About Us
Vision
The Drug Policy Alliance envisions a just society in which the use and regulation of drugs are grounded in science, compassion, health and human rights, in which people are no longer punished for what they put into their own bodies but only for crimes committed against others, and in which the fears, prejudices and punitive prohibitions of today are no more.
Mission
Our mission is to advance those policies and attitudes that best reduce the harms of both drug use and drug prohibition, and to promote the sovereignty of individuals over their minds and bodies.
A Broad Coalition
Our supporters are individuals who believe the war on drugs must end. Together we work to ensure that our nation’s drug policies no longer arrest, incarcerate, disenfranchise and otherwise harm millions – particularly young people and people of color who are disproportionately affected by the war on drugs.
Our Values & Priorities
- Extensively reducing the role of criminalization in drug policy, so that people are no longer punished for what they put into their bodies, but only for crimes that hurt others
- Advocating for responsible and equitable legal regulation of marijuana to reduce the harms caused by prohibition and bring in new sources of tax revenue
- Promoting health–centered drug policies by advocating for services such as treatment on demand, supervised consumption services, drug maintenance therapies, and syringe access programs
- Empowering youth, parents and educators with honest, reality-based drug education that moves beyond inaccurate, fear-based messages and zero-tolerance policies
A Brief History of the Drug Policy Alliance
A Brief History of the Drug Policy Alliance
1987
Arnold S. Trebach, JD, PhD, a professor at American University, and Kevin B. Zeese, an attorney who had directed the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws in the early 1980s, founded The Drug Policy Foundation (DPF). Trebach and Zeese envisioned DPF as “the loyal opposition to the war on drugs” and they introduced a number of initiatives that have defined the drug policy reform movement ever since. It was the first, most significant effort to build up a membership organization around drug policy reform.
1994
Ethan Nadelmann, JD, PhD, a professor of politics at Princeton University founded The Lindesmith Center (TLC). The Lindesmith Center was named after Prof. Alfred Lindesmith, an Indiana University professor who was the first prominent scholar in the U.S. to challenge conventional thinking about drugs, addiction and drug policy. It became the first domestic project of George Soros’ Open Society Foundations and rapidly emerged as the leading drug policy reform advocacy institute in the United States.
2000
The Lindesmith Center merged with DPF to create the Drug Policy Alliance (DPA), with Ethan Nadelmann serving as executive director. Under his leadership, DPA became the world’s leading drug policy reform organization working to end the war on drugs.
2017
Ethan Nadelmann retired from DPA and Maria McFarland Sánchez-Moreno was named the organization’s new executive director. McFarland Sánchez-Moreno brought a dozen years of international and domestic drug policy experience from her work at Human Rights Watch, where she served as Co-Director of the U.S. Program.
Our Victories
Our Victories
Marijuana Reform
Beginning with California in 1996, DPA has played a pivotal role in roughly half of the campaigns that have legalized medical marijuana in the U.S.
We’re also the only organization that played a role in all the victorious campaigns to legalize marijuana more broadly to date – Colorado and Washington in 2012, Uruguay in 2013, and Oregon, Alaska and Washington, D.C., in 2014, and California, Massachusetts, Maine and Nevada in 2016.
Now almost 200 million Americans live in medical marijuana states and more than 60 million live in states where marijuana prohibition is a thing of the past.
2007 – New Mexico Legalizes Medical Marijuana
In 2007, following a multi-year campaign led by DPA, New Mexico became the first state to pass a medical marijuana law requiring a state production and distribution system. Since then, DPA has won several improvements to the program and fought off multiple legislative efforts to repeal this groundbreaking law.
2011 – New Jersey Legalizes Medical Marijuana
New Jersey Governor Chris Christie green-lighted implementation of the state’s medical marijuana legislation in July 2011 after delaying it over concerns about federal interference. DPA’s New Jersey office spearheaded an effort to urge the governor to move forward with the program and protect patients.
