Staff

Lovisa Stannow, MA, is the Executive Director of SPR. Ms. Stannow has spent the past two decades working in the fields of communications and international human rights. She is the former Executive Director of the Pacific Institute for Women's Health and the West Coast Director and Communications Director of Doctors Without Borders/ Médecins Sans Frontières. In the early 1990s, she served as a Press Officer for Amnesty International, following several years as a journalist in Europe and Latin America. Ms. Stannow is multilingual and has spent significant parts of her career based in war zones and areas of humanitarian disaster in Africa, Asia, and Latin America. lstannow@spr.org

Linda McFarlane, MSW, LCSW, is SPR's Deputy Executive Director. She has worked with survivors of sexual violence in a variety of settings throughout the last two decades. Ms. McFarlane is the former Director of Counseling Services for the Sexual Assault Crisis Agency in Long Beach, California. She has served as a counselor and advocate for children and youth in both foster care and detention. In 1995, Ms. McFarlane was instrumental in implementing a ground-breaking treatment program for mentally ill incarcerated teen girls in Detroit, Michigan. She has worked in crisis intervention with a variety of populations including survivors of domestic violence and child abuse, teens and adults living with mental illness, and people living in poverty and with addictions.lmcfarlane@spr.org

Edward Cervantes is the Survivor Outreach Associate for SPR. Mr. Cervantes previously served as the Assistant Director of the Harlem Intel Computer Clubhouse, a non-profit after-school program that strives to empower youth in under-served communities to explore their own ideas and potential through the use of technology. Most recently, he was the Executive Assistant to a prominent psychotherapist, speaker, and author working in the Los Angeles area. A graduate of Sarah Lawrence College in New York, Mr. Cervantes has studied anthropology and photography and been involved in various social justice campaigns. ecervantes@spr.org

Kristin Hall is the Program Development Director for SPR. She has worked with survivors of domestic and sexual violence for more than 15 years. Ms. Hall is the former Executive Director and Chair of the Board of Directors of the Sexual Assault Crisis Agency in Long Beach, California. She has developed and facilitated trainings for law enforcement officers, medical professionals, and community advocates on the dynamics and impact of domestic and sexual violence. Most recently, Ms. Hall served as Grant Writer for A Window Between Worlds, an organization providing art workshops to battered women and children in shelters. khall@spr.org

Christine Kregg serves as the Program Assistant for SPR. Previously she worked as a senior research assistant for a study on parolees with mental health disorders in South Central, Los Angeles. Ms. Kregg has engaged in research and activism related to violence against incarcerated and formerly-incarcerated women in both the United States and Ecuador. Ms. Kregg is bilingual and graduated with honors in political science from Kalamazoo College in Michigan. ckregg@spr.org

Melissa Rothstein, JD, MSW, serves as SPR's East Coast Program Director. She was a senior staff attorney and director of social work at the Office of the Appellate Defender, a public defender office in New York City. In addition to representing indigent defendants challenging their criminal convictions, she created and oversaw a social work program that assisted clients who were transitioning from prison back to the community and/or who had special needs while in prison. She also was an adjunct assistant professor at Columbia University School of Social Work, where she taught legal foundations for social workers. Ms. Rothstein previously served as a Pro Se Law Clerk in the Second Circuit of the U.S. Court of Appeals. She is a graduate of Columbia Law School, Columbia University School of Social Work, and Hampshire College. mrothstein@spr.org

Cynthia Totten, JD, serves as the Program Director for SPR. She previously worked as a litigator at Sprenger and Lang, PLLC in Washington, D.C. from 2000 until 2006, representing plaintiffs in civil rights class action cases. In 1999, Ms. Totten was selected as a Women's Law and Public Policy Fellow, and, in that capacity, worked in the Women's Rights Division of Human Rights Watch, in Washington, D.C. until 2000, focusing on sexual violence against women incarcerated in California state prisons. She was also formerly associated with a law firm in San Diego, California. Ms. Totten is a graduate of Wellesley College and Harvard Law School. ctotten@spr.org

Board of Directors

Officers

David Kaiser SPR's President, is a writer living in New York who just completed work on a novel. A graduate of Columbia University, he was on the editorial staff of the New York Review of Books from 1998 to 2001. Mr. Kaiser sits on the boards of several nonprofit organizations and foundations, including Winrock International. He joined SPR's Board of Directors in 2004 and previously served as Secretary.

Peter Reilly, CPA, SPR's Treasurer, is a partner with a large regional accounting firm in Massachusetts. He is a member of the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants, the Massachusetts Society of Certified Public Accountants, and has served on the AICPA Tax Division's partnership committee. Mr. Reilly has provided accounting expertise to numerous non-profit organizations and currently serves on the Board of Directors of Interlock Media, Jeremiah's Inn, and Children Supervised Visitations.

