Leslie Proll

Departmental Office of Civil Rights
Office of the Secretary, U. S. Department of Transportation
Washington, DC 20590

Prior to joining DOT, Leslie Proll served as Director of Policy for the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc., the nation’s oldest civil rights legal organization. She coordinated and implemented strategy on federal civil rights legislation, supervised responses to federal agency actions involving civil rights, and helped to develop proposals to strengthen federal civil rights regulations, guidance, and data collection. She has testified before Congress, written articles and opinion pieces for numerous national publications, and appeared on television and radio. She received the Congressional Black Caucus Chair’s Award in 2003.

Prior to working in Washington, D.C., Leslie was a civil rights lawyer in Birmingham, Alabama for almost ten years. She litigated dozens of federal civil rights cases, including class actions and jury trials, in the areas of housing discrimination, employment discrimination, higher education school desegregation, voting rights and transportation. Leslie was the first female chair of the Labor and Employment Section of the Alabama State Bar. She helped to establish the first non-profit fair housing organization in Alabama, now known as the Fair Housing Center of Northern Alabama.

Leslie began her career as a law clerk to the late Chief Judge Sam Pointer, Jr. of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Alabama. Leslie is a graduate of the University of California at Berkeley and the University of California at Davis School of Law.