Advisory Board

Jennifer Driver (she/her) is the Senior Director of Reproductive Rights at the State Innovation Exchange (SiX). She has nearly 15 years in the field. Her work centers on addressing systems that add burdens or barriers to accessing full reproductive health information and services — paying particular attention to communities of color, young people, LGBTQ+ communities, immigrants, and young people involved in the family policing system.

Myra Gissel Durán is the Senior Policy Advocate at If/When/How: Lawyering for Reproductive Justice, where she supports policy advocacy efforts, builds partnerships with state-based advocates, and facilitates opportunities of engagement for If/When/How and its constituencies. Myra is the former Senior Policy Manager for California Latinas for Reproductive Justice (CLRJ), a statewide organization committed to honoring the experiences of Latinas to uphold their dignity, their bodies, sexuality, and families. In that position, she helped pass ten bills in the California Legislature and strengthened CLRJ’s policy leadership program geared toward young Latinas/es to have them unapologetically take up space.

Myra has served on the Board of ACCESS Reproductive Justice and the Young Women’s Leadership Council for the Pro-Choice Public Education Project. She also served as mentor for the 2023-2024 cohort of the Positive Women’s Network’s Policy Fellowship and was a 2022 fellow with Rockwood Leadership Institute’s Reproductive Health, Rights, & Justice fellowship. She graduated from UCLA with a B.A. in Women’s Studies and a minor in Labor Studies.

Jessica Pinckney Gil is a Black, biracial mother, advocate, and Reproductive Justice practitioner born and raised in California. At the core of her work, Jessica centers the notion that we don’t lead single-issue lives, so a holistic approach must be taken to our reproductive justice advocacy and movement building, to organizing, outreach, policy change, and to reach people where they are, how they are. She currently serves as the executive director of ACCESS Reproductive Justice, California’s only statewide abortion fund, building power to ensure that everyone living in California and the folks forced to travel are fully able to access their right to abortion. Jessica oversees the organization’s work to combine direct services, community education, and policy advocacy to promote real reproductive options and access to quality health care for people in California. No other organization in the state provides the same range of support for people considering or seeking an abortion.

Jessica previously dedicated her skills and time to building relationships with congressional offices, activating communities and her own individual networks, and applying thoughtful, thorough analysis to policies and legislation through her work as Vice President of Government Relations at In Our Own Voice: National Black Women’s Reproductive Justice Agenda, the only Black women-led, DC-Based, national organization centering Black Women, girls, femmes, trans and gender nonbinary folks. Prior to that, she honed her government relations, legislative advocacy, and policy analysis skills working on issues such as racial profiling, housing, paid leave, and immigration at YWCA USA and health and education at the University of California Office of the President.

Jessica holds an M.A. in Government with a concentration in Political Communications from John’s Hopkins University and a B.A. in Political Science with an emphasis in Public Service from the University of California, Santa Barbara. She serves on the Board of Directors for SPARK Reproductive Justice NOW (Board Chair) and Guttmacher Institute. She also serves on the Executive Committee for the California Coalition for Reproductive Freedom and the Advisory Board for the California Abortion Alliance. She is a graduate of the  Rockwood Reproductive Health, Rights, and Justice Fellowship and New Leaders Council DC.

Cynthia Gutierrez (she/ella) is an award winning first-generation Indigenous Nicaraguan Salvadoran reproductive justice organizer, full spectrum doula, cultural strategist, writer, and public speaker.

Her work is at the intersection of reproductive justice, disability justice, and environmental justice. Cynthia‘s work has been featured in The New York Times, The Lily, Elle Magazine, The San Francisco Chronicle, and Rewire News Group, etc.

She is currently the program manager for the University of California San Francisco (UCSF) Hub of Positive Reproductive and Sexual Health (HIVE) and Team Lily clinical programs. Cynthia is a proud abortion storyteller with We Testify. She is on the Board of Directors for ACCESS Reproductive Justice, SisterSong, and Ineedana. Her work can be found on her website https://www.cynthiaagutierrez.com.

She has a Bachelors in Sociology from the University of CA, Santa Cruz. Cynthia is originally from San Francisco’s Excelsior District and now resides in East Oakland with her husband and son.

Onyemma Obiekea is the Policy Director for Black Women for Wellness (BWW) and its sister organization, Black Women for Wellness Action Project (BWWAP). She began her work in Reproductive Justice (RJ) as Program Coordinator for BWW’s Get Smart B4U Get Sexy — the comprehensive sex and sexuality education program of the Organization’s RJ focused Project, Sisters in Control. Since then, she has continued her work in RJ in varying capacities and currently works on behalf of BWW/AP, to advance intersectional, transformative legislation that seeks to secure the health and wellbeing of Black women and Girls throughout California. Onyemma holds a Juris Doctor from Northeastern University School of Law and Master of Public Health from Tufts University School of Medicine. She is committed to contributing to the global realization of RJ, by leveraging her training and experience in the field. In her free time, you can catch Onyemma trying not to fail as a plant mama, taking a dance class of the African Diaspora, researching and crafting recipes and where the weather permits, going on morning hikes.

Terri-Ann Thompson is a Senior Research Scientist at Ibis Reproductive Health (Ibis). At Ibis, Terri-Ann leads a portfolio focused on the impact of policies such as the Hyde Amendment and innovative care models such as telehealth on access to abortion and contraception in the United States. She uses frameworks such as community-based participatory research and community-engaged research to highlight and propose strategies to address disparities in sexual and reproductive health. Prior to joining Ibis, Terri-Ann worked for Yale University School of Medicine (YSM) directing the coordinating center for the Eastern Caribbean Health Outcomes Research Network (ECHORN). ECHORN is a global health disparities study in the eastern Caribbean focused on identifying risk factors for non-communicable diseases. Terri-Ann also directed operations at the Equity Research and Innovation Center at YSM. Terri-Ann received her PhD from Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in 2011.

Kristen Weber, J.D., is Senior Director of Child Welfare at the National Center for Youth Law (NCYL) where she leads NCYL’s efforts to transform child welfare systems so that children and youth are safer and can heal and thrive in their families and communities.  Kristen began her career by providing direct legal services to children and youth in the foster system in San Francisco.  She also worked on federal class action litigation cases both as a Skadden Fellow and on court monitoring teams.  The predominant focus of her career has been on identifying and addressing racial and social inequities in the child welfare system–a system more accurately described by families and advocates as a family policing system.  Kristen designed and led a multi-year, multi-jurisdiction qualitative review project, known as the Institutional Analysis, to analyze laws, policies, and practices that contribute to poor outcomes for populations involved with family policing systems. She has written accompanying reports about system contributors to racial disproportionality and disparities experienced by Black and Latine children, youth, and families; systems’ responses to survivors of intimate partner violence and their children; and system contributors to the lack of safety and affirmation experienced by LGBTQI+ youth and families. In 2020, she helped create and launch the upEND movement, an effort focused on abolishing the current child welfare system and building many different alternatives that will support the safety, care, and healing of children and youth. At NCYL, Kristen continues to collaborate with youth, parents, advocates, policymakers, and researchers to stop coercive and harmful state interventions and support the health and healing of children and youth in their families and communities.  Kristen is a graduate of Berkeley School of Law and Yale University.