Don Friedman is the managing attorney of the Empire Justice Center’s Long Island office, located within the Public Advocacy Center at Touro Law School.  Before coming to Empire Justice, Don was a staff attorney at Legal Services offices in Queens and Manhattan, the public benefits coordinating attorney at Legal Services for New York City, and a public benefits policy analyst at the Community Food Resource Center and then the Community Service Society, both in New York City.  He is a co-founder of Project FAIR, serves on the board of Hunger Solutions New York and the Public Utility Law Project, and is a member of the Suffolk County Welfare to Work Commission.  He wrote An Advocate’s Guide to the Welfare Work Rules, which was published in 1998, then revised and updated in February 2008.  Don is a graduate of the University of Michigan and Harvard Law School, and plays guitar and sings in two folk/old-time trios.

Tanya E.M.Wong, Esq. is the Acting Project Director at Staten Island Legal Services.  She is an accomplished Public Interest attorney with over 20 years of direct client representation, litigation and policy advocacy experience in the area of Government Benefits, specializing in welfare rights and other anti-poverty/anti-hunger programs, such as SNAP and WIC.  Ms. Wong has been the Director of Legal Services NYC’s Government Benefits practice since 2012 to present and has co-chaired Practising Law Institute’s annual Public Benefits program from 2013 to present.  She participates in several work groups with the NYC Human Resources Administration and chairs Legal Services NYC’s Welfare Law Taskforce. Ms. Wong is a graduate of Harvard University and Northeastern University School of Law.