Lara Stemple, JD, SPR's secretary, is the Director of Graduate Studies at the UCLA School of Law and the former Executive Director of Stop Prisoner Rape. A graduate of Harvard Law School, Ms. Stemple is a human rights lawyer who has worked on issues that include sexual violence, immigrant and refugee rights, and HIV/AIDS. Ms. Stemple has also served as the Senior Advocacy Officer for the Pacific Institute for Women's Health and has worked at the Center for Reproductive Rights.

Directors

Cecilia Chung , a transgender woman living with HIV, is the Deputy Director of the Transgender Law Center in San Francisco. Ms. Chung serves as the Vice Chair of the San Francisco Human Rights Commission and as a board member of Asian and Pacific Islander Wellness Center. She has previously served on the HIV Service Planning Council and the Transgender Discrimination Task Force, both in San Francisco.

Garrett Cunningham was incarcerated by the Texas Department of Criminal Justice and is a survivor of prisoner rape. Mr. Cunningham endured continuous sexual harassment from the corrections officer who eventually raped him. Since his release in April 2004, Mr. Cunningham has been actively involved in advocating for meaningful implementation of the Prison Rape Elimination Act. As part of that work, he has participated in legislative hearings, made public presentations, and offered media interviews. Mr. Cunningham is the founder of Pen Friends and Services, a pen-pal service that provides resources and information to prisoners.

David P. Eisenman, M.D., M.S.H.S., is on the faculty of the UCLA School of Medicine Division of General Internal Medicine/Health Services Research and an Associate Natural Scientist at RAND. From 1994 to 1999, he was the Associate Director of the Bellevue/NYU Program for Survivors of Torture and Clinical Assistant Professor of Medicine at New York University School of Medicine. Dr. Eisenman's research has focused on the relationship between violence and health and health services. He has worked on international health projects in India and Bosnia-Herzegovina. Dr. Eisenman lectures extensively on war and the role of physicians, lawyers, and government in the care of survivors of political violence. He serves on the editorial boards of Human Rights Review and the Journal of Human Rights.

Mary Garton, MA, is the former Executive Director of Teach For America, Greater New Orleans chapter and currently serves as the chapter's Director of Alumni Support. A graduate of Washington University in St. Louis and the University of New Orleans, Ms. Garton taught for nearly 10 years in Louisiana public schools and later served as the vice principal of the New Orleans Free School. Ms. Garton has served as the director of Teach For America's Houston Summer Training Institute, and she is also a member of the Bring New Orleans Back Education Steering Committee.

Oscar de la O is a founding member and the Executive Director of Bienestar Human Services, the largest HIV Latino organization in the country. Bienestar's 11 direct service centers, located in Los Angeles, San Diego, and San Bernardino, offer information, assistance, and support. Mr. de la O has been an advocate for Latinos affected by HIV and AIDS for more than two decades, and he has received numerous awards for his community service. A Mexican-American, he continues to work on both sides of the border, promoting the health and well-being of Latinos.

Hector Villagra, JD, joined the ACLU of Southern California in 2005. Before then, he worked for the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund (MALDEF), first as a staff attorney and then as Regional Counsel. A graduate of Columbia Law School, Mr. Villagra began his professional career as a law clerk for the Honorable Robert N. Wilentz, Chief Justice of the New Jersey Supreme Court, and the Honorable Stephen Reinhardt, a judge on the United States Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals.

Amy Elaine Wakeland is a political strategist and community activist. She has helped to found two non-profit groups: one that that connects young donors with social justice organizations and another that builds parks in low-income neighborhoods. She is a member of the board of directors of the Liberty Hill Foundation and the honorary board of the Coalition to Abolish Slavery and Trafficking, which recently honored Wakeland and her partner Los Angeles City Council President Eric Garcetti with its Community Partners Award. For the past four years, Wakeland has chaired the Women for a New Los Angeles Luncheon and the City of Justice Awards Dinner. Prior to her work as a political strategist, Wakeland served as the director of an urban policy project at Occidental College and a strategic planner for the Los Angeles County Department of Public Social Services. Wakeland is the recipient of a Rhodes Scholarship and a Truman Scholarship. She has traveled widely with a variety of education, government, and human rights groups.

Kenneth Williams, JD, is a Professor at Southwestern University School of Law. A national authority on capital punishment, Mr. Williams currently represents several death row inmates in Texas. He was previously a member of the faculty at Southern University Thurgood Marshall School of Law and Gonzaga University School of Law. Mr. Williams began his legal career with the New Orleans Legal Assistance Corporation, investigating allegations of unfair labor practices for the National Labor Relations Board and helping indigent clients secure housing, public benefits and other assistance. He is a graduate of the University of Virginia School of Law.