2012 – Colorado and Washington Legalize Marijuana
Colorado and Washington made history by becoming the first states to legalize marijuana in 2012, and Colorado became the first state to offer legal retail sales of marijuana in January 2014. The Drug Policy Alliance and its electoral arm, Drug Policy Action, worked closely with local and national allies to draft these ballot initiatives, build coalitions and raise funds.
2013 – Uruguay Legalizes Marijuana
On December 10, 2013, Uruguay became the first country in the world to legally regulate the production, distribution and sale of marijuana for adults. DPA was deeply involved in efforts to legalize marijuana in Uruguay. Our policy manager for the Americas, Hannah Hetzer, spent nine months in Uruguay working with a diverse coalition of Uruguayan civil society organizations on a public education campaign that included input from political consultants and activists in the U.S. who had worked on the successful campaigns in Colorado and Washington.
2014 – Oregon, D.C. and Alaska Legalize Marijuana
On Election Day in November 2014, Oregon and Alaska voters made their states the third and fourth in the nation to legally regulate the production, distribution and sale of marijuana. DPA’s sister organization, Drug Policy Action, was the single largest donor to the Oregon campaign and was deeply involved in the measure’s drafting and on-the-ground campaign. The Drug Policy Alliance and Drug Policy Action also played a leadership role and provided significant financial assistance for Washington, D.C.’s successful campaign.
2014 – New York Legalizes Medical Marijuana
In June 2014, New York became the 23rd state with a medical marijuana law. DPA's New York policy office worked with allies across the state to bring the voices of patients, providers and caregivers to the legislature and governor's office. The bill passed and was signed despite significant opposition from leaders in Albany.
2016 – California Sets New Gold Standard for Marijuana Legalization
In the 2016 election, California, Maine, Massachusetts, and Nevada legalized marijuana, while medical marijuana initiatives prevailed in Arkansas, Florida, Montana and North Dakota. DPA was involved in virtually all of these efforts, helping with drafting, funding and advocacy. The most significant of these victories was California’s Proposition 64, which legalizes the adult use of marijuana in the nation’s largest state. It enacts across-the-board retroactive sentencing reform for marijuana offenses, while establishing a comprehensive system to tax and regulate businesses to produce and distribute marijuana in a legal market. Prop. 64 sets a new gold standard for marijuana policy because of its cutting edge provisions to undo the most egregious harms of marijuana prohibition on impacted communities of color and the environment as well as its sensible approaches to public health, youth protection, licensing and revenue allocation. The Drug Policy Alliance and its lobbying arm, Drug Policy Action, played a key leadership role in the California campaign—co-drafting the initiative, coordinating the political mobilization, social media, public relations and more, and raising over $5 million to fund the effort.
Learn more about our work to reform marijuana laws.
Criminal Justice Reform
DPA has been at the forefront of many, perhaps most, major drug sentencing reforms over the past two decades. There are many tens of thousands fewer people behind bars today as a result of DPA’s efforts—and hundreds of thousands who either did not go to jail or prison, or who spent less time there, because of our work.
2000 – California Passes Proposition 36
California’s landmark treatment-not-incarceration law, Proposition 36, was approved via ballot initiatives by 61 percent of California voters in November 2000. Prop. 36 allowed first- and second-time nonviolent drug offenders the opportunity to receive substance abuse treatment instead of jail time. DPA was the proponent of this initiative and led the campaign. Since 2000, Prop 36 has save California billions of dollars on prison expenditures, while diverting hundreds of thousands of people arrested for drug possession from incarceration.
2010 – Federal Fair Sentencing Act Signed Into Law
DPA played a crucial role in the 2010 passage of the federal Fair Sentencing Act, which reduced the crack/powder sentencing disparity and repealed a mandatory minimum sentence for the first time since 1970.
2010 – New York Reforms the Rockefeller Drug Laws
DPA spearheaded the successful campaign to enact major reforms of New York’s notorious Rockefeller Drug Laws. The reforms, signed into law by Gov. David Paterson in 2010, included eliminating mandatory minimum sentences and returning judicial discretion in many drug cases; reforming the state’s sentencing structure; expanding drug treatment and alternatives to incarceration; and allowing resentencing of people serving sentences under the old laws.
