Yaki Reappointed to Civil Rights Commission

SAN FRANCISCO — Michael Yaki of Michael Yaki consulting in San Francisco announced Jan. 18 that he has been appointed to a third six-year term on the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights by House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi.

Michael Yaki

“The good fight continues,” Yaki said in a Facebook post.

First appointed to the commission in 2005 and reappointed in 2011, Yaki is an attorney, a former elected member of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, and past district director and senior advisor to Pelosi. He is a respected advisor to senior government officials, corporate executives, and community leaders.

In 2008 he was appointed national platform director for Obama for America and the Democratic National Committee, and his portfolio includes managing many winning state and local campaigns. He is the on-air political and legal analyst for KRON-TV in the Bay Area media market, and his frequent writings have appeared in The New York Times, The San Francisco Chronicle, and Huffington Post.

A graduate of UC Berkeley and Yale Law School, Yaki clerked for a California Court of Appeals judge. After nearly 10 years as a partner in law firms where he specialized in governmental affairs and regulatory matters for clients, he founded Michael Yaki Consulting in 2009.

The commission was established in 1957 as an independent, bipartisan, fact-finding federal agency whose mission is to inform the development of national civil rights policy and enhance enforcement of federal civil rights laws. It pursues this mission by studying alleged deprivations of voting rights and alleged discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, age, disability, or national origin, or in the administration of justice.

Four commissioners, including Yaki, are congressional appointees; four are presidential appointees, including independent civil and human rights consultant Karen Narasaki of Washington, D.C.