Trustee Board

Members of the Trustee Board are appointed by the Executive Council. Any voting member of the UAC may submit nominations for appointment consideration to the Trustee Board through the Secretary General of the UAC. All names submitted for consideration shall be those of persons who are of high integrity and have achieved excellence and distinguished service in their community or profession. A current resume must be submitted with the application for consideration.

Trustee Board has the following powers:

(a) Act as a reconciliation and conflict resolution board

(b) Study and recommend policies to the Board of Directors

(d) Perform any other task or businesses assigned to it by the Executive Council

(e) Raise funds for the effective operation of UAC activities and programs

As of January 2017, Trustee Board is made up of the following:

Tom Moverman

Partner, Lipsig Shapey Manus & Moverman

Tom Moverman was born and raised in New York City. After starting his own construction business, Tom became interested in the law and enrolled in Brooklyn Law School; he attended night school so he could work at the Manhattan District Attorney and at the Port Authority Law Department Litigation Division.

In 1983, Tom Moverman joined New York’s leading personal injury attorney Harry Lipsig and specialized in products liability representing the victims of defective and dangerous machinery, autos and toxic substances. Within a few years, he won significant verdicts against manufacturers and was invited to author a chapter in a Products Liability legal treatise.

Tom Moverman and his law firm continue to practice law in the great tradition of Harry Lipsig by working as hard as possible for the injured victims of negligence and discrimination. We follow Harry’s vision of constantly trying to expand the law to protect society’s victims from illegal discrimination, unsafe cars, and dangerous worksites.

As the son of an immigrant, he shares the enthusiasm of newly arrived New Yorkers and understands the difficulties in adjusting to life in New York City. His father came to the USA in 1918 as a 6-year old and became the first person in his family to graduate from college; he later became a New York City Police Captain.

A very large number of Tom’s own injury-case clients are immigrants to New York City and he works mightily both to win their cases and to help them deal with New York City as new residents of the greatest “city of immigrants” in the world. He has represented clients from Gambia, Senegal, Mali, Sierra Leone, Liberia, Ghana and from other areas of Africa. One family was so pleased with the outcome of their case that they hosted him for a trip to visit their home in Africa.

In addition to his active legal practice, he donates substantial time to legal assistance to the African and other immigrant communities in New York City. He is legal counsel to Board of Directors to the United African Congress

H. E. Jean Ping

Former Chairman, African Union Commission

The career of Gabon’s consummate diplomat owes its success less to the impact he made as President of the United Nations General Assembly in September 2004-05 than his accomplishments as head of cabinet to the country’s veteran President, El Hadj Omar Bongo Ondimba in 1984-90. Ping started off his career at the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization in 1972, before becoming Gabon’s Ambassador to the institution from 1978 to 1984.

He moved on to President Omar Bongo’s cabinet, jumping from one ministerial office to another, with stints at Information, Finance, Mines, and Foreign Affairs, before settling at the latter post in 1999. Ping has built up strong diplomatic credentials across Africa and won the Chairmanship of the African Union Commission on 1 February 2008 with 31 of 46 votes in a single round of voting. A popular choice in Central, Western and North Africa, he lacked such support in Southern Africa, where South Africa is said to have wanted a candidate of greater substance. Ping faces a hard task: reforming an AU plagued by dysfunction and unable to focus on internal reform because of relentless crises in a host of countries, headed by Sudan, Somalia and Chad. He says that his motto there will be 'less talk, more work’.

Born in November 1942 to a Chinese father and a Gabonese mother in Omboué, Gabon, Ping’s attachment to China is more nuanced than his nickname of ‘Mao’. As Foreign Minister since 1999, he has led Gabon’s campaign to open up trade with non-traditional partners including China, Brazil and South Africa. Ping is uncritical of the Chinese, who signed a controversial US$3 billion iron ore-backed deal for the development of the Bélinga deposit in northeastern Gabon in 2006, saying: ‘With China, everything is simple. She gives us debt forgiveness or long-term loans without interest or conditions.

As a former President of the Organization of Oil Producing Exporting Countries in 1993 and along with all his other jobs, Ping has a reputation as a globetrotter. He has also accompanied Bongo in his mediation efforts to São Tomé, Chad, Central African Republic and Congo-Kinshasa. According to local observers, Ping prefers to avoid Gabon’s messy local politicking and the ruling Parti Démocratique Gabonais, as he has the ear of the President himself. Ping has two children with the President’s daughter and current head of the presidential Cabinet, Pascaline Bongo, and is married to an Italo-Ivorian, Jeanne-Thérèse.

Gary Schultz

Retired MTA Executive and Board Member US Peace Corps

Gary Schulze is an elected Board Member of the National Peace Corps representing all returned volunteers who served in West, Central, and Southern Africa. He was a member of the first contingent of Peace Corps Volunteers sent to Sierra Leone in 1962, shortly after the country gained its Independence from Great Britain.

