience in the legal services setting, including advocacy on behalf of Hurricane Katrina survivors on the Mississippi Gulf Coast.
Amanda earned her law degree from the University of Michigan Law School in 2008, where she was a Clarence Darrow Merit Scholar, an editor of the University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform, and co-chair of the Environmental Law Society Board. In 2003, Amanda obtained a Bachelor of Science in Journalism and a certificate in Environmental Studies from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Before embarking on her legal career, Amanda won several awards for her work as a newspaper reporter in Wisconsin and New Mexico.
Tony Brown joined FLAG as Development Director in the fall of 2005. His experience helping social service and human rights nonprofit organizations with fundraising and communications is built on more than 20 years as a newspaper reporter and columnist, mostly in New York, and in corporate communications, mostly in his native Minnesota. A University of Minnesota Journalism alumnus, Tony has, through various circumstances, baled hay, branded cattle, milked a cow, and grown vegetables – although never professionally.
Rita Gorman Capes joined FLAG in 2003 and is the Legal Secretary and Assistant to the Executive Director and the Development Associate, splitting her time among a wide variety of duties in each position. Since leaving Beloit College (Phi Beta Kappa), Rita lived and worked within an international spiritual community and later began her career in the field of legal support.
Although Rita was born and raised on Chicago’s southeast side, she has lived and worked on farms in Illinois, Indiana and Colorado, including a conventional family farm in the heart of America’s corn belt and an intentional spiritual community actively practicing sustainable, organic farming methods in the fertile fields of central Indiana and the arid foothills of the Rocky Mountains.
Debby Erickson joined FLAG as a part-time receptionist in 1994, and has been the "voice of FLAG" ever since. Over the years her responsibilities have grown extensively. Now as the office manager, Debby's main goal is to make sure FLAG runs smoothly by ensuring that office systems are effective, efficient and responsive. Debby is also FLAG's webmaster, and production editor of FLAG publications and marketing materials. Her responsibilities also include maintaining FLAG databases, and providing administrative assistance to the attorneys and executive director.
Mike Bruns joined FLAG in 2004 as our information technology staff. He bought his first computer, an Atari ST, in 1987 and has been manipulating bits and bytes ever since, including ten years as a database developer for a variety of corporate and non-profit clients. Mike graduated summa cum laude from the University of Minnesota with a B.A. in Humanities.
Lois Wood, President
Ms. Wood is President of FLAG’s board, which she joined in 1994. She is the Executive Director of Land of Lincoln Legal Assistance Foundation, Inc. which serves clients in 65 counties in central and southern Illinois. From 1986-1996, she was an attorney with the Illinois Family Farm Law Project, during which time she was lead counsel in several successful agricultural law cases and wrote numerous articles on farm law issues. In 2005, Lois received the Distinguished Service Award from Southern Illinois University-Edwardsville. She was the 2003 winner of the national Kutak-Dodds Prize for advocacy on behalf of the poor, she was presented the Chief Judge Richard A. Hudlin IV Memorial Award in 2002, in memory of the first African-American Chief Judge in southern Illinois, and she was the 1994 recipient of the Attorney Recognition Award given by the Lawyers Trust Fund of Illinois. (Location: East St. Louis, Illinois)
Lou Anne Kling, Vice-President
Ms. Kling, Vice-President of FLAG's Board, returned to FLAG’s Board in 2004, having served as a founding Board member and as chair of the Board in the 1980s and early ‘90s. She was born and raised on a family farm in Chippewa County, MN, and farmed with her husband for 25 years near Granite Falls, Minnesota. Among her many accomplishments: Lou Anne organized and served as director of Neighbors United Resource Center, a Granite Falls organization that helps farmers in financial difficulty; together with Anne Kanten, she developed the Minnesota Farm Advocates program, which continues to serve as a model for many advocate programs across the country; she conducted trainings across the country on Farmer Home Administration rules and regulations; she received the Virginia McKnight Binger Award for Human Service; and she served as Acting and then permanent Deputy Administrator of the Farm Loan Program in Washington, D.C., during the mid-1990s. Today, Lou Ann is back in Minnesota, serving as the Project Administrator for the National Tribal Development
Association’s American Indian Credit Outreach Initiative.