2012 – California Reforms “Three Strikes Law”
On Election Day in November 2012, Californians passed Proposition 36, which reformed California’s notorious Three Strikes Law so no more Californians would be sentenced to life in prison for minor and nonviolent drug law offenses. The Drug Policy Alliance’s electoral arm, Drug Policy Alliance Issues PAC, was one of the primary financial contributors to the Prop. 36 campaign.
2014 – California Scales Back Mass Incarceration
Californians overwhelmingly voted in favor of Proposition 47, which changes six low-level, nonviolent offenses – including simple drug possession – from felonies to misdemeanors. DPA’s lobbying arm, Drug Policy Action, supported this initiative with assistance on its drafting, as well as financial and other support for the campaign.
2014 – New Jersey Approves Bail Reform
New Jersey voters approved a ballot measure to reform New Jersey’s bail system in November 2014. The new law allowed judges to deny bail to dangerous individuals. Now pretrial release decisions are made based on risk rather than resources and thousands of low-income individuals – many of whom are behind bars for a low-level drug law violation – will avoid unnecessary jail time. The Drug Policy Alliance and Drug Policy Action played a leading role in efforts to pass both this legislation and the accompanying ballot initiative.
2015-16 – California, Florida and New Mexico Pass Groundbreaking Asset Forfeiture Reforms
In 2015, DPA led a successful effort to pass legislation that eliminated civil asset forfeiture in New Mexico. We followed this up in 2016 by successfully campaigning for California and Florida to reform their civil asset forfeiture laws to protect people suspected of drug law violations from unjust property seizures.
Learn more about our work to oppose drug war injustice.
Harm Reduction
DPA is leading the fight to reduce the death, disease, crime and suffering associated with both drug use and drug prohibition.
Syringe Access
Throughout DPA’s history, one major focus has been reducing the spread of HIV/AIDS, hepatitis C and other preventable diseases by making sterile syringes legally available. DPA played a pivotal role in successful efforts to make syringes legally available in New York (2000), California (2004), and New Jersey (2006) and supported successful efforts in Connecticut, Illinois and other states.
More recently, we led a successful effort in Congress to overturn the decades-long ban on federal funding for syringe access programs, and played a key role in passing legislative reforms in Florida (2016) and Indiana (2015) to initiate such programs.
Overdose Prevention
DPA took the lead over a decade ago in addressing the rapidly growing number of overdose deaths, which recently surpassed auto accidents as the leading cause of accidental death in the U.S. The past few years have been transformative for overdose prevention efforts in the U.S., and much of it can be credited to our efforts.
Since 2010, than three dozen states have passed legislation to increase access to naloxone and “911 Good Samaritan” laws to stop arresting and prosecuting people for drug possession when they call 911 to report an overdose. DPA was responsible for the passage of 911 Good Samaritan laws in New Jersey, California and New York, as well as the first 911 Good Samaritan law in the U.S., which was passed in New Mexico in 2007. We have also played an instrumental role in the passage of numerous naloxone access laws, including successful efforts in California and New York to make it available over-the-counter.
Staff & Board
Staff & Board
Leadership Team
Maria McFarland Sánchez-Moreno
Executive Director
Maria McFarland Sánchez-Moreno is the Drug Policy Alliance’s Executive Director. She brings nearly thirteen years of international and domestic drug policy experience from her work at Human Rights Watch, where she served as Co-Director of the US Program.
Congratulations to Maria
Maria has been awarded a New Executives Fund grant from Open Society Foundations. These competitive, two-year awards are designed to give a new executive the flexibility to invest in the organization’s development or their own leadership.
Maria’s commitment to social justice and drug policy reform dates from her childhood, which she spent mostly in Peru. She was strongly influenced by her early work at Human Rights Watch researching Colombia, where drug profits fueled massacres and official corruption.
