Shantonu Basu was a Staff Attorney with the Northern Manhattan Improvement Corporation, since 2013. 
 

Prior to joining Northern Manhattan Improvement Corporation, he was an Organizer, Attorney with Ridgewood Bushwick Senior Citizens Council in Brooklyn, NY and a Staff Attorney with South Brooklyn Legal Services.
 

Mr. Basu received his JD from Rutgers University School of Law and his bachelor’s form City University of New York City College.  

Bill joined the BDS Civil Justice Practice in July 2014 after 5 years as a staff attorney at the Urban Justice Center where he focused on direct representation and affirmative litigation of public benefits and public housing issues. 

For the past 5 years Bill has fought for systemic change and due process rights of his clients in various administrative forums as well as state and federal court.  Having been interested in the intersection of the criminal and civil justice systems since law school, bill jumped at the opportunity to join BDS’s Civil Justice Practice and is truly grateful to be able to help some of New York’s most vulnerable residents.

Bill is originally from Southern California where he received his JD from UC Berkeley School of Law and his bachelor’s from UC Santa Cruz. 

Sergio Jimenez is Judge with the Housing Court, Civil Court of the City of New York, Queens County.  He was appointed by Chief Administrative Judge Lawrence K. Marks, 2018 to present.

Prior to becoming a judge, Sergio worked for the Brooklyn Defender Services as director of the Civil Justice Practice where he litigated on behalf of BDS’ clients with the collateral consequences issues that arise from contacts with the criminal, immigration and family court systems. He also worked at Bushwick Housing & Legal Assistance where he was the director for two and a half years and was part of the program for four years prior, as a staff attorney.

As an advocate for vulnerable populations, he has litigated housing court cases, administrative hearings and appeals of all kinds in landlord/tenant law.

Sergio was born in Costa Rica and grew up in seven different countries.

Sergio has bar admittance in Colorado, New York, Washington DC and the Federal Bar.

He received his JD from the University of Denver Sturm College of Law and his a Bachelor’s from McGill University in Montreal.

Runa is the Managing Director, Civil Action Practice.  Prior to joining The Bronx Defenders, Runa was a Senior Staff Attorney for the Mental Health Law Project at MFY Legal Services, Inc. where she worked for over five and half years representing mental health consumers in the areas of fair and affordable housing, income preservation, consumer defense, family law and disability rights in various administrative forms and in city, state and federal courts in New York.  

Runa was also a Fellow in the Marshall-Brennan Literacy Project and forged her commitment to the public interest and civil rights by working at such organizations as the Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, the Asian Pacific American Legal Resource Center and Mehri & Skalet, PLLC. 

Runa received her J.D. from the Washington College of Law, American University and she received her bachelor’s from the State University of New York at Geneseo.

Mr. Sanchez-Camus joined NMIC as a member of the legal staff in 2005. He worked at the Urban Justice Center's Mental Health Project where he co-started a Spanish speaking walk-in mental health legal clinic at the Puerto Rican Family Institute.

When he joined NMIC, he litigated housing matters at administrative, trial and appellate courts. In 2015, Mr. Sanchez-Camus became the Acting Legal Co-Director where he managed a team of 10 attorneys, 11 paralegals and 5 support staff doing housing, immigration, consumer debt and public benefits advocacy, and was promoted to Director of Legal Services in 2016.

He has also taught as an adjunct professor at the City University of New York since 2009.

He received his JD from Columbia Law School.

Andrew Scherer is the Policy Direc­tor of the Impact Center for Public Interest Law at New York Law School and a Visiting Associate Professor at the Law School, where he teaches Land Use Regulation. He also directs the Impact Center’s Right to Counsel Project.

Professor Scherer is the author of the treatise, Residential Landlord-Tenant Law in New York (Thomson Reuters), originally published in 1994 and updated annually, and of numerous law review articles and other published works.

In 2010, Professor Scherer stepped down after nine years as Executive Director of Legal Services NYC, the largest nonprofit exclusively devoted to civil legal services in the United States, where he had worked in a variety of capacities since 1978.

Professor Scherer is also an Adjunct Professor at the Columbia University Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation and has taught at CUNY Law School, NYU Law School (in the Root-Tilden public interest scholars program), Yangon University in Myanmar, and Bennington College.

He has lectured widely in the U.S. and in Latin America, Africa and Asia.

He received his JD from NYU Law School and his BA from the University of Pennsylvania and.  He is fluent in Spanish.