Gary retired as Senior Advisor to the Metropolitan Transportation Authority’s Interagency Counterterrorism Task Force in New York City. Before that he was the MTA’s Director of Executive & Organizational Development. He joined MTA after an eleven-year career at McGraw-Hill, Inc. where he was Corporate Director of Executive Development & Training. Gary also served as National Director of In-House Training & Development at the American Management Association, Director of National & International Seminars for the Young Presidents’ Organization and Director of Personnel & Safety for a West African subsidiary of PPG Industries. In 1996 he was a United Nations Election Observer at Sierra Leone’s Presidential and Parliamentary Elections which restored democratic rule to the country.

Gary is on the boards of Queensborough Community College in NYC, The Friends of Sierra Leone, and The Magic Penny (an NGO which builds schools in Sierra Leone). He is also on the Advisory Board of the United African Congress. He has a B.A. from New York University and a M.A. from Columbia University in Foreign Political Institutions.

In 2013, he was installed as Honorary Paramount Chief Pieh Gbabyior Caulker I of Kagboro Chiefdom in Sierra Leone, the first RPCV to ever receive such an honor, a title he shares with Queen Elizabeth and Tony Blair.

Sierra Leone President Ernest Bai Koroma presented Gary with the country’s highest civilian award in 2014, The Order of the Rokel, with the rank of “Officer” for his “tremendous contributions to history, education and culture” over the past 52 years.

Joseph Champagne

Mayor of Toms River, NJ

Joseph Makhandal Champagne is Mayor of the Borough of South Toms River, New Jersey. He was elected on November 2, 2010. Two years earlier, November 2, 2008, during Barack Obama’s presidential election, Mayor Champagne won the Councilman seat in a landslide against an incumbent in South Toms River. Mayor Champagne is committed and passionate about serving his constituency and community. He is married with two beautiful daughters.

Mr. Champagne holds a Bachelor of Arts in Psychology and with science concentrations from Columbia University (where he received a full academic scholarship). Upon graduation, Mr. Champagne returned to Brooklyn to teach Environmental and Earth Science along with Mathematics at his former High School (Sarah J. Hale High School in Brooklyn where he had graduated top of his class). A year later, he attended Georgetown University, Law Center’s Charles Hamilton Houston Pre-law Institute program, where he won the Best Respondent Advocate award of class of 1999. Mayor Champagne earned his Juris Doctor degree from Vermont Law School (VLS). While at VLS, asides from being on Deans’ List, he founded The Vermont Law Student Leadership Collective for Human Rights, a campus wide student group that identifies and promotes leadership talents. As an exchange student, Mayor Champagne also studied European Union Law at the University of Trento, School of Law, in Trento, Italy.

Upon graduation, Mayor Champagne served as a Judicial Law Clerk to the Honorable Wendell E. Daniels, J.S.C., of the Superior Court of New Jersey, Ocean County. Mayor Champagne practices in New Jersey and focuses primarily on immigration, criminal and civil law. Mr. Champagne is a member of the Ocean County Bar Association. He is admitted to practice in the New Jersey Supreme Court, the United States District Court, the Third and Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals of the United States of America. He appears regularly in Federal courts, in addition to State and Municipal courts throughout New Jersey. He serves on several advisory committees including Alternative Dispute Resolution, Law Day, and Minority Concerns.

Notwithstanding the practice of law, Mr. Champagne is passionate about social engineering and actively serves in this capacity. He is a board member of Ocean Community Economic Action Now, (O.C.E.A.N., Inc.), a community agency that provides comprehensive services to improve the quality of life of individuals and assist them in moving toward self sufficiency. Mayor Champagne is also a member of the Global Syndicate, Haitian-American Leadership Council and the National Haitian-American Elected Officials Network (NHAEON). He also served as an assistant to the Public Policy Counsel and Executive Director of the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law in Washington, D.C.

Mayor Champagne is an inductee in the All American Scholar Book, 1993 and from 2001 to 2002 he was elected in the Who’s Who Among Students in American Universities and Colleges for his outstanding merit and accomplishment as a student at Vermont Law School.

Patricia Gatling

Commissioner and Chair, NYC Commission on Human Rights

Patricia L. Gatling is the Commissioner and Chair of the New York City Commission on Human Rights. She is in charge of enforcing the Human Rights Law and combating discrimination in New York City. She also worked as a senior trainer with John Jay College of Criminal Justice, as part of the U.S. State Department's International Law Enforcement Academy (ILEA), teaching "Human Dignity and the Law" in newly emerging democratic countries, such as Botswana, Thailand, and Budapest, and at the Dubai Police Academy International Conference in the United Arab Emirates. Ms. Gatling has also served on the New York City Charter Revision Commission.

