Doug Lasdon

Doug Lasdon is the Executive Director of the Urban Justice Center in New York City. In 1984, Doug founded the Urban Justice Center as a one-person operation in a burned-out building in East Harlem, to provide badly needed legal services to one of New York City's most underserved populations – single, homeless adults. To make his services accessible to his clients, he conducted outreach legal clinics directly in soup kitchens, making us the first organization in the country to use this approach.

Since then, Doug has greatly expanded the agency's size, scope, and influence, while still holding fast to its core mission – helping those at the farthest margins of society, both one at a time and collectively. In addition to leading the agency, he continues to represent individual clients and to engage in impact litigation.

Prior to founding the Urban Justice Center, Doug was a Fellow and Staff Attorney at Covenant House in New York City. He has been an adjunct faculty member at New York University since 1985, and has also served as a consultant to the World Bank, and as a Wasserstein Fellow at Harvard Law School.

Doug graduated from Cornell Law School and from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania