Catherine Ahlin-Halverson is a staff attorney at ACLU of Minnesota, where she facilitates the Systemic Racism and Native Rights issue team and leads the organization’s five-year initiative to end solitary confinement in Minnesota. Her cross-departmental team works to dismantle racially discriminatory policies in education, housing and employment, while advancing laws protecting Native sovereignty.

Before joining ACLU-MN in November 2023, Ahlin-Halverson spent nearly 19 years at Maslon LLP, rising to partner. As public interest counsel, she led pro bono teams in partnership with the Advocates for Human Rights and the Children’s Law Center of Minnesota. She was part of the Maslon team that secured the vacation of a death sentence by the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals after the client had spent 10 years on death row.

She also founded UPLIFT Legal Institute for Teens, a legal diversity pipeline program for eighth-grade students culminating in mock trials at the University of Minnesota Law School. Ahlin-Halverson earned her J.D. from Columbia Law School.

Katie Barrett Wiik is a partner at Saul Ewing LLP, where she leads the firm’s national appellate practice and its Minneapolis litigation team. Over two decades of practice, she has served as lead attorney in dozens of appeals, securing favorable outcomes before the Sixth, Eighth, and Ninth Circuits, the Minnesota Supreme Court, and the Minnesota Court of Appeals.

Barrett Wiik also chairs Saul Ewing’s pro bono committee, under which she has increased firmwide participation by nearly 50%. She is a co-author of the Minnesota Practice Series: Appellate Rules Annotated (Thomson Reuters) and co-editor of the Eighth Circuit Practice Manual (Minnesota CLE).

She is a fellow of the American Academy of Appellate Lawyers, inducted in 2024, and serves on the Minnesota Supreme Court Historical Society board. Her past leadership roles include president of the Federal Bar Association’s Minnesota chapter, executive board member of the American Bar Association’s Council of Appellate Lawyers, and chair of the Minnesota State Bar Association’s Appellate Practice Section.

m boulette is an attorney and founder of boulette PLLC, a Minneapolis-based family law practice. Previously, they served as partner and chair of the family and juvenile law practice group at Taft, where they were the only chair of an AmLaw 100 family law group based in Minneapolis. Their appellate practice includes 11 briefs to the Minnesota Supreme Court and dozens of cases before the Minnesota Court of Appeals.
boulette has been a steadfast pro bono advocate for Native American communities and transgender Minnesotans. They served as the first openly transgender president of the Hennepin County Bar Association and spent seven years on the Minnesota State Bar Association’s board. They are a fellow of the International Academy of Matrimonial Lawyers and a member of the National LGBTQ+ Bar Association’s Family Law Institute.
boulette is an adjunct professor at the University of St. Thomas School of Law and co-author of the Thomson Reuters Minnesota Practice Series volume on family law. They earned their J.D. magna cum laude from the University of St. Thomas School of Law.

Thomas H. Boyd is a shareholder at Winthrop & Weinstine PA, where his practice focuses on commercial litigation and civil appeals, including contract disputes, business torts, trust and estate matters, insurance coverage disputes, and land use matters. Over a career spanning decades, he has handled high-stakes litigation and appellate advocacy in state and federal courts nationwide, with extensive experience before the Eighth Circuit and other U.S. Courts of Appeals.

Boyd is a fellow of the American Academy of Appellate Lawyers and an elected member of the American Law Institute. He serves on the Minnesota Board of Law Examiners and co-chairs Winthrop & Weinstine’s pro bono committee. He has taught courses at the University of Minnesota Law School and William Mitchell College of Law.

Boyd earned his J.D. from the University of Iowa College of Law, where he served as a note and comment editor of the Iowa Law Review. He also holds an M.A. in philosophy from the University of Iowa.

Jess Braverman is the legal director at Gender Justice, where she leads litigation strategy advancing gender equity, including cases involving abortion rights, transgender rights in schools and prisons, and access to contraception.

Before joining Gender Justice, Braverman worked at the Hennepin County Public Defender’s office, where she represented hundreds of clients in felony matters before spearheading the office’s Special Litigation Unit, focused on racial profiling in policing. Earlier in her career, she represented young people in delinquency and child protection cases at the Legal Aid Society’s Juvenile Rights Project in Brooklyn, New York.

Braverman led the legal team in Cooper v. USA Powerlifting, in which the Minnesota Supreme Court ruled that categorically barring transgender women from women’s athletic competitions constitutes discriminatory conduct under the Minnesota Human Rights Act — a decision establishing protections for transgender people across all public accommodations in the state.

Braverman earned her J.D. from NYU School of Law, where she was an Arthur Garfield Hays Civil Liberties Fellow with a focus on LGBTQ rights.

Erica Holzer’s appellate practice is backed by a level of institutional engagement that few attorneys achieve — she has served as reporter for three Minnesota Supreme Court Advisory Committees simultaneously, developing proposed rule amendments for the Rules of Civil Procedure, Rules of Civil Appellate Procedure, and General Rules of Practice. A partner and co-chair of the Appellate Practice Group at Maslon LLP, Holzer represents clients in complex commercial disputes spanning tort and product liability, consumer fraud, insurance coverage and breach of contract, with a particular focus on appellate advocacy before state and federal courts.

Before joining Maslon, Holzer clerked for the Honorable Matthew E. Johnson, then chief judge of the Minnesota Court of Appeals. She co-authors four treatises on Minnesota civil and appellate law and a chapter in the Eighth Circuit Appellate Practice Manual.

Her representative appellate matters include securing $40 million in insurance coverage for Life Time Fitness and successfully representing a same-sex couple in a paternity dispute on appeal. She also represented Terry Olson on behalf of the Innocence Project of Minnesota, obtaining his release from prison.