Our Legal Advisory Board

Janaan Hashim

Legal Advisory Board Chair

Janaan Hashim is a civil rights attorney and partner at Amal Law Group, LLC, the first U.S. law firm founded by six Muslim women. She specializes in employment discrimination, expungements, and fair housing. Janaan was a recipient of the 2024 Chicago Bar Association Vanguard Award. Previously, she served as an Assistant Appellate Defender in Illinois. Hashim has been a spokesperson for CAIR-Chicago and was a founding board member.

Faiyaz Hussain

Legal Advisory Board Member

M. Faiyaz Hussain is a corporate attorney and litigator who most recently worked in senior positions for pharmaceutical companies such as Abbott Labs and Baxter Healthcare where he led various global teams on transactional matters as well as investigations involving white collar crime, fraud, anti-corruption and healthcare-related anti-kickback provisions in the US, Europe, Russia, and Asia. Faiyaz started his legal career in 2001 working for the international law firm of Winston & Strawn LLP. He currently serves as the Founder and Managing Director of Infinity Legal & Compliance Services, LLC.

Gregory Abdullah Mitchell

Legal Advisory Board Member

Gregory Abdullah Mitchell is a former Assistant District Attorney for Allegheny County, Pennsylvania and has practiced law in Illinois for over 33 years. His practice focused on civil litigation, and he has served as a litigator, court appointed arbitrator, and mediator.   He has counseled countless nonprofit entities through organizational and compliance policy issues and has directed a nonprofit organization that provided free consultation services to various faith groups in the African American community. 

Since 2017, he has served as Executive Director of the Council of Islamic Organizations of Greater Chicago (CIOGC), a federation of mosques, Islamic schools, and direct service agencies in Illinois. CIOGC’s mission is to build the operational and service capacity of its members and to serve as the representative voice for the Muslim community in Illinois.  As executive director, he has worked to broaden the scope of services offered by the Council to its membership, focusing on civic issues impacting member entities and their constituency This work has involved providing direct services to members and facilitating collaborative projects with member organizations, other faith groups, and civic groups. 

Maaria Mozaffar

Legal Advisory Board Member

Maaria Mozaffar is an attorney, legislative drafter, mediator, author, speaker. She crafts groundbreaking legislations spanning over 15 years on a variety of issues centered on equity and inclusiveness institutional change. Her legislative work focuses on equity in social services, healthcare, criminal justice reform, women empowerment, and inclusive schools and institutions for families.

In 2019 Mozaffar was appointed by the Governor of Illinois to the Council of Women and Girls where she co-chairs the Leadership committee that introduced the first Illinois Girls Lead mentoring/shadowing program for girls often overlooked but possessing leadership skills.

She points to her deep faith in God in giving her direction to assist where she feels her skills are needed the most. She is focused on helping communities but knows that we have to uplift the individual and remind them of their God given dignity. “Nobody knows what impact they can have on someone... The world is waiting on us.”

Waleed Naser

Legal Advisory Board Member

Waleed Naser is the founder and principal attorney of Naser Immigration Law, LLC. He is dedicated to advocating for immigrants, focusing on asylum, family-based immigration, and federal immigration litigation. Waleed has represented dozens of asylum seekers—including many Palestinians—in both USCIS interviews and immigration court, and has filed numerous lawsuits against the U.S. government challenging wrongful denials and delays.

He founded Naser Immigration Law to provide powerful, accessible, client-centered representation rooted in strong advocacy, efficiency, and transparency. Born in Nashville, Tennessee, Waleed is a proud Palestinian-American. He earned his undergraduate degree from Tennessee State University and his law degree from the University of Memphis.

Waleed began his career at a nonprofit civil rights firm in Dallas, representing Muslims and other marginalized communities in immigration and constitutional litigation. He later played a key role in mass-plaintiff lawsuits against the government, including COVID-related immigration delays and challenges to USCIS’s H-1B process. His litigation spans 13 U.S. District Courts. He serves on the American Immigration Benefits Litigation Committee and AILA’s Federal Court Steering Committee.

In 2024, Waleed was named a Super Lawyer and is widely respected for his strategic, results-driven, and compassionate representation.

Azam Nizamuddin

Legal Advisory Board Member

Azam Nizamuddin is a litigation attorney with Abear Law Offices where he practices family law, employment law and business litigation. Before joining Abear Law Offices, Mr. Nizamuddin served as a litigator for over 20 years, advising companies and individuals in several areas of practice.

Azam is a member of the DuPage County Bar Association, the Illinois Trial Lawyers Association, the Illinois State Bar Association, and the Muslim Bar Association. He is a Board of Director of the DuPage Bar Association, and is the former Chair of the Appellate Law and Civil Law Sections of the DCBA and the former Editor in Chief of the DCBA Journal, the Brief.

A well known speaker, and former college professor, Azam has given CLE credit presentations for the DuPage County Bar Association on Piercing the Corporate Veil, the Federal Religious Land Use and Intuitional Persons Act (RLUIPA), Preventing Sexual Harassment in the Workplace, and Employment Termination, and to the Circuit Court of Cook County on Cultural Issues in Custody Disputes, and regularly presents on Religious Liberty and the First Amendment of the US Constitution.

