Victoria Alexander
M.D., M.P.H., Chair, Community Advisory Board, Berkeley Black Infant Health Program
Victoria Alexander, M.D., M.P.H., is currently chair of the Advisory Board for the Berkeley Black Infant Health Program. She is board certified in Preventative Medicine. Before she retired in 2006, she served on the faculty of San Francisco General Hospital, then Harlem Hospital. Later, she became the Director Maternal, Child and Adolescent Health for the City of Berkeley, focusing among other things Domestic Violence Prevention. In 1995, Dr. Alexander served as the interim Health Officer for the City of Berkeley. She holds a M.D. from the University of California San Francisco and a Masters in Public Health from Columbia University.
Alisa Bierria
Associate Director, Center for Race and Gender, UC Berkeley
Ms. Bierria is an award-winning teacher of feminist theory and has 10 years of community organizing experience related to racial and gender justice. She is a founder Communities against Rape and Abuse, a Collective Member of INCITE! Women of Color Against Violence. She is currently a Ph.D.candidate at Stanford University’s Department of Philosophy. Her dissertation investigates the social and political recognition aspects of human agency.
John L. Burris
Attorney at Law
John Burris is an attorney in private practice in Oakland, California at the Law Offices of John L. Burris. His practice primarily focuses on cases involving police misconduct, employment discrimination and criminal defense. His high profile cases include the Oakland Riders class action, wherein he was instrumental in developing the reforms in the landmark multi-million dollar settlement of the case and consent decree placing the Oakland Police Department under a court monitor; the Oscar Grant civil case; and the Rodney King civil suit against the City of Los Angeles. The American Trial Lawyers Association selected him as a top 100 trial lawyers in California in 2007. He was named one of the top 100 most influential Attorneys in the State of California by the Los Angeles and San Francisco Daily Journal in 2005. He earned a law degree from Boalt Hall School of Law (UC Berkeley School of Law) and an M.B.A. from UC Berkeley Graduate School of Business.
Mary Louise Frampton
Adjunct Professor, UC Berkeley School of Law
Faculty Director, Thelton E. Henderson Center for Social Justice
Mary Louise Frampton has a long record of involvement in social justice issues. Before coming to Boalt Hall, she was a Central Valley, California civil rights lawyer in her own practice that focused on issues of discrimination in employment. Before establishing that firm in 1974, Frampton was the directing attorney of the Madera office of California Rural Legal Services. In the 1970s she was instrumental in establishing National Land for People, an organization of small farmers and farm workers. As the group’s lawyer, she won a series of landmark federal cases that forced the federal government and large agribusiness corporations to comply with the law and end the diversion of federally subsidized water away from small family farmers. Frampton represented several community coalitions, including a group of Latino, African-American and women’s groups that increased diversity in hiring and programming in network and local television stations. In the 1980s she obtained the largest economic damages in an employment case awarded by the Fair Employment and Housing Commission, and in the early 1990s she won the biggest verdict in a sex discrimination action in the Central Valley. In 2003 Frampton was named a National Bellow Scholar by the Public Interest Committee of the American Association of Law Schools. The award honors projects that involve law students and faculty in anti-poverty or access to justice work. She earned a B.A. from Brown University and a J.D. from Harvard University.
Jazz Hudson
Poet Mentor, Spoken Work Artist, Artistic Educator
Jazz Hudson is a poet. She has traveled around the country presenting workshops to at-risk teens to make them critical thinkers of the decisions they make, and how those decisions will affect their lives. She is considered one of the most effective speakers of her generation. She is an expert in facilitating workshops and sister circles. She will attend San Francisco State University in fall 2012.
Rekia Jibrin
Graduate Student Researcher, Thelton E. Henderson Center for Social Justice
Ph.D. Candidate, UC Berkeley Graduate School of Education
Rekia Jibrin has been a researcher at People United for a Better Life in Oakland (PUEBLO), and an instructor, lecturer, and teacher at a variety of educational institutions including UC Berkeley, Stanford University, San Francisco State University, Harvard University, and Berkeley Technical Academy (East Campus). She was the Director a Leadership Program in the Division of Social Medicine and Health Inequalities at Brigham & Women’s Hospital, in Dorchester, Massachusetts from 2002 to 2007. She is a published author and a frequent writer and speaker on social justice issues. She earned a B.A. from Tufts University with an Inter-disciplinary concentration in Sociology, Anthropology and Peace and Justice Studies.
Nikki Jones
Associate Professor, Department of Sociology, UC Santa Barbara
Dr. Jones’s areas of expertise include urban ethnography, urban sociology, race and ethnic relations and criminology and criminal justice, with a special emphasis on the intersection of race, gender, and justice. Dr. Jones teaches courses in field research methods, urban sociology and criminal justice at the undergraduate and graduate level. She is the author of Between Good and Ghetto: African American Girls and Inner-City Violence. She is also a co-editor of Fighting for Girls: New Perspectives on Gender and Violence (with Meda Chesney-Lind), Sociologists Backstage: Answers to 10 Questions About What They Do (with Sarah Fenstermaker), and Being Here and Being There: Fieldwork Encounters and Ethnographic Discoveries (with Elijah Anderson, Scott Brooks and Raymond Gunn). Her next book is based on a multi-year, neighborhood-based ethnographic study of how African American men with street or criminal histories (adults and adolescents) change their lives and their place in the neighborhood once they do. The study is grounded in the Fillmore neighborhood of San Francisco and is supported by the William T. Grant Professor Jones earned her Ph.D. in Sociology and Criminology from the University of Pennsylvania.
