Biography

Prior to joining St. Mary’s Jaime Aleman worked as an associate attorney in an insurance defense firm, where he represented clients in personal injury claims. Professor Aleman later worked as staff attorney for Texas Rio Grande Legal Aid where his work focused on probate and federal tax law, and he continues to provide assistance with federal tax cases on a pro bono basis through Texas Rio Grande Legal Aid. Professor Aleman is licensed to practice in Texas, the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Texas, and the U.S. Tax Court.

Professor Aleman grew up in Corpus Christi, Texas, and moved to San Antonio to attend The University of Texas at San Antonio where he earned his B.A. in Economics. Thereafter, he obtained his J.D. from St. Mary’s University School of Law.

In his free time, Professor Aleman serves as a volunteer on the Shavano Park Board of Adjustments, and he enjoys spending time with his family.

Biography

Tracy earned a Bachelor’s Degree in Business Management with a minor Communications Management from Trinity University in San Antonio, Texas in 2002. She also earned a Juris Doctorate Degree from St. Mary’s University School of Law in San Antonio, Texas in 2006.

Tracy began her career with the El Paso County Attorney’s Office in 2006 as the Community Prosecutor. During her time at the County Attorney’s Office, she received training in representing clients in protective orders applications, handling mental health commitments, prosecuting juvenile cases, and eventually, representing Child Protective Services. In 2016, she went into private practice, where she practiced in child welfare law, juvenile law, family law, and some probate law.

Tracy has been a part of several committees through the State Bar of Texas throughout her career, to include the Racial Diversity in the Profession Committee and the Child Abuse Committee. For two years, she was the Chair of the Diversity in the Profession Committee and is now still a member. In addition, she recently served on Former State Bar President Sylvia Borunda-Firth’s State Bar Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Task Force. She is now a member of newly created Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion State Bar Committee.

Tracy joined the University of Texas at El Paso in February 2023 as a Professor of Practice for the Law School Preparation Institute in the Patti and Paul Yetter Center for Law. Tracy taught classes to include legal writing and legal research.

Finally, Tracy married attorney, Alex Almanzán, in 2006 and they have two beautiful children, Noa and Paloma, and a dog named Frida. In her free time, she enjoys supporting her children’s love of theater arts, sports, and music, reading, traveling, and working out on her Peloton.

Biography

Joaquin Gonzalez is a San Antonio native and civil litigator. Prior to joining the St. Mary’s faculty, he was the Senior Supervising Attorney in the Voting Rights Program at the Texas Civil Rights Project.

He has played a leading role in some of the most significant Texas voting rights cases in recent years. This includes halting an attempt to improperly purge nearly 100,000 naturalized citizens from the voter rolls and forcing Texas to fully comply with the federal motor voter law, which has led to over 2,000,000 voter registrations. He helped design Bexar County’s S.M.A.R.T. Elections initiative in 2020, which successfully expanded access and ensured safe and effective elections during the COVID pandemic.

One of Gonzalez’s focus areas has been redistricting. He has served as the redistricting counsel for the Mexican American Legislative Caucus, and recently argued a major Voting Rights Act case in front of the En Banc Fifth Circuit.

Prior to becoming an attorney, Gonzalez worked in policy and campaign positions for a number of state and local elected officials.

• Miguel Rivera, Joaquin Gonzalez, Sarah Chen, Report: A Review of Redistricting in Texas, Texas Civil Rights Project (2021), https://www.txcivilrights.org/_files/ugd/aab911_c285d6b647d84991b89352f49595841b.pdf.
• Joaquin Gonzalez, Secrecy, Lies, Exclusion: Why Texas Is One of the Most Gerrymandered States, TCRPMag (May 21, 2020), https://www.news.txcivilrights.org/post/secrecy-lies-exclusion-why-texas-is-one-of-the-most-gerrymandered-states.
• Rebecca Harrison Stevens, Meagan Taylor Harding, Joaquin Gonzalez, Emily Eby, Handcuffing the Vote: Diluting Minority Voting Power Through Prison Gerrymandering and Felon Disenfranchisement, 21 Scholar: St. Mary’s L. Rev. & Soc. Just. 195, 196 (2019).
• Joaquin Gonzalez, Fighting Back To Protect Student Voting Rights, 129 Yale L.J. Forum 258 (2019).

Biography

Originally from Pearsall, TX—like many of his current students—Professor Vinton was a non-traditional law student. Before attending the SMU Dedman School of Law, Professor Vinton enlisted in the U.S. Army Reserves and completed several active-duty tours, including one supporting Operation Iraqi Freedom/New Dawn. After graduating from law school, Professor Vinton served as an Assistant District Attorney in Nueces County, representing the State of Texas in misdemeanor and felony prosecutions, as well as representing his office on the Veterans’ Court treatment staff.

