Cathy Lesser Mansfield is a nationally known consumer law expert. She is the former board chair of Americans for Fairness in Lending, an organization formed in 2007 to raise public awareness of predatory lending and promote government protection from predatory lending. Prior to teaching at Drake, Mansfield worked as an attorney at a large law firm and a legal services program for the poor, both in Phoenix, Ariz. She's published articles in the Stanford Law and Policy Review, New Mexico Law Review and Brooklyn Law Review and is the co-author of “Consumer Banking and Payment Systems”, published by the National Consumer Law Center. She is also the composer and librettist of The Sparks Fly Upward, and opera that follows three families in Berlin during the Holocaust. She joined the Drake University faculty in 1996.