During her tenure at Human Rights Watch, Maria led a team advocating against racial discrimination in policing, excessive sentencing, and unfair deportation policies that tear families apart, all issues closely intertwined with the United States’ cruel and irrational approach to drugs. She also pressed the organization to more directly address the war on drugs as a human rights issue. As a result, in 2013 Human Rights Watch became the first major international human rights organization to call for decriminalization of the personal use and possession of drugs and global drug reform more broadly.
Maria is the author of the narrative non-fiction book There Are No Dead Here: A Story of Murder and Denial in Colombia, released by Nation Books in February 2018. She holds a law degree from New York University School of Law and did most of her undergraduate studies in Lima, Peru, before completing her BA at the University of Texas at Austin. She is a native speaker of both Spanish and English.
See Maria's writings and videos.
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Ellen Flenniken
Managing Director, Development
Ellen Flenniken manages the Drug Policy Alliance’s development and donor engagement efforts.
Before joining DPA, Ellen worked extensively as a political campaign manager and fundraiser. She served as finance director for Oregon’s successful campaign to regulate, legalize and tax marijuana, campaign manager for Congresswoman Suzanne Bonamici (D-OR), finance director for Kate Brown’s winning campaign for Oregon Secretary of State, and deputy finance director at Oregon United for Marriage. Ellen received her B.A. in political science and Mandarin Chinese from Middlebury College.
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Heather Mangrum
Managing Director, Communications
Heather Mangrum brings more than 20 years of experience in marketing, PR, and digital and traditional communications strategy. Most recently, she served as Director of Communications for International House, building the nearly century old organization’s first-ever communications practice. Prior to that, she led the communications team at Helen Keller International, a global agency dedicated to preventing blindness and reducing malnutrition, and visited HKI programs in Africa, Asia and the United States to capture assets and success stories illustrating the impact of the work.
Her work in advocacy includes leading communications efforts in launching the ELEV8 national education initiative, as well as for The Center for Arts Education in its efforts to restore and support arts education in New York City public schools. Her experience also includes successful tenures with Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts and Alvin Ailey Dance Theater, as well as Rolling Stone magazine. Ms. Mangrum is holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in Journalism and Communications from Washington & Lee University and lives in Brooklyn, NY.
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Ryan Chavez
Managing Director, Finance and Administration
Ryan Chavez is managing director, finance and administration, based in New York. Ryan has over 20 years of progressive experience in government and nonprofit management, emergency feeding programs, technical assistance and AIDS housing services. Prior to joining the organization, Ryan served for seven years as deputy executive director of Community Health Action (CHASI), a community organization based in Staten Island that provides services to individuals and families challenged by health disparities.
Before joining CHASI, he was director of strategic planning for NYC’s HIV Health and Human Services Planning Council. Previously, he worked at Bailey House, a nationally-recognized AIDS housing provider, where he developed a technical assistance department providing program planning and evaluation, fiscal management, conflict resolution and trainings to NYC AIDS housing agencies. He was a member of NYC’s Housing Works Group and the Massachusetts statewide Housing Advisory Committee. While at Bailey House, he worked closely with the city to develop a number of new housing models, including the Sustainable Living Fund. Ryan has an M.S. from the University of Massachusetts at Boston with a concentration in nonprofit management, and a B.A. in Psychology from Cornell University.
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Widney Brown
Managing Director, Policy
Widney Brown is the Drug Policy Alliance’s Managing Director of Policy, overseeing work at the state and national level promoting drug policies that are compassionate, based in science and uphold the human rights of people who use drugs.
Prior to joining DPA, Brown was the Director of Programs at Physicians for Human Rights where she oversaw the organization’s research, documentation and training projects with a particular focus on Afghanistan, Democratic Republic of Congo, Myanmar and Syria. She writes extensively on human rights issues, recently publishing an article on the intersection of social justice and human rights. Previously Brown was the Senior Director for International Law and Policy at the Secretariat of Amnesty International in London where she was responsible for the organization’s legal analysis, policy development, and advocacy. Brown held a variety of positions, including deputy program director, at Human Rights Watch from 1997 through 2005.
