Partnering for Prevention

Leadership & Staff

Deborah Ramirez, Executive Director

Deborah Ramirez is a Professor of Law at the Northeastern University School of Law and the Executive Director of the Partnering for Prevention and Community Safety Initiative (PfP). Professor Ramirez writes and lectures on racial profiling, community and law enforcement partnerships, and issues of race and criminal justice. As Executive Director of PfP, Professor Ramirez oversees all aspects of the projects research. She has also worked as consultant to the US Department of Justice on issues of racial profiling and data collection. From 2003-2004, she was a Senior Fellow at the Criminal Justice Initiative of the Soros Foundation.

Prior to joining the Northeastern University School of Law faculty in 1989, Professor Ramirez was an associate with the law firm of Hale and Dorr and an assistant US attorney in Boston, where she was assigned to the Organized Crime Drug Task Force Unit. She has served on the Massachusetts Executive Judicial Nominating Commission, the Federal Judicial Selection Commission, and has chaired the Massachusetts Hispanic Advisory Commission. Professor Ramirez earned a BA from Northwestern University in 1977, and a J.D. from Harvard Law School in 1981.

Tara Lai Quinlan, Director of Research

Ms. Quinlan is the Director of Research for the Partnering for Prevention and Community Safety Initiative (PfP). Ms. Quinlan is currently a civil rights attorney employed at Outten & Golden LLP in Manhattan, where she represents employees in discrimination, retaliation, sexual harassment, wage and hour, and executive compensation matters.

Since 2001, Ms. Quinlan has worked with Professor Ramirez researching and writing on racial profiling and community policing issues. Ms. Quinlan and Professor Ramirez have co-authored "Defining Racial Profiling in a Post September 11th World”, 40 Am. Crim. L. Rev. 1195 (Summer 2003), and "The Greater London Experience: Essential Lessons Learned In Law Enforcement-Community Partnerships and Terrorism Prevention” (2008).

Ms. Quinlan is a former Judicial Law Clerk to the Staff Attorneys’ Office of the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. Ms. Quinlan also possesses an extensive fair housing background, having spent two years as the Test Coordinator for a non-profit fair housing agency in Oakland, California, where she coordinated fair housing testing and trainings on fair housing laws.

Ms. Quinlan received her J.D. from Northeastern University School of Law, and her B.A. from the University of California, Berkeley, in Rhetoric and American Studies.