In 2022, Professor Vinton returned to his law school to work as a policy attorney for the Deason Criminal Justice Reform Center, where his research focused on early-stage criminal procedure and prosecutorial discretion. As part of his work with the Deason Center, Professor Vinton had the opportunity to meet with elected prosecuting attorneys across the country and discuss their charging policies, and to work closely with the Dallas County District Attorney’s Office on several research projects.

Most recently, and before joining the faculty at St. Mary’s, Professor Vinton served as an Assistant Public Defender in Bexar County, representing indigent defendants charged with misdemeanor offenses.

When not preparing asynchronous materials for his class at either his office or home studio, Professor Vinton enjoys word puzzles, reading, running, and spending time with his friends and family.

Biography

Krystal earned a Bachelor’s Degree in Agricultural Economics with a minor in History from Texas A&M University in College Station, Texas in 2017. She then earned a Master’s Degree in Social Anthropology from the University of Oxford in the United Kingdom in 2019. She also earned a Juris Doctorate Degree from Notre Dame Law School in South Bend, Indiana in 2021.

Krystal began her career with Chasnoff Valkenaar Pepping & Stribling LLP in San Antonio, Texas, where she advised foreign and domestic insurers in complex matters arising out of director and officer liability, management liability, professional liability, cyber liability, commercial general liability, and excess insurance policies. She also represented foreign and domestic insurers in federal and state court lawsuits concerning declaratory judgments, breaches of contract, bad faith allegations, and statutory violations in complex civil litigation matters.

Krystal joined St. Mary’s University School of Law in the fall of 2024, where she is teaching legal writing and research in the school’s Legal Communications, Analysis, and Professionalism course.

Finally, Krystal married attorney, Cam O’Connor, who she met in law school, in 2024. In her free time, she enjoys spending time with her husband, family, and friends, going to the theater, reading fantasy and mystery stories, various outdoor hobbies, working with her family’s cow-calf operation, and cooking.

Biography

Prior to joining St. Mary’s University, Duke-Dawson’s academia path started in Houston, Texas as a staff attorney for the Legal Clinics at Thurgood Marshall School of Law. After several years of showing students how to practice law with real clients, it was then time to make the transition to show students how to embrace legal writing. These skills were subsequently imported from Houston, Texas, to Orlando, Florida, at Florida A&M University College of Law. There Duke-Dawson served as the Director of Legal Writing and afterward an Associate Professor of Law in Torts, Elder Law, Juvenile Law, Advanced Torts, Professional Responsibility and a Law School indoctrination Program. Her accomplishments gained her an invitation to become an inaugural professor at the newly established law school, Indiana Tech, in Fort Wayne, Indiana. After two years in the Midwest, she returned back to the South. First, she went to Atlanta’s John Marshall School of Law where she taught legal writing, bar prep classes and served in the academic support classes, teaching skills labs. To complete the cycle Duke-Dawson transferred her talents and experience and returned back to Texas to teach at St. Mary’s School of Law. Here she supports students in skills-related courses, labs and workshops.

Periodicals

• Workaholic Syndrome: Law and Psychology Explore the Far Reach of the Eggshell Doctrine (work-in-progress).
• Co-authored Forward for the Twenty-Fifth Anniversary Wiley A. Branton Issues Symposium Issue- Education: The New Civil Rights, 68 Arkansas Law Review 5 (Symposium Issue 2015).
• Calumnious News Reporting: Defamatory Law Is More Than Sticks And Stones For Civic Duty Participants, 93 Nebraska Law Review 690 (March 2015).
• A Silk Purse Does Not Come From a Sow’s Ear: Non-Class Aggregate Settlements Based on Public Law Erodes the Model of Private Law, 8 Seton Hall Cir. Rev. 309 (Spring 2012).
• Reverse Mortgage Facilitators Harvesting Benefits While Escaping Fiduciary Duties: Who’s Really Looking Out For Whom? 10 Florida State Business Review Journal 117 (Spring 2011).
• Who Is Responsible When You Shop Until You Drop? An Impact On The Use Of The Aggressive Marketing Schemes Of ‘Black Friday’ Through Enterprise Liability Concepts, 50 Santa Clara Law Review 747 (2010).

Biography

Em Landon, J.D., teaches Bar Success, Negotiation, and Mediation. Prior to transitioning to an academic career, Landon practiced civil litigation at Dykema Gossett PLLC. She later served as the Policy Director for the Office of the Attorney General of Texas, where she was responsible for leading statewide efforts to eradicate human trafficking in Texas. Landon is the author of Texas’s first-ever strategic plan to fight human trafficking, Charting an End to Human Trafficking in Texas. As the Policy Director and General Counsel, she provided legal counsel to policymakers and negotiated complex public policy disputes between stakeholders, members of the Legislature, NGOs, and governmental entities.

