U.S. Department of Transportation
Office of Civil Rights Key Officials
Updated: Tuesday, January 31, 2017
Leslie M. Proll, Director
Leslie Proll is the principal advisor to the Secretary and Deputy Secretary on civil rights and equal opportunity matters. She develops, recommends, and implements policies, programs, standards, and procedures relating to the enforcement of and compliance with federal civil rights laws. She provides oversight and guidance regarding the implementation of the various civil rights programs throughout the Department. This includes the prevention of discrimination in the operation of federally assisted activities and within federal employment practices. She also oversees the operation of the Disadvantaged Business Enterprise Program. She directs the provision of training and technical assistance on civil rights standards and procedures. She serves as the principal representative for DOT on civil rights matters with other federal agencies, commissions, organizations, and the civil rights community.
Background
Prior to joining DOT in February 2016, Leslie Proll served as Director of Policy for the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc., the nation's oldest civil rights legal organization. As head of the Washington, D.C. office for over a decade, she directed the organization's federal advocacy around issues involving voting rights, education, employment discrimination, fair housing, and criminal justice. She coordinated and implemented strategy on federal civil rights legislation, supervised responses to federal agency actions involving civil rights, and helped to develop proposals to strengthen federal civil rights regulations, guidance, and data collection.
Ms. Proll has testified before Congress, written articles and opinion pieces for numerous national publications, and appeared on television and radio. She served for more than a decade as Co-Chair of the Fair Housing Task Force of the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights. She also served as Co-Chair of the Civil Rights Committee of the Individual Rights and Responsibilities Section of the American Bar Association. In 2003, she received the Congressional Black Caucus Chair's Award.
Prior to working in Washington, D.C., Ms. Proll spent nearly ten years in practice as a civil rights lawyer in Birmingham, Alabama. She litigated dozens of federal civil rights cases, including class actions and jury trials, in the areas of housing discrimination, employment discrimination, higher education school desegregation, voting rights, and transportation. She was a member of the plaintiffs' trial team in two of three trials of Alabama's higher education desegregation case, Knight v. State of Alabama. She filed some of the first sexual harassment in employment cases in Alabama. Ms. Proll was the first female chair of the Labor and Employment Section of the Alabama State Bar. She helped to establish the first non-profit fair housing organization in Alabama.
Ms. Proll began her career as a law clerk to the late Chief Judge Sam Pointer, Jr. of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Alabama. Ms. Proll is a graduate of the University of California at Berkeley and the University of California at Davis School of Law.