Ms. Gatling is formerly the First Assistant District Attorney at the Kings County District Attorney’s Office in charge of the Major Narcotics Investigations Bureau, the Community Relations Bureau, Legal Hiring, Inter-Agency Training, and Inter-Government Affairs. As First ADA, Ms. Gatling also oversaw all of the Office’s legal and administrative operations.

Ms. Gatling attributes her interest in law to her days growing up in the south during the Civil Rights Movement. She received her Juris Doctorate from the University Of Maryland School Of Law and a Bachelor of Arts Degree in International Studies from The Johns Hopkins University. She also attended New York University in Paris, France. Ms. Gatling is the former President of the National Black Prosecutors Association. She served as a Special Assistant Attorney General at the Office to Investigate the New York City Criminal Justice System from 1987 to 1990. While in that office, she prosecuted corruption cases involving public officials, police officers, and corrections officers, specializing in the prosecution of police brutality and death-in-custody cases.

Ms. Gatling is an active participant in community outreach programs and a widely respected speaker. She has lectured at the United Nations African Mothers Association Conference, the University Of Iowa School Of Law, American Women's Economic Development Corporation, the National Association of Black Narcotics Agents, the Practicing Law Institute, and has delivered the John Jay College Lloyd G. Sealy lecture, among others. She has been featured in numerous publications including Black Enterprise, Emerge, Black Elegance, Essence, Aramica and major newspapers such as the New York Times, the Daily News, and the New York Post. Ms. Gatling has been a guest on the Oprah Winfrey Show and on Court TV and featured in A&E documentaries titled “The Prosecutors” and “Second Chance.” She was featured on NBC, UPN-9, CBS, and New York 1 for her work at the Commission. Ms. Gatling led a successful campaign to remedy the lack of diversity in the advertising industry, and was subsequently ranked #4 of the “10 Who Made Their Mark,” a list in Advertising Age that showcased those who had an impact on the industry in 2006. In 2007, The Network Journal Magazine ranked Ms. Gatling among the “25 Most Influential Black Women in Business” and the National Organization of Black Law Enforcement Executives named Ms. Gatling “Humanitarian of the Year.”

Andrew P. Johnson

Senior Partner, Law Offices of Andrew P. Johnson, PC

Andrew P. Johnson received a Bachelor of Arts from the University of Delaware, studied International Law at Uppsala University, Sweden, and received a Juris Doctorate from Delaware (Widener) Law School. Mr. Johnson was a government prosecutor until he entered private practice in 1998. He has authored numerous articles on immigration and international litigation, some of which have been published by the American Bar Association and the American Immigration Lawyers Association. In addition, Mr. Johnson has been featured in a New York Times article, quoted by New York Daily News, and interviewed by CBS News on the topic of Immigration. He has represented large corporations, non-profits organizations, and small companies in all aspects of immigration law. Mr. Johnson has spoken to business organizations in conferences around the world on the various strategies for immigration and sending employees to the United States, and he organized the conference series entitled, "Investing and Living in the United States," which has been presented in countries in Asia and Europe.

He is a senior partner at the Law Offices of Andrew P. Johnson, PC, a business immigration firm located in the middle of the Financial District in New York City. The firm has successfully represented both large and small corporations along with thousands of individuals in complex immigration cases. Some of their clientele includes multinational corporations, United Nations affiliated non-profit organizations and embassies across the globe.

Mr. Johnson practices federal immigration law exclusively and is an active member of the American Immigration Lawyers Association. He is admitted into the United States Supreme Court, the State Bar of New Jersey, and is admitted to the 1st-7th, 9th, and 11th United States Circuit Court of Appeals.

Reverend Luonne Abram Rouse

Church Leader, United Methodist Church

Huntington - Cold Spring Harbor

Reverend Luonne Abram Rouse has been described by his peers in the field of pastoral counseling as having the ability to speak readily of the theological implications of individual cases, while paralleling processes within the clinical arena. Rouse utilizes a therapeutic approach, always combining pastoral care and social action. He places particular emphasis towards elimination of racist attitudes and moving toward racial reconciliation.

Dr. Rouse served as the first chief executive officer of The Sisk Foundation (with assets of 2.7 million dollars) and added twenty-five counseling services meeting the basic needs of the local transient, unemployed, elderly, deinstitutionalized, homeless, which often included substance abusers, HIV/AIDS patients, and others marginalized individuals. On December 1, 2003, Rouse relocated to Harlem, New York, for a reengineering mission service in an urban context at Metropolitan Community United Methodist Church. In this capacity he developed Metro Health Ministries, a counseling and consultation service in East Harlem, which offers “Brief Substance Abuse Intervention and Family Therapy,” with primary care to those persons faced with HIV/AIDS.