Robin Potter

Legal Advisory Board Member

Robin Potter is a veteran civil rights, union and labor & employment attorney based in Chicago, with a distinguished career spanning over four decades. She retains deep her humble beginnings as the granddaughter of Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe, growing up in public housing and from a union family. She has litigated high-impact cases involving individual and class action employment discrimination, sexual harassment, whistleblower protections, wage and hour violations, and False Claims Act (FCA) matters, recovering tens of millions for the U.S. Treasury and private claimants. As former counsel to the Chicago Teachers Union, she played a pivotal role in advancing labor rights and workplace equity and in recovering millions of dollars for teachers who faced systemic racial discrimination. Potter has also served in key court-appointed roles, including Special Master in EEOC v. The Dial Corporation and Claims Administrator in Smith v. Nike. She is a founding member of the National Employment Lawyers Association (NELA) and its Illinois chapter, and has been honored with awards such as the NELA Lifetime Achievement, Arthur Kinoy People’s Law Award and recognition from Public Justice. A graduate of the University of Iowa College of Law, Potter is the Principal Owner of Robin Potter & Associates.

Kalman Resnick

Legal Advisory Board Member

Kalman Resnick is a Shareholder with Hughes Socol Piers Resnick & Dym., Ltd. With over 40 years of experience, he practices immigration, labor and employment, civil rights, and constitutional law. He has extensive experience across virtually every area of immigration practice, including business immigration, family unification, asylum, nationality, employer sanctions, and removal defense.

Mr. Resnick has litigated cases before the U.S. Courts of Appeals, District Courts, and the Board of Immigration Appeals. Notably, he litigated Silva v. Bell, which recaptured 144,999 visa numbers and protected over 500,000 Western Hemisphere natives from deportation.

He represents multinational corporations, businesses, universities, and individual foreign nationals, advising on institutional immigration policy. He also has decades of experience in collective bargaining, arbitration, and labor litigation.

After earning a Reginald Heber Smith Fellowship in 1973, Mr. Resnick helped launch one of the nation’s first legal advocacy centers for immigrant rights.

Ahmad Sulaiman

Legal Advisory Board Member

Ahmad Sulaiman serves as the managing partner of Atlas Law Center and focuses 100% of his practice on Civil Litigation Law. He is a student of the most Advanced Federal Civil Litigation Strategies, with an emphasis on the Real Estate Settlement Procedures Act and Truth in Lending Act. This experience and knowledge particularly lends itself to his areas of concentration in multi-district Federal Litigation, Consumer Protection Class Actions, and Telephone Consumer Protection, to name a few.

Attorney Sulaiman is incredibly dedicated to the rights of the consumer, as shown in his advocacy and pursuit of justice on behalf of consumers who have suffered from harassment, negligence, or any other form of harm at the hands of a corporation or business.

Consistently named to the Super Lawyers®: Illinois Rising Stars™ list for several years in a row, including 2018, Attorney Sulaiman continues to elevate the standards of excellence for all professionals in the legal field.

Christina Abraham

Legal Advisory Board Member

Christina Abraham recently returned as CAIR-Chicago’s Litigation Clinic Lead. She directs the organization’s Litigation Clinic, which provides practical legal training to law students and advances strategic civil rights litigation on behalf of marginalized communities.

Christina first joined CAIR-Chicago in 2005 as Civil Rights Director, where she played a central role in building the legal department and litigating cases involving racial profiling, workplace discrimination, immigration delays, and hate crimes. Her leadership helped set legal precedents in citizenship delay lawsuits and police misconduct cases, and she was instrumental in launching the organization’s pro bono attorney network.

She holds a JD from DePaul University College of Law and a Master of Social Science from the University of Chicago. Christina has delivered Know Your Rights trainings and spoken globally on human rights, civil liberties, and the post-9/11 impact on Muslim Americans. She can be reached at litigationclinic@cairchicago.org.

Sufyan Sohel

Legal Advisory Board Member

Sufyan Sohel is an international social impact consultant, nonprofit executive, and civil rights attorney dedicated to combating hate and advancing justice for marginalized communities. He is the Founder & CEO of Globalize Good, where he advises leaders and guides nonprofits, foundations, and social enterprises in navigating conflict, strengthening capacity, and scaling equity-centered solutions. Sufyan helped lead the rapid-response effort against the Muslim Ban at O’Hare Airport, and he continues to provide critical guidance through CAIR-Chicago’s Travelers Assistance Project.

He currently serves as Chair of the Cook County Commission on Human Rights, Board Equity Officer for the ACLU of Illinois, co-chair of the DePaul Law Diversity Council, and Board Chair of the South Asian American Coalition to Renew Democracy (SACRED). A trained facilitator, mediator, poet, and storyteller, he uses narrative, advocacy, media, and movement-building to uplift impacted communities and inspire collective action rooted in justice, dignity, and resilience. He can be reached at ssohel@cair.com.