(Location: Granite Falls, Minnesota)
Susan A. Schneider, Treasurer
Ms. Schneider is FLAG's Board Treasurer and joined FLAG’s Board in 2008. Susan is Director of the LL.M. Program in Agricultural Law, University of Arkansas School of Law. As well as teaching law classes, her private practice experience includes agricultural law work with firms in Arkansas, Minnesota, North Dakota, and Washington, D.C. In 2010, Susan won the AALA Distinguished Service award, demonstrating "sustained excellence" in contributing to the development of agricultural law. She has served as a staff attorney at FLAG and at the National Center for Agricultural Law Research & Information, and has taught at William Mitchell College of Law in Minnesota and at the Drake University Summer Agricultural Law Institute in Iowa. Susan has published numerous articles, is a contributor to an agricultural law blog, and is a frequent speaker at agricultural law conferences. (Location: West Fork, Arkansas)
Phil Baird
Mr. Baird joined FLAG’s Board in 2009. He is Vice President of Academic, Career & Technical Education at United Tribes Technical College (UTTC) in Bismarck, N.D. As an enrolled member of the Rosebud Sioux Tribe (Sicangu Lakota), he has worked in agriculture, education, economic development, and Tribal gaming. Phil earned his B.S. degree in animal science/pre-veterinary medicine from South Dakota State University and a masters degree (agricultural education) from Iowa State University. Phil presently serves as a governor-appointed member of the North Dakota Indian Affairs Commission. For the past four years, he has represented UTTC on the AIHEC board of directors. In 2006, he was elected as a policy director of the Board of Agricultural Assembly for the National Association of State Universities & Land Grant Colleges. In other leadership positions, he has been active in promoting multi-cultural education, community and workplace diversity, Tribal voter education, bison restoration, western heritage preservation, and rodeo.
(Location: Bismarck, North Dakota)
Benny Bunting
Mr. Bunting, a farmer and the Lead Farmer Advocate with The Rural Advancement Foundation International–USA based in North Carolina, is a self-taught authority with encyclopedic knowledge of federal, state, and local farm programs. Years ago, Benny had to fight to save his own farm and has since helped countless farm families avoid bankruptcy and foreclosure. According to the calculations compiled by RAFI-USA, he "has been successful 90 percent of the time and has saved farm families an estimated $42 million." In 2008, Benny received the Nancy Susan Reynolds Award for Personal Service from the Z. Smith Reynolds Foundation, in honor of his many years of hard work as one of "the unsung heroes of North Carolina whose vision, determination, resourcefulness and strength of character have caused them to make a positive difference in the state...often...at great personal or professional sacrifice." (Location: Oak City, North Carolina)
Robert Lee
Mr. Lee
is a Hmong American farmer and FLAG client who came to the United States in 1988 from a Thai refugee camp. Robert and his wife, Nancy, reclaimed their farming traditions in Minnesota, and now grow vegetables in St. Michael for Twin Cities-area farmers’ markets and institutional customers. The Lees have been pioneers in the Hmong American farming community, becoming one of the first immigrant farm families to master the complexities of federal farm programs’ application and claims process, and they have also become mentors for other immigrant farmers. (Location: Albertville, Minnesota)
Thomas W. Mitchell
Professor Mitchell joined FLAG’s Board in 2001. He is a tenured Associate Professor of Law at the University of Wisconsin Law School in Madison, WI. Professor Mitchell has done extensive work in the area of land tenure within the African American community. He received his undergraduate degree from Amherst College, his J.D. from Howard University, and his LL.M from the University of Wisconsin upon completion of the William H. Hastie Fellowship. Before pursuing his LL.M., Thomas was a litigation associate at Covington & Burling in Washington, D.C., and he clerked for Judge Emmet G. Sullivan of the District Court of the D.C. Circuit. He also serves on the National Advisory Board of the Rural Policy Research Institute. (Location: Madison, Wisconsin)
Jerry Pennick
Mr. Pennick
