Meet Our Staff & Board

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Eunice Timoney Ravenna leads organizational development programs for the local Cincinnati organization, the Intercommunity Justice and Peace Center (IJPC). From 2006 to 2009 Eunice was the Midwest Field Organizer for Equal Justice USA, providing support to state campaigns working for a moratorium on executions in Ohio, Missouri, and Indiana. Eunice also spent eight years at IJPC prior to her work with EJUSA, doing public education, community organizing and advocacy on social justice issues. She is a co-founder of Families That Matter, an organizing committee for families who have loved ones on Ohio’s death row. Eunice served as the Director of St. Francis Soup Kitchen, taught adjunct at Xavier University in the theology department, served on the Board of the Sarah Women’s Center, and worked/volunteered with many other social justice advocacy groups and direct service centers. Eunice is a graduate of Immaculata College and has a Master’s of Arts from Xavier University. She currently serves on the executive committee of the Cincinnati Catholic Social Action Commission, the fundraising committee of Power Inspires Progress, and the Board of Trustees of Visions Community Services.

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Jane Henderson is the Executive Director of Maryland Citizens Against State Executions (MDCASE).  In her current position, she is responsible for the leading anti-death penalty organization in the state of Maryland, conducting public education, organizing, and advocacy campaigns.  Her leadership securing a moratorium on executions in Maryland won her the National Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty's "Abolitionist of the Year" Award in 2002. Jane has been active in the movement for criminal justice reform for over two decades, beginning in 1990 when she founded the Equal Justice USA program of the Quixote Center.  (And we are proud to have our founder now serving on our board since we’ve spun off from the Quixote Center!) Jane is the embodiment of the old saying that "all politics is local," - she can often be found chatting up prosecutors, legislators, and other political leaders at the county pool, the grocery store, or at her kids' soccer matches.

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Peter Loge is the Principal of Milo Public Affairs LLC, a national communications and advocacy consulting firm. Peter has directed two leading national death penalty organizations and advised criminal justice reform and death penalty efforts in a number of states including Texas, North Carolina, New Mexico, New York, Maryland, New Jersey (where he was part of the team that led the successful abolition effort), and elsewhere. Prior to launching Milo Public Affairs LLC in 2007, Peter was a Senior Vice President and director of the media relations team at M+R Strategic Services, where he provided strategic counsel to a wide array of social justice, human rights, and other organizations. Peter was the first Director of The Justice Project, an organization that has led national efforts for criminal justice reform. He also held senior staff positions in the US House and Senate. And he throws great parties!

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Edgar De Leon was a member of the New York City Police Department (NYPD) for 15 years, working as a Detective Sergeant and an attorney for the police department before he retired in 1999. In 2005, Edgar was part of an international team that trained police officers in the European Union on the handling and investigation of hate crimes. He has counseled law enforcement, community groups, and companies on issues of cultural diversity. After retiring from the police force, Edgar became a founding partner in a law firm whose clients include the NYPD Patrolman's Benevolent Association. In 2003, the Mayor of New York City, Michael Bloomberg, appointed Edgar to serve on the Committee on City Marshals. He has also served as the President of the Puerto Rican Bar Association, on the board of a neighborhood community organization, and as a legal analyst on Court TV. He is a recipient of the Network for Woman’s Services Commitment to Justice Award in 2000, the Borough of Manhattan Community College's Latino Honor Society Award for 2001, the Fordham University School of Law LALSA Alumni Award for 2004, and was named one of El Diario newspaper’s “Most Notable & Featured Latinos” for 2012.

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Lisa Good has extensive experience working on violence reduction and with crime survivors in urban communities. She is currently the Program Director for SNUG/Ceasefire, an intervention initiative that brings together community members, faith leaders, and law enforcement to reduce violence in the city of Albany. Her experience working in communities harmed by violence, and personally having lost a family member to murder, led her to investigate what resources were readily available to people in urban communities, many of whom were living below the poverty line and predominately people of color. She discovered that the experience of crime victims in urban neighborhoods is largely ignored. She founded Urban Grief Team in 2001, a community based bereavement and crisis response team that offered support to those impacted by crisis, homicide, and death. She continues to make presentations on the crisis, trauma, and bereavement needs of victims in neighborhoods being disproportionately impacted by violence and homicide. Prior to directing the SNUG program, Lisa worked for 18 years at the Homer Perkins Center, a long-term residential drug treatment facility for adults. She is also an ordained minister and serves as an associate minister at the Mt. Pleasant Baptist Church. She is a graduate of Maria College (AAS. in Liberal Arts) and holds a Bachelors of Science from Skidmore College. She has served in multiple board and volunteer positions and received numerous awards and recognitions, including volunteer counselor for the Albany County Crime Victims and Sexual Assault Center from 1997-2007, Cornell Cooperative Extension Volunteer HIV Educator from 1990-2000, former Vice Chair of the Capital District African American Coalition Against Aids, former board member of New York State Association of Drug Treatment Court Professionals, and 2008 Omega Chi Women of Distinction Award.