Nancy Lemon
Lecturer, Domestic Violence Practicum
Director, Domestic Violence Practicum, UC Berkeley School of Law
Nancy Lemon is an authority on domestic violence, pioneering its study in law schools. She is the author of Domestic Violence Law, (West Group, 3d. Ed. 2009). Lemon has specialized in domestic violence law as an advocate and practicing attorney, working both with victims of domestic abuse and police and public agencies charged with responding to domestic crime. As director of the Domestic Violence Unit of Alameda County’s Legal Aid Society in 1981, Lemon trained attorneys and shelter workers along with Oakland police officers, and was instrumental in creating the Southern Alameda County Domestic Violence Law Project. She has also worked as a staff attorney and volunteer coordinator for Alameda County’s Family Violence Law Center. She serves as a domestic violence expert witness in court cases Lemon holds a B.A. degree from the University of California, Santa Cruz, and earned a J.D. degree from Boalt Hall School of Law (UC Berkeley School of Law).
Priscilla Ocen
Critical Race Studies Law Fellow, UC Los Angeles
Priscilla Ocen is a Critical Race Studies Law Fellow at UCLA. Her work will examine the intersection between race, gender and mass incarceration, particularly with respect to incarcerated and formerly incarcerated Black women. After law school, Ms. Ocen clerked for the Honorable Eric L. Clay of the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit.She was also a Thurgood Marshall Fellow at the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights of the San Francisco Bay Area, where she litigated in the areas of voting rights, affirmative action, school desegregation, police misconduct and spearheaded the development of a Black Women’s Reentry Project. Ms. Ocen graduated magna cum laude from San Diego State University with a B.A. in Africana Studies and Political Science (2003). She earned her J.D. from UCLA School of Law (2007) with a specialization in Critical Race Studies.
Julia Oparah (formerly Julia Sudbury)
Professor and Chair of Ethnic Studies, Mills College
Julia Oparah’s (formerly Julia Sudbury) research interests include African diaspora studies, Black British studies, black feminist theory, women of color organizing, transnational prison-industrial complex, women and transgender prisoners, and black women and child birth. She teaches courses on the African diaspora; women of color organizing; and the criminal justice system. Dr. Sudbury is author of Other Kinds of Dreams: Black Women’s Organisations and the Politics of Transformation; editor of Global Lockdown: Race, Gender and the Prison-Industrial Complex and co-editor of Activist Scholarship: Antiracism, Feminism and Social Change; Outsiders Within: Writing on Transracial Adoption; and Color of Violence: The Incite! Anthology. Dr. Sudbury is co-founder of Critical Resistance, a national anti-prison organization, and member of Adopted and Fostered Adults of the African Diaspora. She earned a Ph.D. in Sociology from the University of Warwick, a M.A. with Distinction, Race and Ethnic Studies, University of Warwick, Centre for Research in Ethnic Relations, a M.A. Modern and Medieval Languages and Literature – Spanish and German, from the University of Cambridge, Clare College and a Bachelor of Arts with Honors in Modern and Medieval Languages and Literature – Spanish and German from the University of Cambridge, Clare College.
Hillary Potter
Assistant Professor of Sociology, University of Colorado Boulder
Hillary Potter current research and teaching interests are feminist and Black feminist criminology, racialized perceptions of crime, the intersections of race, gender, class, and crime, and race and intimate partner violence. Before she began her career in higher education, Dr. Potter worked for 10 years in community-based corrections as a case manager and an administrator in residential community corrections centers in Colorado and New York City, as a juvenile diversion counselor for the City and County of Denver, and as a juvenile probation officer for the state-level Denver Juvenile Court. She received her B.A. in sociology, with an emphasis in criminology, from the University of Colorado at Boulder in 1991, and her M.A. in criminal justice, with an emphasis in corrections, from the John Jay College of Criminal Justice at the City University of New York in 1996. She completed the Ph.D. in Sociology from CU-Boulder in 2004, where her dissertation focused on the experiences of battered Black women. She is the author of Battle Cries: Black Women and Intimate Partner Abuse (New York University Press 2008)
Andrea Ritchie
Attorney at Law
Andrea Ritchie is a police misconduct attorney and organizer in New York City. She is a co-author, along with Joey L. Mogul and Kay Whitlock, of Queer (In)Justice: The Criminalization of LGBT People in the United States (Beacon Press 2011). Ms. Ritchie has written and spoken extensively on the issue of violence against women and LGBT people of color by law enforcement agents, and testified before the United Nations Committee Against Torture, United Nations Human Rights Committee and the UN Special Rapporteur on Torture in 2006. She served as one of the National Coordinators of the Color of Violence III and as a member of the editorial collective for Color of Violence: The INCITE! Anthology. Ms. Ritchie graduated from the Howard University School of Law in 2002.
