Our Board

Governing Board of Directors

Board President: John P. Linton, Jr., Walker Gressette & Linton, LLC

Sue Chang, Bleecker Law Firm

Emma Cregg, Harvard Kennedy School's Government Performance Lab

Wilson Daniel, Duffy & Young LLC

Megan Denton, Community Advocate/Volunteer

Jane Diange, Volunteer

Tola Familoni, Motley Rice, LLC

Melissa Fried Spence, Butler Snow LLP

Natalie Hauff, Charleston County Public Library

Jessy Tallant, Motley Rice, LLC

Tyler Roberts, NOMOS Marketing

Rachel Wehrman, Elliott Davis

“By choosing to support Charleston Legal Access, ‘you are a part of something good for someone else.’  And that is justice at its best.”

  - Julie Moore 

  • Emma is a Project Leader for Harvard Kennedy School's Government Performance Lab, where she manages a team and project portfolio that supports state and local governments design and implement solutions to build more just and efficient service systems. Prior to joining Harvard's GPL team, she spent years working in South Carolina government- holding positions at the city, county, and state level.These positions included work in data-driven performance management, municipal budget planning, criminal legal system reform, and public health data analytics used to track state-level Covid-19 health metrics and build the state's Covid-19 vaccine rollout plan.

    Emma holds a Master of Public Administration from the College of Charleston with an emphasis in Urban and Regional Planning and BAs in Spanish and Interdisciplinary Studies from Lee University. She also lived and taught in Paris (Université de Versailles), while completing a Research Fellowship focused on challenges faced by host cities implementing national refugee policy, and interning with UNESCO’s Section of Intercultural Dialogue. She now lives in Park Circle with her husband and cat, but returns to Paris as much as she can!

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  • Sue Chang is an attorney at Bleecker Family Law in Charleston, South Carolina. She graduated from the University of Rhode Island in 2003 with a Bachelor of Arts Degree in English. Sue received her law degree from the University of South Carolina School of Law in 2008. During law school, she was an active member of the Public Interest Law Society and Vice President of the Pro Bono Board.

    After graduation from law school, Sue worked as an attorney with South Carolina Legal Services, focused primarily on family court matters for indigent clients and survivors of domestic violence. In 2013, she began her practice as counsel at Lighthouse Immigration Services, providing Family Court representation to clients with concurrent immigration concerns. The South Carolina Department of Social Services contracted Sue to prosecute child protection agency cases in late 2014, and she litigated cases with the agency until joining Bleecker Family Law. Sue also ran her solo practice Chang Family Law, where she focused on child custody, divorce, and private Guardian ad Litem cases.

    Sue is an active member of the Charleston County Bar, the South Carolina Bar, and the South Carolina Women Lawyers Association. Sue has spoken at training events for both attorneys and members of the community. Here national memberships include the National Hispanic Bar Association and the National LGBT Bar Family Law Institute.

    In her free time, Sue can be found running local 5K races, racking up Charity Miles for the Alzheimer’s Association, and spending time with her family. She is on the Board of Racers for Pacers, a local organization committed to providing running chairs for individuals with disabilities who cannot run on their own. She is fluent in Spanish and has a passion for community outreach to Charleston.

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  • Megan Denton has been a Charleston resident for the last 18 years, she enjoys connecting with others in the community and finding ways to assist others in times of need. CLA’s incredible impact to the local community has drawn Megan to support the annual CLA fundraiser, and opened opportunities for stronger support in the years to come.

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  • Jane has over 25 years of Fortune 500 Company management experience in the hospitality industry, encompassing 20 years in human resources, 12 years executive level experience, including four years operations executive experience. Areas of expertise involve regulatory and employment law matters, mergers and acquisitions, collective bargaining, and franchised operations.

    Jane serves on the Board of Directors of Camp Boggy Creek SeriousFun Children’s Network, and the Charleston School of Law Foundation.

    A graduate of the Pennsylvania State University with a BS in psychology, Jane also holds an MBA from the University of Tampa, and earned a JD degree from the Charleston School of Law. While in law school she completed externships at the ACLU of South Carolina and Charleston Legal Access, and served as a monitor for the Probate Court Adult Guardianship and Assistance Monitoring Program. She is a certified South Carolina Bar Family Court and Circuit Court mediator.

    Jane lives in Charleston and volunteers at Meals on Wheels of Charleston and is a tutor with Reading Partners South Carolina.

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  • Tola is a plaintiff's litigation attorney, licensed in both Washington, D.C. and South Carolina. He is currently an associate at Motley Rice where he works in the Public Client group. Formerly, he was a Public Defender in Charleston, South Carolina where he represented the indigent accused. Originally from East Greenwich, Rhode Island, and the son of Nigerian immigrants, Tola moved to Charleston in 2017 with the aim of advocating for those who would otherwise go unheard. Tola, who is also a board member for South Carolina for Criminal Justice Reform and Father to Father, graduated from the University of Massachusetts with a degree in Criminal Justice. He attended Elon University School of Law, where he graduated with the Dean’s Award and as a member of the Order of the Barrister’s.

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  • Melissa Fried Spence, a member of Butler Snow’s Labor & Employment practice group, has 13 years of legal experience building proactive strategies that help clients avoid long and protracted legal disputes involving a variety of labor and employment matters. She has negotiated and tried numerous cases to verdict, representing clients in a wide range of industries, and has represented clients before the South Carolina state and district courts, U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, U.S. Department of Labor, and South Carolina Human Affairs Commission.

