In order to provide high quality legal and technical assistance to Georgia’s environmental community, GreenLaw maintains a staff of highly qualified individuals.   Our attorneys are:  Justine Thompson, George Hays, Hutton Brown and Kurt Ebersbach.  Our Development Director is Anne Harper and our Office Manager is Scott Sykes.  Their professional biographies with email links are below.

Justine Thompson has served eleven years as the Executive Director of GreenLaw. During her tenure, Thompson has built the organization from a staff of one to its current size of seven, who have a combined total of over 70 years of legal and nonprofit experience. Thompson is the longest serving public interest environmental attorney in the state of Georgia. She has been the lead attorney in most of GreenLaw’s notable cases, for example, defeating a proposed thousand-acre landfill in one of Georgia’s poorest counties, requiring a polluter to pay a $1M fine for illegally dumping cyanide into a river, and requiring a power company to spend over $50 M to prevent excessively heated discharges from a coal plant that caused massive fish kills in Lake Sinclair. Thompson has significant experience in addressing the problems of pollution from coal-fired power plants. With the GreenLaw legal team, Thompson is representing the Sierra Club and the Friends of the Chattahoochee in a legal challenge to an air pollution permit issued by Georgia’s Environmental Protection Division (of the Department of Natural Resources) to LS Power (a New Jersey-based energy conglomerate) to build a coal-fired power plant in Early County. Prior to taking leadership of GreenLaw, Thompson worked as an attorney for the Southern Environmental Law Center and as an associate for the Atlanta law firm, Chorey, Taylor and Feil. She served as law clerk for United States District Court Judge Robert L. Echols in Nashville, Tennessee. In 1995, she received a Juris Doctor (J.D.) degree with honors from Duke University School of Law where she served on the editorial board of the Duke Law Journal. Prior to attending law school, Thompson worked in the non-profit sector for the Sierra Club, the National Wildlife Federation, and the California Public Interest Research Group. She received an economics degree from the University of California, Berkeley, in 1988.

Hutton Brown is a Senior Attorney with GreenLaw where he focuses his work on implementation of the federal Clean Water Act. He brings with him twenty years of experience litigating in state and federal court. He is a graduate of Vanderbilt University where he was on the Vanderbilt Law Review, and received his undergraduate degree from the University of Tennessee where he graduated magna cum laude. He began his legal career at King & Spalding, followed by a successful tenure at Doffermyre Shields Canfield Knowles & Devine. Hutton has been litigating at Brown & Shamp for the past ten years doing environmental toxic torts, product liability and other plaintiffs' work.

David Deganian joins GreenLaw as the University of Georgia School of Law Public Interest Fellow.   In this position, he focuses on environmental justice in the Atlanta metropolitan area, providing legal services to the underrepresented.  He is a graduate of Georgia State University College of Law and received his undergraduate degree from the University of Georgia.  While a law student, David served as an intern for GreenLaw, EPA’s Region IV, and the U.S. Department of the Interior, Office of the Regional Solicitor.  He is a former Fulton County Assistant Public Defender and has worked as a pro bono staff attorney with the Environmental Law Foundation in Oakland, CA.   He is licensed to practice law in Georgia and California.

Kurt Ebersbach is a Senior Attorney with GreenLaw where he focuses his efforts on air quality and ensuring that environmental laws are applied equally for the benefit of all Georgians.  He was named a “Super Lawyer, Rising Star” in 2007 and 2008. A cum laude graduate of the University of Georgia School of Law, he served as Notes Editor of the Georgia Law Review, 1996-97. Before attending law school, he completed internships with the California Nature Conservancy and the National Wildlife Federation. He is a 1993 graduate of Cornell University, where he studied ecology and natural resources. He also serves on the Board of Georgia Organics.

Anne Harper has extensive experience in the nonprofit, public, and private sectors. Prior to joining us, she established Harper Consulting, a management consulting practice. From 1988 to 1996 she was a Communications Consultant with McKinsey & Co., Inc. Harper served on the Atlanta Board of Education from 1994 to 2001. A long-time activist on behalf of women and girls, Harper worked with state legislators to initiate the Equity in Sports Act of 2000, incorporating Title IX into Georgia law. She has served on the boards of many civic organizations, including the New York-based NOW Legal Defense & Education Fund (renamed Legal Momentum), Cool Girls, Girls on the Run of Atlanta, Feminist Women's Health Center, Atlanta Partners for Education, and Odyssey. In 1995 Harper was named a YWCA Woman of Achievement. She holds a Ph.D. in political science from the University of Michigan and a B.A. magna cum laude from Smith College 

George Hays is a leading national expert in air quality laws bringing with him over twenty-two years of experience.  George worked in several leadership positions for the United States Environmental Protection Agency in the Office of General Counsel.  In recent years, he has successfully litigated complex cases for such groups as Sierra Club, Environmental Defense, the National Parks Conservation Association, the Alabama Environmental Council and others.  He serves as an Adjunct Professor at the Golden Gate University School of Law.  George is an honor graduate of Cornell Law School where he served as a Note Editor for the Cornell Law Review and received the Herbert R. Reif Prize awarded by the Cornell Law School faculty for the best Law Review Note.  He also clerked for United States District Court Judge Stephen V. Wilson in Los Angeles.  George graduated cum laude from Amherst College.
 
Scott Sykes has fifteen years of legal experience as an office manager and paralegal for large and small law firms. He has worked as a docket clerk for the 11^th Circuit Court of Appeals and a customer service representative for a legal support company. In 2007 he organized a neighborhood coalition that successfully defeated a developer’s attempt to rezone the neighborhood and invalidate the area’s master plan known as Blueprint Midtown.  He received a B.S. in advertising from the University of Florida and a paralegal certificate from the National Center for Paralegal Training