Damien M. Schnyder
Assistant Professor, African Studies, Scripps College
Damien M. Schnyder researches the relationship between the public education system, the prison industrial complex and construction of Black masculinity. He has also researched, written and presented at conferences on the intersection between Black cultural production and critiques of society. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Texas at Austin in the Department of Anthropology, African Diaspora concentration. Damien also holds both a Masters in Sociology and Bachelors in African and African American Studies from Stanford University.
Carol J. Silverman
Research Director, Thelton E. Henderson Center for Social Justice
Dr. Silverman joined the research staff of the Henderson Center in October 2009. She previously served as Research Director of the Center for Self Help Research (CSHR) at the Public Health Institute, Berkeley, California, and also The Institute of Nonprofit Organization Management at the University of San Francisco (INOM). She has a broad social science background, specializing in the fields of poverty, homelessness, mental illness and affordable housing. At CSHR, she served as the co-principal investigator on a series of studies funded by the National Institute of Health/Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Agency. At INOM, she supervised a series of studies benefiting nonprofits and philanthropy. She also worked with the Foundation Center and Northern California Grantmakers on their study of the racial and ethnic diversity of the California Foundation sector. Her research experience includes quantitative and qualitative methods of data collection and analysis, with a specialty in survey methodology. She has published extensively in the fields of housing, mental health and nonprofits and foundations. Dr. Silverman has served as a Lecturer or adjunct faculty at UC Berkeley, San Francisco State, University of San Francisco and New College of California. Silverman received her Ph.D. in Sociology from UC Berkeley and was a postdoctoral fellow in the School of Social Welfare.
Sonja C. Tonnesen ‘13
2012 Thelton E. Henderson Center for Social Justice Coblentz Civil Rights Research Fellow
Sonja Tonnesen is a J.D. candidate, class of 2013, at the University of California, Berkeley, School of Law. She currently works as a law clerk in the Domestic Violence Unit at Bay Area Legal Aid in Oakland, CA, providing direct legal services to victims of partner abuse in restraining order, custody, and divorce proceedings. During law school, she also worked as a summer law clerk at East Bay Children’s Law Offices, where she represented and advocated for abused and neglected children in the dependency system in Alameda County, CA. Sonja has also taught in the San Leandro Juvenile Hall, and is a board member of Berkeley Law’s Advocates for Youth Justice, Boalt Hall Women’s Association, and Queer Caucus. She served as Article Editor for the Berkeley Journal of Gender, Law, & Justice and serves as Development Editor for the California Law Review. She earned a B.A., summa cum laude, in Urban Studies from the University of Pennsylvania. While living in Philadelphia, she taught urban gardening, nutrition, and healthy cooking to K-12 public school students. Her research interests focus on the intersection of gender, race, class, age, and geography.
Quentin Walcott
Director, CONNECT Training Institute and the Community Empowerment Program, New York, NY
Quentin Walcott works nationally with individuals, families, communities and service providers as a violence prevention activist, educator, group leader, lecturer and program developer. Mr. Walcott is the Director of CONNECT’s Training Institute and the Community Empowerment Program; CONNECT is a New York City based organization dedicated to ending family and gender violence. The mission of The CONNECT Training Institute (CTI) is to expand the number of professionals and community members who have a deep understanding of the dynamics and consequences of violence in the family. By providing intensive training, CTI gives participants the tools they need to develop community-based solutions for the complex problem of family violence.
Wilda L. White
Executive Director, Thelton E. Henderson Center for Social Justice
Lecturer in Residence, UC Berkeley School of Law
Before joining the Henderson Center in 2008, Ms. White was a partner in the San Francisco law firm of Walker, Hamilton & White, where she tried cases on behalf of plaintiffs. Over the course of her career she was a Staff Attorney with The Legal Aid Society of New York City, an Assistant City Editor at The Miami Herald during the time that the newspaper won the Pulitzer Prize for Public Service, and an international management consultant with McKinsey & Company, where she specialized in strategic planning. From 2004 until she joined the Henderson Center, she was a Board Member of the San Francisco Trial Lawyers Association. She also served as a Director of the Oakland Unified School District Board of Education from 2000 to 2002. She is licensed to practice law in the States of California and New York, and the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. She holds a J.D. from Boalt Hall School of Law (UC Berkeley School of Law) and a MBA from Harvard University Graduate School of Business Administration.
Connie Wun
Ph.D. Candidate, UC Berkeley Graduate School of Education
Connie Wun is a doctoral student in the Graduate School of Education at UC Berkeley. She is a former high school teacher and youth counselor. Wun’s research focuses on the relationship between school discipline, punishment, gendered and racial violence against young women of color. She is a National Science Foundation Fellow, a UC Berkeley Chancellor’s Fellow and a Haas Diversity Research Initiative (HDRI) Fellow.