From Argument to Advocacy: Urban Debate

Michele Mayes

Michele Mayes is executive vice president and general counsel for The Allstate Corporation. She is also a member of the Allstate senior management team. Mayes is responsible for guiding Allstate's strategy to ensure sound compliance of governance practices and fostering a healthy legal, legislative, and regulatory environment. She joined Allstate in November 2007, bringing extensive legal, corporate, and government experience to the company. In 2003, she was named one of America's top black lawyers by Black Enterprise magazine. In 2009, The National Law Journal named her as one of the most influential general counsels in America. Mayes serves on numerous boards including Legal Momentum, RAND Corporation, the American Bar Association Center for Racial and Ethnic Diversity, and Leadership Counsel for Legal Diversity.

Joshua Rivera

Joshua Rivera of Lane Technical College Prep High School in Chicago won the Boies, Schiller & Flexner Top Speaker Award.

Hanna Rosin

Hanna Rosin is a contributing editor at The Atlantic and founder and co-editor of DoubleX, Slate's women's section. For the last two years she has been extensively writing about women's issues from a personal and political angle. In 2010 she won the National Magazine Award as part of a package of stories in New York magazine about circumcision. Rosin is currently working on a book based on a recent Atlantic story, The End of Men. In the book she will expand on her theory that we are in an unprecedented historical moment where men are losing their dominance and women are quickly rising. She has written for The New Yorker, the New York Times, GQ, The New Republic, and the Washington Post, where she covered politics and religion for many years. She is the author of God's Harvard: A Christian College on a Mission to Save America.