Cornell William Brooks is the recipient of the Harvard Kennedy School Innovations in Teaching Award. Through the Trotter Collaborative, his social justice advocacy clinical class has enabled students to do pioneering policy work with mayors across the US and abroad; nonprofits from the Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights Under Law to Black Voters Matter; as well as organizations from the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism to the National Council of Churches. Brooks served as the 18th president of the NAACP from 2014 to 2017. Under his leadership, the NAACP secured 12 significant legal victories, including laying the groundwork for the first statewide legal challenge to prison-based gerrymandering. He also reinvigorated the activist social justice heritage of the NAACP, dramatically increasing membership, particularly online and among millennials.