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Jonathan E. Gradess is Executive Director of the New York State Defenders Association (NYSDA), a not-for-profit, membership organization dedicated to improving the quality and scope of public legal representation in New York. The Association operates the nation's only state-funded Public Defense Backup Center, serving New York's more than 5000 public defense attorneys. Jonathan, who has worked as a criminal defense lawyer, a private investigator, and a clinical law professor at Hofstra law School, serves on the Board of New Yorkers Against the Death Penalty and is a member of the Restorative Justice Commission of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Albany.

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Lori James-Townes is the Director of Social Work Services for the Maryland Offices of Public Defender (OPD) and a consultant for the University of Maryland School of Social Work on partnership initiatives with the OPD. Lori is also a mitigation specialist and has been providing alternative sentencing and mitigation services for two decades. Lori began her career in criminal justice volunteering at the Baltimore City Jail. She realized that the young men she worked with were just like the men who lived in the Baltimore projects she once lived in as a child. Working with the women inmates she realized she could have been any one of them. Since those days she has dedicated her life to uncovering and conveying the factors that impede her clients from remaining out of the criminal justice system. Lori serves on the board for the National Legal Aid and Defender Association and is the Chairperson for the organization’s annual conference. She also served as President of the National Alliance of Sentencing Advocates and Mitigation Specialists for seven terms. She was named Alumni of the Decade by the University of Maryland School of Social Work Alumni Association and is a doctoral candidate at Morgan State University, completing a dissertation on former death row inmates now serving life sentences and their families.

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Jesselyn McCurdy is a Senior Legislative Counsel in the Washington Legislative Office (WLO) of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and is responsible for defending civil liberties in Congress and in the Executive Branch in the areas of criminal justice. Prior, she was a Counsel for the U.S. House of Representatives’ Committee on Judiciary’s Subcommittee on Crime, Terrorism and Homeland Security and a Legislative Counsel in the Washington Legislative Office of the American Civil Liberties Union working on criminal justice issues federally. Jesselyn was also the Co-Director of the Children's Defense Fund’s Education and Youth Development Division, where she co-chaired a consortium of over 80 national non-profit organizations working on juvenile justice and delinquency prevention. Jesselyn has also worked as the Assistant Section Director of the American Bar Association’s Section of Individual Rights and Responsibilities, and was a staff attorney for the American Prosecutors Research Institute affiliated with the National District Attorney’s Association. Jesselyn received a BA in Journalism and Political Science from Rutgers University and her JD from Catholic University of America, Columbus School of Law.

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Richard Schrader is the New York Legislative Director for the Natural Resources Defense Fund (NRDC) and a veteran leader in the public interest movement. His political commentary and analysis is regularly featured on national and local news programs including Dateline NBC, NBC Nightly News with Tom Brokaw, ABC's Good Morning America, Good Day New York, and New York 1's Inside City Hall. Richard’s past includes involvement with numerous, high visibility litigation efforts, including the fight to free Darryl King, a wrongfully imprisoned New York inmate who was eventually released. He was a lead lobbyist in the creation of the New York State Capital Defender office that represented people facing the death penalty before New York ended the death penalty. Other former positions include political and media strategist for the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) Local 32BJ in New York and New Jersey, Commissioner of Consumer Affairs in New York City (where he led the first law enforcement action against merchants selling tobacco products to minors), and Public Affairs Director of the New York State Trial Lawyers Association.

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Michael Siem has been practicing law since 2000, and is now Special Counsel at the firm Baker Botts, where he specializes in intellectual property litigation with a focus on patents. He was formerly a Principle at Fish & Richardson, where he was the co-head of the firm’s Business Development for New York and has managed large litigation teams with litigation budgets of over $10 million. Mike has also worked on numerous pro bono death penalty cases. He argued two death penalty appeals before the Virginia Supreme Court and was lead counsel in a death penalty case in Georgia. Mike was a recipient of the 2008 Thurgood Marshall Award for Capital Representation given by the Committee on Capital Punishment of the Association of the Bar of the City of New York. Mike is also on the steering committee for the American Bar Association Death Penalty Representation Project and was honored by the Project when they gave an award to Fish & Richardson for his death penalty work in 2012.