    Spence has been recognized for her exemplary work and commitment to the Charleston community with inclusion in the Charleston Regional Business Journal ‘Forty under 40’ list in 2020. She was listed as One to Watch by Best Lawyers in America® for Labor and Employment Law – Management in the 2021 and 2022 editions. She was also named a South Carolina Rising Stars honoree from 2016 to 2019 and is a graduate of the Charleston Metro Chamber of Commerce Leadership Charleston Class of 2019.

    Spence holds a bachelor’s degree with honors from Wofford College and a Juris Doctorate with honors from Charleston School of Law. In her spare time, she serves as general counsel on the Palmetto Society for Human Resource Management board, board member for the Charleston Forum, and is the CLE coordinator for the employment and labor law section for the South Carolina Bar Association. She is also a member of the International Association of Defense Counsel, South Carolina Women Lawyers Association, Charleston County Bar Association and South Carolina Federal Bar Association Chapter.

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  • Tyler Roberts is an attorney and Co-Founder of NOMOS Marketing, a full-service marketing agency for lawyers. He discovered a passion for entrepreneurship and legal technology after working at several early stage startups and later reporting on legal trends as an editor for several law-related magazine titles. Tyler is passionate about issues surrounding access to justice and believes that marketing provides an opportunity for law firms to amplify their impact and better serve their communities.

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  • John is partner with Walker Gressette & Linton, LLC. He is a trial lawyer, who has tried cases to verdict in both state and federal court. He has also handled numerous appeals. His practice encompasses a broad range of areas including representing plaintiffs in personal injury, construction, and other cases; business, commercial, and property litigation; and representing landowners in eminent domain/condemnation cases. John is regularly included in the lawyer ranking publications, such as Best Lawyers® and Super Lawyers®. He is also AV-rated, the highest rating offered by Martindale-Hubbell®.

    John was born in Charleston and lives in the Old Village in Mt. Pleasant with his wife Julia, their sons Jack and Fritz, and their dog Buddy.

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  • Rachel leads the Elliott Davis Accounting Advisory practice: a team that provides outsourced accounting services and strategic Accounting Advisory consulting. Drawing on 18 years of finance and accounting experience in both the public and private sectors, Rachel specializes in GAAP-based accounting, budgeting, forecasting, cash flow management, and CFO-level consulting.
    Prior to joining Elliott Davis, Rachel held both corporate controller and senior finance positions for middle-market and high-growth companies across a variety of industries. Rachel’s extensive experience in inventory costing, management, and margin analysis allows her to assist customers in increasing efficiency and accuracy of management reporting, enabling a shift in focus to financial planning and analysis. Rachel is a strategic leader for E-commerce and Direct to Consumer companies, providing CFO-level strategic insight. She has demonstrated success in developing scalable processes that maximize a customer’s visibility into profitability by sales channel to drive margin improvement and EBITDA growth.

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  • Natalie Caula Hauff is Deputy Director of the Charleston County Public Library, overseeing Innovative services, which includes partnerships, outreach, community engagement, programs, as well as communications and marketing. She’s been with the library system for eight years. Previously, Hauff spent nearly a decade as a journalist in radio, TV and newspaper. She was a reporter for ABC News 4 and the Post and Courier newspaper, where she earned a Pulitzer Prize in 2015. She currently serves as a board member for the Charleston Metro Chamber of Commerce, Roper Hospital Board, and chair of the Executive Committee of the Lowcountry Digital Equity Coalition. She also serves as a mentor for Charleston County Government’s Emerging Leader Program and is a Furman University Riley Diversity Leaders Fellow.

    Spence has been recognized for her exemplary work and commitment to the Charleston community with inclusion in the Charleston Regional Business Journal ‘Forty under 40’ list in 2020. She was listed as One to Watch by Best Lawyers in America® for Labor and Employment Law – Management in the 2021 and 2022 editions. She was also named a South Carolina Rising Stars honoree from 2016 to 2019 and is a graduate of the Charleston Metro Chamber of Commerce Leadership Charleston Class of 2019.

    Spence holds a bachelor’s degree with honors from Wofford College and a Juris Doctorate with honors from Charleston School of Law. In her spare time, she serves as general counsel on the Palmetto Society for Human Resource Management board, board member for the Charleston Forum, and is the CLE coordinator for the employment and labor law section for the South Carolina Bar Association. She is also a member of the International Association of Defense Counsel, South Carolina Women Lawyers Association, Charleston County Bar Association and South Carolina Federal Bar Association Chapter.

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  • Jessica(“Jessy”)Tallant is an attorney at Motley Rice, LLC, where she focuses her practice on advocacy for victims of harmful medical drugs and devices, medical negligence, and corporate misconduct. She also works with victims of child sex abuse and human trafficking in bringing civil lawsuits aimed at holding corporate entities accountable for enabling abuse and trafficking for profit. Jessy holds a bachelor’s degree with honors from the University of Georgia and aJuris Doctorate with honors from Wake Forest University School of Law. In her spare time, she can be found walking her dog in one of Charleston’s many beautiful parks.

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  • Wilson is a trial attorney with Duffy & Young, LLC, who represents individuals and businesses in matters across a broad spectrum of civil litigation, including personal injury, wrongful death, business litigation, and property disputes. Wilson is an active member of the South Carolina Bar and Young Lawyers Division, the latter of which he serves as a committee chair. Wilson obtained his undergraduate degree from the University of Georgia and earned his Juris Doctor from the University of South Carolina School of Law, where he was awarded the Dean’s Medallion. Prior to joining Duffy & Young, Wilson served a two-year term as a Judicial Law Clerk on the United States District Court for the District of South Carolina. A Charleston native, Wilson lives in West Ashley with his wife, Sarah, and two young sons.