Brown received her B.A. from the George Washington University and her J.D. from the New York University School of Law where she was a Root-Tilden Scholar.
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Communications
Anthony Papa
Manager, Media and Artist Relations
Anthony Papa is manager of media and artist relations. He is an artist, writer, freedom fighter, noted advocate against the war on drugs and co-founder of the Mothers of the New York Disappeared. Papa’s stinging opinion pieces about the drug war have appeared in news sources across the country. He is a frequent public speaker and college lecturer on his art and criminal justice issues.
On 12/31/16 Papa received a pardon from Gov. Andrew Cuomo and became the first person in NYS history to receive both clemency (from Gov. George Pataki 1997) and a pardon. Papa is the author of This Side of Freedom: Life After Clemency, his second memoir about his 18 years of freedom after imprisonment, and 15 to Life: How I Painted My Way to Freedom (2004), a memoir about his experience of being sentenced to state prison for a first-time, nonviolent drug offense under New York’s draconian Rockefeller Drug Laws.
Papa has been interviewed by a wide range of national print and broadcast media, including The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Nation, National Public Radio, “Democracy Now,” Court TV, “Extra,” C-Span, WPIX, RNN among others. His art has been exhibited widely from the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York to many cultural centers, and he has appeared on nationally syndicated talk shows such as CNN's Your Money, MSNBC Live withTamron Hall, “Charles Grodin,” “Geraldo Rivera,” and “Catherine Crier Live.”
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Gabriella Miyares
Manager, Multimedia Design
Heather Mangrum
Managing Director, Communications
Heather Mangrum brings more than 20 years of experience in marketing, PR, and digital and traditional communications strategy. Most recently, she served as Director of Communications for International House, building the nearly century old organization’s first-ever communications practice. Prior to that, she led the communications team at Helen Keller International, a global agency dedicated to preventing blindness and reducing malnutrition, and visited HKI programs in Africa, Asia and the United States to capture assets and success stories illustrating the impact of the work.
Her work in advocacy includes leading communications efforts in launching the ELEV8 national education initiative, as well as for The Center for Arts Education in its efforts to restore and support arts education in New York City public schools. Her experience also includes successful tenures with Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts and Alvin Ailey Dance Theater, as well as Rolling Stone magazine. Ms. Mangrum is holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in Journalism and Communications from Washington & Lee University and lives in Brooklyn, NY.
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Ifetayo Harvey
Marketing Coordinator
Ifetayo first joined DPA as an intern in 2013 and has been an integral part of the Communications staff since 2016. She has shared her experience of being personally impacted by the drug war, and plays an instrumental role in developing DPA’s voice and perspective with LGBTQIA+ audiences. She is a creative and strategic thinker ready to help DPA expand in our communications practice.
As Marketing Coordinator, Ifetayo manages DPA’s social media channels, with a particular focus on building strategy to better align and leverage channels run by other DPA teams. She works in creative development, marketing, inventory management, distribution of promotional materials, and coordination and sponsorship of DPA’s presence at third-party events. Ifetayo also contributes to digital advertising and assists in posting web content, as well as other special projects.
She has spoken about her experience on National Public Radio and HuffPost Live. Ifetayo is from Charleston, South Carolina and has a B.A. in History and African Studies from Smith College.
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Jag Davies
Director, Communications Strategy
As director of communications strategy, Jag Davies works with communications, program, development and senior management staff to oversee production of all DPA publications and to facilitate best practices in the implementation of the organization’s messaging and brand identity. Davies manages a team that includes DPA’s research coordinator and communications coordinator, as well as external consultant relationships with writers, designers, and multimedia content producers.
Davies also plays a key role in DPA’s media work. He is regularly quoted in a wide range of media outlets and his writings have appeared in the New York Times, Washington Post, BBC.com, CNN.com, and dozens of regional and online publications.
