Deadria Farmer-Paellmann is a legal strategist and human rights advocate. In 2002, she filed a landmark class action lawsuit for slavery reparations against blue-chip corporations. Farmer-Paellmann is credited with popularizing the slavery reparations movement through her groundbreaking research exposing corporate complicity in slavery. In January of 2000, she exposed Aetna Incorporated for writing insurance policies on the lives of enslaved Africans with slaveholders as the beneficiaries in the 1800's. Her research linking JP Morgan Chase/Bank One to slavery led to the company making a public apology in January 2005, and committing to pay $5 million in reparations over the next five years in college scholarships to slave descendants residing in Louisiana. She earned her B.A. in Political Science at the CUNY Brooklyn College in 1988; her M.A. in Lobbying from The George Washington University in 1995; and her J.D. from New England School of Law in 1999.