Our Team

  • Danielle Dupuy-Watson, PhD.

    Danielle is the CEO of Civil Rights Corps. Prior to joining CRC Danielle was the Executive Director of the Million Dollar Hoods project and the Director of Research and Programs at the Ralph J. Bunche Center for African American Studies at UCLA.

  • Alec Karakatsanis

    Alec is the founder of Civil Rights Corps. Before founding Civil Rights Corps, Alec was a civil rights lawyer and public defender.

  • Claudia A. Withers

    Claudia is the Chief Operating Officer for Civil Rights Corps. Prior to her arrival at CRC, she was the Chief Operating Officer for the NAACP.

  • Ryan Downer

    Ryan joined Civil Rights Corps after a decade of litigating civil rights cases at both Relman, Dane & Colfax, PLLC in Washington, D.C. and the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, Inc. (LDF) in New York.

  • Elizabeth Rossi

    As the Director of Strategic Initiatives Elizabeth Rossi investigates and litigates cases challenging money bail, debtors' prisons, and private probation.

  • Thea Sebastian

    Thea is the Director of Policy for Civil Rights Corps. In this role, she oversees a range of initiatives that include policy changes.

  • Jeffrey Stein

    Jeff joined Civil Rights Corps after eight years as a Trial Attorney and Supervising Attorney at the Public Defender Service for the District of Columbia. While there, Jeff represented juveniles and adults charged with serious crimes, including complex homicides.

  • Bina Ahmad

    Bina Ahmad is a social justice attorney, making the choice to become a lawyer to help dismantle and push back against the crushing might of the government.

  • Brittany Francis

    Brittany leads the Police Abuse Project at Civil Rights Corps. Her work aims to hold police accountable for abusive conduct while building shared community and power among advocates and survivors.

  • Cornelia Carter-Sykes

    Cornelia joins Civil Rights Corps with twenty years of non-profit administrative and management experience.

  • Cheryl Bonacci

    Cheryl is the Director of Storytelling for Civil Rights Corps. In collaboration with all CRC departments, Cheryl and the Storytelling team guide the organization’s narrative strategies and campaigns helping to highlight the human toll the criminal system takes on our communities.

  • Cody Cutting

    Cody is an attorney with Civil Rights Corps, where his work focuses on litigation and advocacy challenging money bail, private probation, and police abuse. Prior to joining CRC, Cody was an Equal Justice Works Fellow with the Southern Center for Human Rights (SCHR) in Atlanta, Georgia.

  • Katherine Hubbard

    Katherine’s work focuses on litigation challenging the criminalization of poverty, particularly debtor’s prisons and wealth-based pretrial detention. Katherine coordinates CRC’s bail reform efforts in several states across the country including California

  • Ellora Israni

    Ellora litigates in support of movements to abolish police, prosecutors, and the prison industrial complex. Ellora litigates in support of movements to abolish police, prosecutors, and the prison industrial complex.

  • Tashawn Reagon

    Tashawn is a Senior Investigator/Paralegal at Civil Rights Corps, where she works on projects challenging money bail and policing.

  • Kiah Duggins

    Kiah uses movement lawyering to challenge police abuse and the criminalization of poverty.

  • Quinita Ennis

    Quinita is the Operations Manager for Civil Rights Corps. As an integral team member at CRC she plays a crucial role in managing the day-to-day operations,

  • Carson White

    Carson is a staff attorney at Civil Rights Corps where raises systemic challenges to the criminalization of poverty. She is currently challenging wealth-based pretrial detention in California and North Carolina.

  • Marco Lopez

    Marco works to stop state and local governments (and the occasional private company) from jailing people for lack of money. He spends a lot of time trying to convince federal courts that they can do something about this.

  • Leo Laurenceau

    Leo is a Senior Attorney at Civil Rights Corps whose work focuses on dismantling systems that criminalize poverty and unjustly target people of color.

  • Peter Santina

    Peter is the Managing Attorney of the Prosecutorial Accountability Project. His work is focused on designing and implementing creative approaches to curb the problem of prosecutorial misconduct.

  • Mister Ringler

    Mister’s goal is to leverage Civil Rights Corps’ resources to challenge police violence and support on-the-ground abolitionist organizing in DC.

  • Salil Dudani

    Salil is an attorney at Civil Rights Corps who litigates money bail and other abuses in the criminal punishment system. His work includes challenging pretrial detention in California, where he is based.

  • Sumayya Saleh

    Sumayya joined Civil Rights Corps after working at the Southern Poverty Law Center in her home state of Florida.

  • Micah Clark-Moody

    Micah is a litigation support fellow at Civil Rights Corps where she works on projects challenging money bail and exposing police abuse.

  • Alfredo Dominguez

    Alfredo’s work in Houston is focused on connecting victims of police abuse to civil rights attorneys and building towards a more free Houston through advocacy and organizing.

  • Shirley LaVarco

    Shirley LaVarco is an attorney at Civil Rights Corps. Her work at CRC is currently focused on wealth-based detention and police-perpetrated violence.

  • Brianna Joyner

    As the Administrative Assistant, Brianna plays a pivotal role in ensuring the smooth and efficient operations of the organization's day-to-day activities.

  • Lamont Peete

    Lamont is the Operations Fellow at Civil Rights Corps. Before joining CRC, Lamont completed the training program at BreakFree Education.

  • Cassidy Kristal-Cohen

    In her role as a Litigation Support Fellow, Cassidy works alongside attorneys to challenge police impunity and wealth-based detention.