He is also a Fellow of the American Association of Pastoral Counselors, Lieutenant Commander in the United States Naval Reserve Chaplains Corps, Certified Pastoral Counselor, Certified Stephen Leader in the Stephen Ministries Series, Certified Youth Leader and Consultant, Church Growth Consultant, Race Relations Consultant, and Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist.

Reverend Samson Slobert

Christian Chaplain, New York City

Reverend Samson Slobert, Sr. is the spiritual leader of the United African Congress. He is also founder and President of the United African Christian Council, a body empowered by the Federal government to identify and process applications for new immigrants during the 1987-88 Amnesty program under the Reagan Administration. He led the organization as Advocate, educator and counselor for new immigrants transitioning into the United States.

Rev. Slobert is one of the frontrunners in helping replant the acceptance and positive reception of African indigenous religious beliefs by establishing fellowship sites throughout the United States of America.

Dr. Slobert is the founder and Senior Pastor of the Pentecostal Bible Outreach Mission based in New York City and branches in East and West Africa. Under his leadership, the Pentecostal Bible Outreach Mission built and established private schools to aid children from communities with limited resources, particularly homes with single mothers.

Born in Liberia, this internationally acclaimed visionary continues to receive awards for his relentless contributions to his community and society at large. He also worked as a former addiction counselor serving the disabled and mentally ill in the New York City Health and Hospital Corporation.

Reverend David Kayode

Christian Chaplain

Reverend David B. Kayode was born in Ijero Kingdom, Ekiti State Nigeria. He attended West Virginia University of Technology, and received both Bachelors of Science degree in Management, and honors, as the Ambassador of Good Will from the West Virginia Secretary of State. He later received his Masters of Education from Kean University of New Jersey.

Rev. Kayode started working with the New York City Department of Homeless Services as an outreach team leader in 1989. He soon developed a desire to make a greater contribution to the homeless, so he became a New York State Credentialed Alcohol and Substance Abuse Counselor, and has been practicing since 1996 at NYC/DHS Atlantic Men’s Assessment Center, a 350 bed homeless facility in Brooklyn. He was honored by the International Narcotic Enforcement in 2004 and was honored as the Counselor of the Year in the State of New York by OASAS in 2008.

Rev. David B. Kayode simultaneously wears many hats. He is a: Baptist minister and director of community affairs at Maranatha Baptist Church, NYS Brooklyn NY “Prison Mentor”, District 28 Legislative Aide, Member of Economic Development Subcommittee of Community Board #12, Chief Operations Officer of Learning Institute For Employability (LIFE), Inc., DC 37 Local 371 Delegate, Counselor of Addiction Treatment at NYCDHS’ Atlantic Men’s Assessment Center, the Vice President for international public relations of African Diaspora Development Corporation Inc., former NYC City Council Democratic Candidate and is one of the spiritual advisers of United Africa Congress in North America.

Cheryl Wills

Writer and Anchor, NY1 News

Cheryl Wills is an award-winning television personality for Time Warner Cable’s flagship national news network, New York 1 News, based in New York City. She has been with the news channel since its launch in 1992 and the journalist is also the author of Die Free: A Heroic Family Tale, which traces her great-great-great grandfather Sandy Wills' courageous service in the Civil War as a member of the United States Colored Troops. On March 25, 2011, Cheryl Wills made history as the first journalist invited to speak inside the United Nations General Assembly Hall for the International Remembrance of Victims of Slavery and the Transatlantic Slave Trade. Cheryl is also a blogger for the internationally renowned The Huffington Post and she contributes to Essence.com. A nationally recognized public speaker, Cheryl has been tapped to host and speak events at The Essence Music Festival, McDonald's Gospel Fest, The Congressional Black Caucus and The World Summit of Mayors in Senegal West Africa.

As a television journalist, Cheryl Wills has been a reliable guide through everything from the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, to moderating televised discussions about the presidency of Barack Obama. She has received numerous awards for her work including New York Press Club and AP Awards, the YMCA National Black Achievers in Industry Award. In 2010, McDonald’s honored Wills as a broadcasting legend during a regional ad campaign. She was awarded an honorary doctorate from New York College of Health Professions in May of 2005.

Her acting work has included playing herself in television shows like NBC's Law & Order SVU and major motion pictures such as Freedomland, starring Samuel Jackson, and The Brave One, with Jodie Foster and Terrence Howard. Wills is a graduate of the S.I. Newhouse School at Syracuse University, and is the V.P. of the New York Chapter of the National Association of Black Journalists, an active member of The Women's Forum of New York, The Links, Incorporated, The Inner Circle of City Hall Journalists, The New York Press Club, and The Screen Actors Guild. Cheryl is also proud to be a The Founding Commander of the New York Chapter of the "Sons & Daughters of the United States Colored Troops."