Staff

Samantha J. Morton is Executive Director of the Medical-Legal Partnership | Boston (MLP | Boston) at Boston Medical Center. She previously served as Deputy Director (2006-08) and Staff Attorney (2003-05) at the Medical-Legal Partnership for Children, the precursor organization to MLP | Boston which housed both national and local programs. Ms. Morton has focused on immigration advocacy, pro bono service delivery strategies, ethics and confidentiality in the MLP model, and preventive law priority-setting. She spearheaded the successful “adoption” of five Boston-area health clinics by law firm pro bono partners; this model is now being replicated by the American Bar Association through the ABA Medical-Legal Partnerships Pro Bono Support Project. Ms. Morton has authored several articles on medical-legal partnership and presented at numerous national, state, and local conferences.

Ms. Morton is a Lecturer on Law at New England Law | Boston and a member of the Massachusetts Bar Association’s Health Law Section Council. In 2004-05, she was a Boston Bar Association Public Interest Leadership Program fellow. Before joining MLP | Boston in 2003, Ms. Morton was a litigation associate at WilmerHale (formerly Hale and Dorr LLP), and served as a judicial clerk to the Honorable Morton A. Brody of the United States District Court for the District of Maine. She is a graduate of the University of Michigan School of Law and Cornell University.

Veronique Corrdin, MBA is the Financial Administrator at the National Center for Medical-Legal Partnership and Medical-Legal Partnership | Boston. She holds a Masters of Business Administration, from Simmons College, located in Boston and Bachelors of Arts in Communication from San Diego State University. Prior to joining NCMLP/MLP | Boston, Veronique worked in finance functions in both the non-profit and the for-profit arenas.

Tibrine da Fonseca is a paralegal at the Medical-Legal Partnership | Boston, focusing on housing and utilities. She coordinates training and education activities, staffs legal clinic and manages the intake referral system and triages case consults with the other paralegals. Ms. da Fonseca frequently trains frontline providers and other partners on the connection between health and utility access and how to advocate for their patients-families. Prior to joining MLP | Boston, she was an AmeriCorps Paralegal with Casa Myrna Vazquez Inc., a multicultural organization dedicated to ending domestic violence in Boston, MA. Ms. da Fonseca graduated from Simmons College with a Bachelors degree in International Relations and Spanish. She is fluent in Portuguese and Spanish.

Martha Drane is an attorney with the Medical-Legal Partnership | Boston. Leading the Education Team, her work focuses on special education issues, particularly for those children with Autism Spectrum Disorder; transitional services for children entering public schools from early intervention programs; and disciplinary issues for children with disabilities. She is a graduate of New England Law | Boston and Ithaca College.

JoHanna Flacks is the Pro Bono Director at Medical-Legal Partnership | Boston (MLP | Boston), serving as a liaison to all of MLP | Boston's private bar partners.  Before joining MLP | Boston in 2006, JoHanna was in private practice, and provided pro bono services to the Cape Cod Anti-Discrimination Task Force in its campaign to establish the Barnstable County Human Rights Commission. Prior to that, she served as Assistant General Counsel for the Boston Public Health Commission, and Senior Investigator for the Boston Fair Housing Commission. She began her career as a labor-side employment discrimination litigation associate. JoHanna graduated from the University of Oklahoma College of Law and Brandeis University

Liza Hirsch is a 2011 Skadden Fellow and staff attorney with Medical-Legal Partnership | Boston (MLP | Boston) at Boston Medical Center. Liza provides direct representation in the area of housing law, specifically taking cases involving housing conditions, housing subsidies, and reasonable accommodations. Through her fellowship, she is also launching a new medical-legal partnership with the Family Medicine Department at Boston Medical Center. During law school, Liza interned with the housing unit at Greater Boston Legal Services and the Youth Advocacy Department, representing juveniles in delinquency proceedings. She also completed a judicial co-op with Judge Blitzman, the first justice of the Middlesex Juvenile Court. Prior to law school, Liza worked as a Care Coordinator with the Massachusetts Department of Public Health, launching a Medical Home program for children with special health care needs at Children’s Hospital Boston. Liza is a graduate of Northeastern University School of Law. She received her B.A. in Psychology from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.    