With her master’s degree in Dispute Resolution, Landon has served as a mediator for the Center for Conflict Resolution and California Academy of Mediation Professionals, mediating cases involving civil harassment, insurance claims, landlord-tenant disputes, automobile accidents, construction claims, and property disputes. Skilled in disrupting the healthcare space by igniting results-driven environments, she has served as General Counsel for several healthcare tech startups.

Prior to joining St. Mary’s School of Law, Landon taught Negotiation and LL.M. Legal Research and Writing at U.C. Berkeley School of Law.

Biography

Director Haynes works with high school, community colleges and undergraduate students to increase the number of diverse students interested in exploring opportunities in the legal profession.

Before joining St. Mary’s University School of Law in 2015 as Assistant Dean for Law Student Affairs, he worked at the University of Minnesota Law School as Director of the Career Center from 2008 to 2015 and as chair of the law school’s diversity committee. From 2005 to 2008, he was the associate director of career services and diversity outreach adviser at Brooklyn Law School. In his prior positions, he enhanced the law school experience for many students by bringing interviews on campus, expanding off-campus interview programs in major markets including New York, Washington D.C., Chicago and San Francisco, and counseling those seeking opportunities in the public and private sector. In addition, while in Minnesota, he co-chaired the Minnesota State Bar Association’s Self-Audit on Gender Equity and Diversity in 2011 and chaired the Minnesota State Bar Association Diversity Committee in 2012.

Before joining academia, Haynes served as associate counsel for New York State United Teachers where he represented public school and other government employees in disciplinary hearings. As an assistant district attorney for the New York County District Attorney’s Office he presented numerous cases to the grand jury and tried felony cases involving domestic violence, criminal sale and possession of controlled substances, robbery, assault and burglary.

Haynes grew up in San Antonio and, prior to earning his law degree, worked as a teacher and a speech and debate director for both MacArthur High School and Lee High School where he coached students to state and national championships.

Articles in a Periodical

• “The Vanishing African American Male in Law Schools”, NALP Bulletin, March 2014.

Presentations

• “The Danger of a Single Story for Lawyers – Recognizing Our Biases with Clients and Colleagues” – Hennepin County Bar Association, CLE, Minneapolis, MN, November 2014
• “Achieving Diversity Post-Fisher” – NALP Annual Conference, Seattle, WA, April 2014
• “Hypothetically Speaking 2.0: Taking Prosecutor and Public Defender Interview Preparation to the Next Level” – NALP Annual Conference, Seattle, WA, April 2014
• “The Diversity Pipeline: Best Practices and Challenges for Recruiting, Training, and Retaining a Diverse Workforce,” Minnesota Urban Debate League, CLE, Minneapolis, MN, June 2013
• “Beyond Grades and Scores: Factors Predicting Lawyer Success and Effectiveness” – Plenary Session, NALP Annual Conference, April 2011, Palm Desert, CA

Biography

Amanda Stephens, J.D., joined St. Mary’s University School of Law as a Law Success Instructor in 2022 and is now an Assistant Professor of Practice of Law.

Before joining St. Mary’s, Stephens practiced general civil litigation at Ferguson law (Bloomington, Indiana) and insurance litigation defense at Valdez & Treviño (San Antonio, Texas). Throughout and after law school, she has also engaged in various pro bono activities in mostly of the area of family law and served on local city boards. 

Stephens grew up in Huntington, West Virginia, where she earned her B.A. and M.A. in English from Marshall University. Thereafter, she obtained her J.D. and Ph.D. in Gender Studies from Indiana University-Bloomington. Her qualitative research centers on women volunteers in northern India who navigate India’s patriarchal societies.

In her free time, Stephens enjoys weightlifting; being outdoors; and spending time with her spouse, dog and cat.

