Amy Ackerman serves as the head of the firm’s government practice group. Her experience includes municipal government law, public health, juvenile dependency and appellate law. She currently serves as Town Attorney for the Town of Corte Madera and District Counsel for Marin Sanitary District No. 2. She serves on the Executive Committee of the Public Law Section of the California Lawyers Association and on the Brown Act Committee of the League of Cities. Amy was a Senior Deputy City Attorney for 16 years with the City and County of San Francisco. She served as the first Director of Training for the City Attorney’s Office and developed a comprehensive training program for Deputy City Attorneys addressing all aspects of local government law. She wrote handbooks on public meetings and public records laws, contracts, and drafting legislation for use by attorneys and officials. She also served as the coordinator for legal advice on the Brown Act, Public Records Act and the City’s Sunshine Ordinance for the City Attorney’s Office and delivered the annual open government training for all city officials. Representative cases include Gillespie v. San Francisco Public Library Commission (1998) 67 Cal.App.4th 1165, holding that the Library could properly hold a closed session to nominate candidates for City Librarian and serving as amicus on behalf of fifty cities in City of San Jose v. Superior Court (1999) 74 Cal.App.4th 1008, holding that the City of San Jose could protect the identity of citizens making complaints regarding municipal airport noise. Amy served as legal counsel to the San Francisco County Transportation Authority, whose governing body is the Board of Supervisors. She also served as general counsel, litigating at both the trial and appellate level and drafting legislation, to a wide variety of City departments and agencies, including the Arts Commission, Department of Children, Youth and Their Families, Department of Human Services, First Five Commission, Film Commission, Juvenile Probation Department, Office of Citizens’ Complaints of the San Francisco Police Department, Office of Labor Standards Enforcement, Mayor’s Office of Criminal Justice, Rent Board, San Francisco Unified School District and Youth Commission. In addition, she drafted amicus briefs on behalf of the League of Cities and the California State Association of Counties. After leaving the City Attorney’s Office, Amy was a consultant to the National Policy and Legal Analysis Network to Prevent Childhood Obesity founded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. She worked with communities around the country to enact policy solutions to address chronic health issues. Her work included drafting model legislation and agreements addressing land use, complete streets, healthy housing, code enforcement, shared use of government resources and promoting healthy food. In addition, she represented the counties of Del Norte, Napa, San Francisco and Sonoma in the California Court of Appeal on human services matters.

Venesia Thompson-Ramsay is the associate vice president for operations for the Division of University Advancement at SF State and serves as corporate secretary and chief financial officer for the San Francisco State University Foundation. Thompson-Ramsay heads the Advancement Services & Operations unit. She oversees the day-to-day operations of the division and the Foundation, including budget and finance, administration, IT, procurement, advancement services and gift processing, audit and risk management. Thompson-Ramsay has over 25 years’ experience working in nonprofit and higher education settings. Prior to coming to SF State, Thompson-Ramsay served as senior director, finance and administration at Urban Habitat, a policy, advocacy, research nonprofit in Oakland, CA. Prior to joining Urban Habitat, she worked as the assistant director of the Center for Urban Redevelopment and Education (CURE), an applied research and community outreach center based at Florida Atlantic University. Thompson-Ramsay earned a B.A. in Language and Linguistics from the University of the West Indies, Jamaica, an M.A in Political Science from Florida Atlantic University and an MBA from Western Governor's University. Thompson-Ramsay is also an alumna of the Center for Studies in Higher Education’s Executive Leadership Academy, a program of the Goldman School of Public Policy, University of California, Berkeley.