Carmen Palacios is a paralegal with Medical-Legal Partnership | Boston at Boston Medical Center. Carmen is a member of the Income Supports Team specializing in public benefits advocacy. She is originally from Chile and has a Bachelor degree from the University of Chile. Prior to joining MLP | Boston, Carmen worked as a Financial Eligibility Case Manager for the Massachusetts Department of Transitional Assistance. She has also worked as a paralegal with Greater Boston Legal Services.

Marcia Peters serves as Consultant to the Housing and Utilities practice at BMC. She brings forty years of experience to this position, having organized public housing tenants, graduated from Northeastern University School of Law, and held several positions in the housing field afterwards. She was counsel to the Leased Housing Department of the Boston Housing Authority during its court-ordered receivership. Since 1986 she has been a Clinical Instructor at Harvard Law School, supervising students representing public housing tenants and applicants through the Tenant Advocacy Project. She also maintained a private practice focusing on housing and real estate law for many years until accepting the MLP position.

Kristin Small is a staff attorney with the Medical-Legal Partnership | Boston (MLP | Boston) at Boston Medical Center. Kristin provides direct representation in the area of benefits law, including disability benefits, food stamps, cash assistance and health insurance. She also serves as MLP | Boston's attorney liaison to Children's Hospital Boston, where she is currently working to establish a new medical-legal partnership. Prior to MLP | Boston, Kristin practiced for two years in Brownsville, Texas as a housing and benefits attorney for Texas RioGrande Legal Aid. While at TRLA she founded the second medical-legal partnership in Texas at the Brownsville Community Health Center, a health center serving a low-income and primarily immigrant population. Kristin is a graduate of Harvard Law School, where she was a member of the Harvard Legal Aid Bureau. She received her B.A. from Wesleyan University.

Genevieve Preer is a pediatrician at Boston Medical Center.  Originally from Washington, DC, she worked in the San Francisco Department of Public Health as an outreach worker and medical assistant before entering medical school at the University of California, San Francisco.  She completed her residency in the Boston Combined Residency Program in Pediatrics in 2009.  She is currently a member of the faculty of Boston University School of Medicine and works in the Primary Care Clinic at Boston Medical Center.  She is also the BMC Pediatric Medical Director for MLP | Boston and is a member of the BMC Child Protection Team.  Her interests include health advocacy, child abuse prevention, breastfeeding medicine, and social justice.

Robyn Riseberg, MD is the Health Center Medical Director for the Medical Legal Partnership | Boston. She has worked closely with other MLP | Boston staff to help expand services to a total of six health centers in Boston. Dr. Riseberg also works as a Pediatrician at the South End Community Health Center. She is dedicated to providing excellent health care to a primarily underserved, Latino population. Through both of these endeavors and others, Dr. Riseberg acts as a child advocate.

Dr. Riseberg is a member of the Board of Directors of Casa Myrna Vasquez, an organization committed to ending domestic violence. She completed her residency in Pediatrics in 2005 from the Boston Combined Residency Program at Boston Children’s Hospital and Boston Medical Center. She is a graduate of the University of Massachusetts Medical School and the University of Michigan.

Emily Suther is a Research Assistant at Medical-Legal Partnership | Boston, working on several research and evaluation projects. Prior to joining the staff at MLP | Boston, Emily worked as a Research Assistant in the department of pediatrics at Boston Medical Center, with a focus on pediatric asthma. She also worked for a year as a Research Assistant with the National Center for Medical-Legal Partnership. Emily holds a BA in Spanish and a minor in chemistry from Wake Forest University, and an MA in Medical Sciences from Boston University, where she graduated with honors.