Kwaneta Harris is a former nurse, business owner and expat, now incarcerated journalist and a Haymarket Writing Freedom Fellow. She brings experiences from each profession to illuminate how the experience of being incarcerated in the largest state prison in Texas is vastly different for women in ways that directly map onto a culture rooted in misogyny. Her powerful and shocking stories expose how the intersection of gender, race and place contribute to state-sanctioned, gender-based violence. As an advisory board member of CGES, Kwaneta’s input is an invaluable asset towards ensuring our programming is responsive to the needs of incarcerated women. You can read Kwaneta’s writing here .

Bahar Mirhosseni is a human rights advocate, a criminal defense lawyer, and the Director of Legal Advocacy at the Cornell Center on the Death Penalty Worldwide. She also co-teaches the Pretrial Justice Clinic at UCLA School of Law. She has collaborated with a range of human rights organizations including the Georgia Capital Defender Office, the Southern Africa Litigation Centre, and Addameer Prisoner Support and Human Rights Association. She serves on both the Racial Justice Committee and the Education Committee of the National Association for Public Defense. She has spent over sixteen years in indigent defense, as a public defender in New York and California, and in partnership with public defenders overseas, on access to justice, human rights, and high quality lawyering.

Chelsea Halstead is the Director of the Cornell Center on the Death Penalty Worldwide, where she oversees the center’s operations, communications, strategy, advocacy, and fundraising efforts. Prior to her appointment at CCDPW, Chelsea co-founded the Colibrí Center for Human Rights in Tucson, Arizona. Colibrí combines forensic science with human rights advocacy to identify the remains of people who have died in their attempt to cross the U.S.-Mexico border while calling attention to failed immigration policy. Chelsea helped design the organization’s innovative DNA program, which has facilitated the identification of over 200 previously unidentified human remains. Her work has been recognized in USA Today, The Guardian, The New York Times, The Washington Post, Al Jazeera, and other media. Chelsea holds a B.A. in Geography from the University of Arizona and an M.P.A. from Cornell University.

Jocelyn Hackett is the Director of International Human Rights Advocacy & Research at the Cornell Center on the Death Penalty Worldwide, the Advocacy & Research Director of the Legal Information Institute’s Women & Justice Collection, and an Adjunct Professor of Law at Cornell Law School. She specializes in international and comparative human rights, criminal law, and gender justice. She has partnered with local human rights defenders on a wide range of advocacy projects, including field research in Kenya, Uganda, and South Africa. Prior to Cornell, Jocelyn worked on cases involving mass atrocity prevention and accountability at the Cardozo Law Institute in Holocaust and Human Rights. After law school, Jocelyn clerked at the International Criminal Court. Jocelyn holds a J.D. from Cornell Law School and a B.A. with a concentration in history from Colgate University.

Sandra Babcock is a Clinical Professor at Cornell Law School, where she is the Faculty Director and founder of the Cornell Center on the Death Penalty Worldwide (CCDPW). Over the last thirty years she has helped defend hundreds of men and women facing execution around the world. She began her career as a staff attorney at the Texas Resource Center, where she defended persons facing execution in post-conviction proceedings for four years. Following a five-year stint as a public defender in Minneapolis, she served for six years as the founding director of the Mexican Capital Legal Assistance Program, a project funded by the Government of Mexico to defend Mexican nationals facing the death penalty in the U.S. In that capacity she provided litigation support to attorneys around the country, defended Mexican nationals facing execution, and represented Mexico before the International Court of Justice in Avena and Other Mexican Nationals. In 2006, she became a Clinical Professor at Northwestern Law School, where she spearheaded a ten-year project in Malawi that ultimately resulted in the release of over 250 prisoners, 150 of whom were formerly sentenced to death. She moved to Cornell Law in 2014, where she founded the Cornell Center on the Death Penalty Worldwide. In 2018, together with her colleagues at CDPW, she launched the Alice Project, a global movement to end extreme sentencing of women and gender non-conforming individuals. Her clinic currently represents women facing the death penalty in the United States, Malawi, and Tanzania. She has authored numerous articles, book chapters and reports on the application of the death penalty under international law. She teaches classes in international human rights, gender rights, and the death penalty. In September 2021, she received the American Bar Association’s John Paul Stevens Guiding Hand of Counsel Award, given to one capital defender every two years whose work has improved the legal representation of persons facing the death penalty and contributed to systemic reform.

SUSTAINABILITY DIRECTOR

Dorian Bess brings a wealth of knowledge and experience to her role as the Program Development and Engagement Officer of The Social Justice Network. With 18 years of lived experience within the Criminal Justice System, she has transformed her journey into a career dedicated to supporting justice-impacted individuals through reentry services, mental health advocacy, and specialized care for women experiencing trauma and substance abuse.

Dorian's professional background includes her impactful work with the Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, where she served as a Community Health Worker focusing on reentry services for citizens returning from city, state, and federal facilities.

Her hands-on experience in navigating the complexities of reentry has made her a key player in helping individuals rebuild their lives post-incarceration. In addition to her reentry work, Dorian plays an active role in the National Action Network's Second Chance Committee, where she collaborates with the crisis and prevention team to address the needs of justice-impacted Communities.

Her dedication to this cause is further demonstrated by her ability to foster strong partnerships with local groups, as well as state and federal agencies, to create and implement programs that address education, mental health, substance use, and reentry challenges. Dorian is not just a leader but also a connector, known for her ability to build robust internal networks that drive meaningful change. Her work emphasizes the importance of communication and leadership in advancing initiatives that aim for systemic reform.

Through her efforts, she continuously creates spaces for crucial conversations that pave the way for genuine reform within the criminal justice system. Dorian’s commitment to her work and her community is evident in everything she does, making her an invaluable asset to the Social Justice Network and a beacon of hope for those she serves.

SUSTAINABILITY DIRECTOR

Jhody Polk, d’Alchemist, is the founder of the Jailhouse Lawyers Initiative (JLI) housed at the Bernstein Institute for Human Rights at NYU School of Law and she is the founder of the Legal Empowerment & Advocacy Hub (LEAH). Jhody is a 2024 Global Freedom Fellow and an inaugural 2024 Future Freedoms Fellow with the Center on Gender and Extreme Sentencing. Jhody is the recipient of the 2019 Peacebuilder of the Year Award, the 2020 Dr. Martin Luther King’s Jr. Legacy award and named a Soros Justice Fellow in 2018. She currently serves on the Board of Namati. Jhody is known for her work as a central Florida Organizer on Amendment 4 which restored the right to vote to over a million Floridians with felony convictions. She was the 2023 Legal Empowerment Fellow of the Global Justice Clinic at NYU Law School, the 2023 inaugural Pathways to Research and Advocacy Fellow with the Fortune Society and Center for Justice Innovation and the former Director of Community Justice at the River Phoenix Center for Peacebuilding. Jhody also served 3 years as the Director of the Alachua County Reentry Coalition in her hometown of Gainesville, Florida. During her incarceration Jhody gained her legal identity and became a teacher, translator and facilitator of the law as a jailhouse lawyer working in the prison law library. d’Alchemist describes herself as “Justice Living” not "justice impacted. She uses her work and life to accelerate SDG16 and to establish legal empowerment as a proactive tool of abolition in the US.