DOJABA’s Women’s History Month: You Go Girl!
In honor of Women’s History Month, we will circulate a “You Go Girl!” segment each week featuring the outstanding female leaders on DOJABA’s Executive Council. This week we celebrate the following DOJABA Executive Council members Roberta Roberts, Ayanna Brown, and Charell Elliott.
DOJABA’s Attorney Recruitment and Professional Development Committee Chair, Roberta Oluwaseun Roberts. Roberta serves as a trial attorney with the Office of Immigration Litigation – Appellate Section in the Civil Division of the Department of Justice, and is a member of the office’s hiring committee. She also serves as a Special Assistant United States Attorney with the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Virginia. Roberta entered on duty in 2015 through the Attorney General’s Honors Program as a judicial law clerk with Arlington Immigration Court. She earned her Bachelor of Science magna cum laude from the University of Florida, where she was inducted into the UF Hall of Fame for student leadership, service, and academic achievement, and her Juris Doctor from The George Washington University Law School, where she was awarded the Judge Albert H. Grenadier Excellence in Oral Advocacy Award at graduation.
When she is not working on cases or events for DOJ and DOJABA, Roberta helps women of color pass the Bar exam with her Blessed & Barred™ Christian Bar Exam Coaching Program. Roberta is also the founder of Grace for the Grind™ Career Mastermind, an online community and mobile app for Christian women lawyers and law students with nearly 500 members in the United States, the Caribbean, Africa, and Europe. Roberta serves on the Board of Trustees for her church, is a certified leadership coach with the John Maxwell Team, a Maxwell Method of DISC behavioral analysis consultant, and a contributing author to Love Letters to My Girls: 100+ Black Women Speak to the Hearts of Black Women & Girls anthology.
DOJABA’s Recording Secretary, Ayanna Brown. Who is Ayanna Brown? Is she the Investigator that uses her talents to research, analyze and help develop strategies to fight against Civil Rights discrimination? Or is she the Team Mom for her children’s athletic league that sits as the Parliamentarian for their Executive Board? Is she the soldier that served 13 years in the Army Reserve as a Paralegal and Administrative Staff Sergeant? Or is she the hard-working nurturer for her family and friends?
Ayanna Brown is all of the above. She joined the Department of Justice in March 2007 as a Contract Paralegal, and quickly moved up the ranks, being hired as an Equal Opportunity Specialist (Investigator) in February 2008. She gained her roots in the Special Litigation (SPL) Section, handling Juvenile Justice, Inmate Discrimination in State Jails, and Police Misconduct cases. In April 2011, through Open Season, Ayanna transferred to the Housing and Civil Enforcement (HCE) Section to continue her fight against civil rights discrimination. She uses her talents to develop substantial supporting evidence of discrimination by interviews, researching bad actors, finding potential victims, identifying damages, and writing recommendations. Ayanna also provides technical assistance and mentoring abilities to all levels of personnel within HCE.
Outside of the Department, Ayanna serves as the Parliamentarian and Resident Agent for her children’s Youth Organization. She served in the Army Reserve from 1990 to 2004, sharpening her craft in the legal field by working in a Judge Advocate General unit. She studied abroad in Scotland, while attending law school. She earned her J.D. and M.B.A. from the University of Baltimore, Schools of Law and Business. She ends her plight everyday by tending to her family, continuing to enrich them with the love and support from her as a mother, partner and friend.
DOJABA’s Social Committee Chair, Charell Elliott. Ms. Elliott is a graduate of Western Michigan University Cooley Law School, in Lansing, Michigan, where she selected by her peers to be the Valedictorian Speaker at her graduation. Ms. Elliott moved to Maryland in 2017 to intern with the Baltimore City State Attorney’s Office where she continued to strive for and advocate for justice.
She received her Master of Law (L.L.M) in Homeland and National Securities Law at Western Michigan University Cooley Law School in 2019. She currently works in the Civil Division at the U.S. Department of Justice where she provide recommendations to the Department of Justice leadership about the appropriate compensation for any individual (or a personal representative of a deceased individual) who suffered physical harm or was killed as a result of the terrorist-related aircraft crashes of September 11, 2001.