• Internal Faculty Research Grant Award, for research project entitled, Brahman Saviors: Confronting Our Investments in Women’s Inequality, St. Mary’s University, 2023
• Fulbright-Nehru Student Research Grant, Indiana University-Bloomington, India, 2017
• Critical Language Enhancement Award—Hindi, Indiana University-Bloomington, India, 2016
• Critical Language Scholarship—Hindi, Indiana University-Bloomington, India, 2015
• Kenneth and Louise Yahne Fellowship, Indiana University Maurer School of Law, 2014
• National Association for Women Lawyers Outstanding Law Student Award, Indiana University Maurer School of Law, 2014
• Terry and Judy Albright Pro Bono Publico and Public Interest Award, Indiana University Maurer School of Law, 2014
• Robert McConnell Memorial Scholarship, Indiana University Maurer School of Law, 2013
• A* (Highest Grade in Class) in Feminist Jurisprudence, Indiana University Maurer School of Law, 2013

Academic Publications

• Sean Viña and Amanda Stephens, Minorities’ Diminished Psychedelic Returns, 9 Drug Sci., Pol’y & L. 1 (2023).
• Psychedelics and Workplace Health Promotion, 14 Frontiers in Psychiatry 1(2023).
• Book Review, 115 Feminist Rev. 193 (2017) (reviewing Rethinking Peacekeeping, Gender Equality, and Collective Security (Gina Heathcote & Dianna Otto eds., 2014)).
• Amanda Stephens and Sean Viña, On Women Professors Who Teach Legal Writing: Addressing Stigma and Women’s Health, Vermont L. Rev. (forthcoming 2024).

Articles in Periodical

• Women Volunteers’ Navigation of Patriarchy and Respectability in Rajasthan, Indiana University-Bloomington, ProQuest Dissertations Publishing (2022). (Doctoral Dissertation.)
• Review of Rethinking Peacekeeping, Gender Equality, and Collective Security, by Gina Heathcote and Dianna Otto, eds, Feminist Review (Mar. 2017).
• Women with Short Hair, Marshall University, ProQuest Dissertations Publishing (2010). (M. A. Thesis.)

Presentations

• “Brahman Saviors: Confronting Our Investments in Women’s Inequality,” St. Mary’s University’s Annual Research Symposium and Creative Activities Exhibition, 2023, San Antonio, TX, 2023.
• “Addressing Stigma in the LRW Classroom,” Annual Rocky Mountain Legal Writing Conference, 2023, Las Vegas, NV.
• “Law, Religion, and Gender: Strategic Entanglements for Women’s Empowerment,” Fulbright-Nehru Annual Conference, 2018, Delhi, India.
• “Women’s Empowerment: Looking through the Prism of Law, Religion, and Gender,” United States-India Educational Foundation Speakers Series, 2018, Chennai, India.
  “Decolonial Methodologies in Jain’s Gulabi Gang,” National Women’s Studies Association Annual Conference, 2016, Montréal, Québec.
  “From Feminist Mother to Militant Feminist: Changes in Women’s Rhetoric in India’s Gender Reservation Debate, 1974 to 2014,” National Women’s Studies Association Annual Conference, 2015, Milwaukee, WI.

Public Commentaries

• Commentary, Seek Gender Equity at Space Command, San Antonio Express-News, Dec. 8 2020.
• Letter to the Editor, Brief Experience (criticizing the lack of legal and judicial experience of then-Supreme Court nominee Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett), San Antonio Express-News, Oct. 25 2020.
• Letter to the Editor, Denounce Lawmakers’ Comments (criticizing Indiana state legislators’ sexist comments about the 2017 Women’s March in Indianapolis), Herald-Times, Feb. 16, 2017.
• Guest Column, A Call for Daily Resistance to Rape, Indiana Daily Student, Apr. 26, 2016.

Biography

Before joining St. Mary’s, Professor Wilson enjoyed a successful and rewarding career as an Assistant District Attorney for the Bexar County District Attorney’s Office. Serving over nineteen years as an ADA, she represented the State of Texas at all levels of proceedings in cases from arrest through sentencing, including jury trials, bond hearings, grand jury proceedings, pretrial motions, and sentencing hearings, involving all degrees of felony charges, such as drug possession, sexual assault, aggravated robbery, and capital murder. As a First Chair Felony Prosecutor, she also had the opportunity to train and mentor junior prosecutors, an aspect of the job she found especially enjoyable.

Originally from Greenwood, Mississippi, Professor Wilson came to Texas after law school as a direct-commissioned officer into the U.S. Army JAG Corps. As a JAG officer stationed at Fort Sam Houston, she served as a legal assistance attorney, Trial Counsel (Army prosecutor), and a legal instructor at the Army Medical Department Center and School. It was during this time that she became acquainted with San Antonio and decided to make it her permanent home. After serving four years, she left the Army to join the District Attorney’s Office in San Antonio.

For the past two years, Professor Wilson has been pursuing a Master of Arts in English through the University of Texas at Tyler. Her current research involves an analysis of the criticism of the English laws of primogeniture and coverture in the fiction of Charlotte Bronte. She is looking forward to completing her studies and receiving her master’s degree in December of 2022.

In her spare time, Professor Wilson enjoys Pilates, reading, attending her son’s football and basketball games and her daughter’s dance performances, and hanging out with her three spoiled dogs.