Our Staff
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Leni Tupper (she/her)
Founder & Director
Leni is the founder and Director of the CLEAR Clinic, Director of the PCC Legal Resource Center, and part-time faculty in the PCC Paralegal Program. Leni founded and developed the CLEAR Clinic to provide legal services strategically targeted at reducing barriers to success. She has collaborated with a wide variety of stakeholders to provide a thoughtful, community-centered vision for the Clinic. Leni is committed to working toward increasing access to justice for our communities, and reducing the footprint and impact of systems of oppression. Leni tries to use her privilege to walk with community members in the struggle toward liberation. Leni grew up in Northeast Portland and is proud to serve her community.
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Natalie Webb (she/her)
Staff Attorney
Natalie Webb is an immigration staff attorney with the CLEAR Clinic. She graduated from Lewis & Clark Law School and became a member of the Oregon State Bar in 2023. She is dedicated to providing trauma-informed and compassionate care to all clients facing issues related to the threat of deportation, and especially enjoys advocating for queer and transgender asylum seekers.
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Jacqueline Johnson (she/her/ella)
Immigration Paralegal
Jacqueline Johnson is an immigration paralegal with the CLEAR Clinic. Working as a paralegal since 2020, Jackie is committed to making a positive impact in the lives of individuals navigating the complexity of the immigration legal system. Having navigated the system herself, she brings a unique and empathetic perspective to this work. Prior to working in immigration, Jackie devoted her efforts to educational justice, working closely with the Latinx community. Through her work, Jackie aims to empower individuals, champion their rights and contribute to building a more just and inclusive society.
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Joie Bassham (they/them)
Paralegal
Joie Bassham is a graduate of PCC's paralegal program and has since been working at the CLEAR Clinic on criminal record and eviction expungement, legal name & gender marker change, and immigration. They're a born-and-raised Portlander and love that this position allows them to work closely with the community they grew up in. Previously, they worked extensively in community childcare and teaching roles, including as a certified sexuality education in middle and high schools. Outside of work they like reading and creative writing and taking their cat, Pigeon, on adventures
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Cody Winger
Immigration Paralegal
Cody is an immigration paralegal with the CLEAR Clinic. He graduated from the Portland Community College Paralegal Program with an associates in Paralegal Studies in 2018 and went on to graduate from Portland State University with his baccalaureate degree in Arts and Letters and a minor in Spanish in 2021. Cody's interest in immigration law and justice initially came from years of waiting tables and witnessing firsthand the differences in how undocumented workers were treated compared to their counterparts with citizenship. Since graduating the paralegal program, Cody worked and volunteered at a variety of different law firms and legal practices that, while gratifying, ultimately were not immigration practices. So, when the immigration paralegal position opened at the CLEAR Clinic, Cody jumped on the opportunity and hasn't left. Before his current position in full-scope representation, he worked for two years on the limited-scope immigration team where he learned the ropes of deportation defense and asylum as a paralegal. Cody is from Utah, originally, but has lived in the Pacific Northwest for over eight years. In his spare time, you'll typically find Cody outside somewhere, rain or shine.
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Lark Mulligan (she/her)
Staff Attorney
Lark Mulligan (she/her) is a white, queer transgender woman who grew up in Michigan and who currently works as an immigration staff attorney at CLEAR Clinic. She attended Middlebury College in Vermont, where she earned a bachelor's degree in philosophy and authored a thesis on feminist epistemology. After moving to Chicago in 2011, Lark became a collective member at the Transformative Justice Law Project of Illinois (TJLP), an abolitionist organization that resists the policing and incarceration of poor and street-based transgender and gender expansive BIPOC people in Illinois. In her 10 years at TJLP, she helped build a reentry program for trans people getting released from prison, organized and staffed a monthly legal name change clinic, submitted a shadow report to the United Nations on the treatment of incarcerated trans people in the US, assisted trans people in filing employment discrimination complaints and jail grievances, and worked with criminalized members of the organization to publish an annual ‘zine that features artwork, stories, poetry, essays, and how-to guides created by and for incarcerated trans people. In 2017, Lark graduated first in her class from DePaul University College of Law, and went on to practice holistic criminal defense, criminal records relief, and civil rights litigation for trans people through an Equal Justice Works Fellowship. She then moved to Mexico City for three years, and her experiences there inspired her to begin practicing immigration law. Lark's published works include a law review article arguing against the constitutionality of state statutes restricting legal name changes for people who have prior criminal convictions.
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Nicole Bowmer (she/they)
Nicole is a paralegal with the CLEAR Clinic. Her interest in the legal system might have begun in childhood when she often watched the television show, Perry Mason, with her mom and grandma. But it more likely started decades later when Nicole was a volunteer mentor at a Portland middle school where she witnessed how poverty, racism, and prioritizing police officers in the hallways instead of school counselors created the school-to-prison pipeline. Nicole is grateful to be surrounded by wonderful colleagues at the clinic who are as committed to repairing the harm of the legal system as they are working toward a future where, as Angela Davis wrote, prisons are no longer used to relieve us of the responsibility of seriously engaging with the problems of our society. When Nicole's not at the clinic, she's teaching holistic sexuality education classes to children and youth, meandering along the beautiful trails and trees around Portland, and probably heading toward last place in her family's football pool. (She's okay with this because last place gets their money back.)