joined FLAG’s Board in October 2009. He is Director of the Land Assistance Fund of the Federation of Southern Cooperatives in the Southeast U.S., whose mission is to retain African American-owned land and engage cooperatives for land-based economic development. With more than three decades of experience in program development and community organizing, Jerry has helped shape current policies and issues affecting land tenure. As one of the nation’s leading experts on farm policy, Jerry was a leader in the Diversity Initiative that was so successful in getting some key provisions for traditionally underserved farmers in the 2008 Farm Bill. Previously, he served as Executive Director of the Emergency Land Fund in Atlanta. Jerry earned his undergraduate degree from Stillman College and his Masters in Social Work from the University of Alabama. (Location: East Point, Georgia)
Thom Petersen
Mr. Petersen
is the Director of Government Relations for Minnesota Farmers Union (MFU), and a long-time advisor, collaborator, and friend of FLAG. Thom works with MFU’s farmer-members in both Washington, D.C. and St. Paul, and has served as a member of the State Organic Task Force and the Minnesota NextGen Energy Board. Petersen grew up on a farm in Pine City, Minnesota, and lives with his wife, Alana, their two sons, and some horses, across the road from his parents, who still farm. Petersen brings to FLAG’s Board an enormous range of experience and connections—unequaled knowledge of state and federal farm policy and how those policies affect farmers’ daily lives; a travel schedule that takes him to most every county of our home state every year; and intense work with the state Legislature on issues that affect family farmers.
(Location: St. Paul, Minnesota)
Betty Puckett
Ms. Puckett has been a member of FLAG’s board since 1989. Betty and her husband farm near Alexandria, Louisiana. She has worked as the sole farm advocate for the State of Louisiana for more than seven years. Betty travels throughout the state, consulting with farmers, helping them with their financial planning, teaching them their basic legal rights, and representing them at administrative appeal hearings. She was a critical member of the response team for farmers in the South whose operations were devastated by Hurricane Katrina. (Location: Lecompte, Louisiana)
Sarah Vogel
Ms. Vogel, an acclaimed attorney, returns to FLAG’s Board after serving for more than a decade before she left in 2009 to focus her work on the Keepseagle v. Vilsack discrimination class action lawsuit on behalf of Native American ranchers and farmers. Sarah began representing family farmers in 1981 and was the original lead counsel in Coleman v. Block, a famous national class action case on behalf of 240,000 farmers that resulted in an injunction prohibiting the federal foreclosure on nearly 80,000 farm families. She served two terms as North Dakota’s Commissioner of Agriculture from 1989 to 1996, where she established the North Dakota Agriculture Mediation Service. Sarah is currently of counsel at the Bismarck firm of Baumstark Braaten. Other significant cases Sarah litigated on behalf of family farmers include Wiley v. Glickman, in which 8,000 farmers received $43 million in crop insurance coverage for their durum wheat, and Jorgenson v. Agway, Inc., which held that farmers may use the consumer fraud laws to recover losses from the sale of bad seed. (Location: Bismarck, North Dakota)
Linda Yardley
Ms. Yardley joined FLAG’s Board in 2008. She is an Outreach Liaison with National FSA American Indian Credit Outreach Initiative, covering nineteen pueblos, two Apache Tribes in New Mexico, and the two Ute tribes in Colorado. Linda was born and raised at the Taos Pueblo in Northern New Mexico, the oldest inhabited dwelling in the United States, where farming has been a traditional practice for hundreds of years. She is a fluent speaker of the Tiwa language Both of her grandfathers raised cattle and horses; her 88-year-old father is still raising cattle; though it is becoming more of a challenge for him each year. Linda’s background includes many years of working at the University of Colorado Health Sciences Center, assisting minority students interested in the health professions. (Location: El Prado, New Mexico)
Thank you for visiting FLAG's web site. Please note that the information located on this site is not intended to provide specific legal advice. You should consult an attorney and not rely on any information contained herein regarding your specific situation.
(See Disclaimer.)
Amanda N. Heyman
Join Email List
