Washington State Human Rights Commission

Mr. Brenman is Executive Director of the Washington State Human Rights Commission ( WSHRC ), a State agency headquartered in Olympia . He began in 2004. The WSHRC has jurisdiction over employment, housing, public accommodations, and financial services civil rights issues and discrimination complaints in the State of Washington . The WSHRC also has contracts with the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development and the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission to investigate and resolve overlapping complaints. In December 2004, the WSHRC held the first statewide civil rights strategic planning conference.

Mr. Brenman worked for the U.S. Department of Transportation from 1995 to 2004, as Senior Policy Advisor for Civil Rights in the Office of the Secretary. Previously, he was with the Offices for Civil Rights of the U. S. Departments of Education; and Health, Education, and Welfare for 22 years, in a variety of positions ranging from equal opportunity specialist (civil rights investigator) to supervisory program analyst to branch chief and division director. He has served in San Francisco , Boston , and Washington , D.C.

Mr. Brenman’s areas of expertise include environmental justice; non-discrimination in the use of federal financial assistance on the basis of race, color, and national origin; disability access to social infrastructure such as schools and transportation; the rights of people who are limited English proficient; investigative planning and techniques; equity issues in safety; racial and ethnic health disparities; emergency management and planning for people with disabilities; strategic and performance planning in civil rights; and public involvement and outreach to people with low literacy.

Mr. Brenman represented USDOT on a variety of interagency committees and task forces, including environmental justice; Asian-Americans and Pacific Islanders; and the Administration's New Freedom Initiative for people with disabilities. Mr. Brenman also represented USDOT on the Transportation Research Board's Environmental Justice Task Force, the Department of Justice's Limited English Proficiency Interagency Working Group, and the Environmental Protection Agency's Interagency Working Group on Environmental Justice.

Mr. Brenman is the author of several papers on civil rights topics, including policy architectures for transportation safety and for eliminating racial and ethnic health disparities; investigating environmental justice complaints under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964; the meaning of the Sandoval U.S. Supreme Court decision; and alternative dispute resolution in environmental justice. He has given presentations, workshops, and served on panels on these and other subjects at a variety of venues.

After the tragic events of September 11, 2001 , Mr. Brenman was involved in issues of nondiscrimination in airport passenger screening, training by Sikh, Muslim, and Arab-American groups for USDOT staff, helping to design the civil rights function of the new Transportation Security Administration, and emergency warning and evacuation of people with disabilities.

An interesting project has been researching and writing about women’s issues in transportation; a chapter on this appears in the book, Running on Empty, published in England in 2004. In 2002, he led the team charged by the Secretary of Transportation with restructuring the organization of civil rights and EEO in the U.S. Department of Transportation. In 2004 the Harvard Civil Rights Project commissioned a paper from Mr. Brenman on transportation equity and environmental justice. He participated in a roundtable on this subject sponsored by Harvard University and the Brookings Institution in Washington , DC , in 2005.

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Marc Brenman - Executive Director