Davies has more than a decade of professional experience working to establish drug policies grounded in science, compassion, health and human rights. Before joining the organization, he served as director of communications for MAPS, a nonprofit pharmaceutical company conducting clinical trials aimed at developing marijuana and certain psychedelic drugs into federally-approved prescription medicines. Davies also previously served as policy researcher for the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) Drug Law Reform Project (now known as the Criminal Law Reform Project), where he coordinated local, state, federal, and international efforts to end punitive drug policies that cause the widespread violation of constitutional and human rights.
Davies grew up in Miami and is a graduate of New World School of the Arts, where he majored in theater. Davies is also a graduate of New College of Florida, the honors college of the state university system of Florida, where he majored in cultural anthropology. He currently lives in New York City.
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Kristen Millnick
Digital Communications Manager
Kristen Millnick is a Digital Communications Manager at the Drug Policy Alliance. Her interest in drug policy reform began when she wrote a medical marijuana bill for a government class in high school. She attended Simon Fraser University in British Columbia, Canada, where she studied Art & Culture Studies and Criminology. While living in Canada, she had the opportunity to learn about the progressive drug and harm reduction policies and practices in Vancouver and has been passionate about ending the war on drugs ever since.
After interning at the Drug Policy Alliance, Office of National Affairs, she graduated and served as field director and associate director at the Interfaith Drug Policy Initiative where she gained experience with grassroots organizing and mobilized clergy and the faith community to advocate for a variety of drug policy reform legislation including medical marijuana, marijuana decriminalization, needle exchange, and overdose prevention. She is particularly interested in harm reduction, pain management, destigmatizing and humanizing addiction, and amplifying the role of women in the drug policy reform movement.
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Michelle Eastwood
Digital Content Strategist
Sasha Simon
Safety First Program Manager
Stefanie Jones
Director, Audience Development
Stefanie Jones is director of audience development at the Drug Policy Alliance, based in New York. In this role she oversees communication and outreach to specific communities on drug use and drug policy topics, including on novel psychoactive substances (NPS) and DPA’s youth drug education work. She personally runs the Music Fan program, which introduces harm reduction principles and drug policy alternatives to partygoers, public health officials and city nightlife regulators across the U.S.
In her prior role within the organization as event manager she produced four progressively larger editions of the biennial International Drug Policy Reform Conference, as well as numerous local policy conferences, fundraisers and coalition-building meetings.
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Suchitra Rajagopalan
Research Coordinator
Suchitra Rajagopalan is the research coordinator for the Drug Policy Alliance. She is responsible for creating content for DPA-branded materials, conducting secondary research to inform DPA’s publications, media, web and policy work, and maintaining a comprehensive reference library of relevant research on drugs, drug policy and criminal justice reform.
Prior to joining DPA, Suchitra was based in Mumbai, India, where she worked on drug policy issues at the HIV/AIDS unit of a legal aid organization called Lawyers Collective. Her passion for drug policy reform stems from a commitment to human rights and social justice.
Suchitra studied political science at Sciences Po Paris and studied law at Trinity College Dublin and the University of Mumbai.
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Tommy McDonald
Director, Multimedia
Tommy McDonald is director of multimedia. After earning his B.A. at Tennessee State University, McDonald began his career as a sports writer for The Nashville Banner in 1991. He was a community news reporter at The Sacramento Bee and a local sports editor for ANG Newspapers, which owns The Oakland Tribune. McDonald also worked as a freelance writer and consultant for several years.
After an eight-year journalism career, McDonald made the transition into public relations in late 1998, joining Communication Works, a San Francisco-based nonprofit public relations firm in the public interest. During his tenure, Communication Works became the largest such PR firm on the West coast. In early 2001, Communication Works merged with Fenton Communications, the nation’s largest public interest PR firm. In late 2001, he joined Children Now, a nationally recognized child advocacy organization based in Oakland. McDonald managed national media campaigns on social justice issues, such as juvenile justice, consumer litigation, affordable housing, drug policy, human rights and gun control.
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Tony Newman
Director, Media Relations
Tony Newman is director of media relations, a position he has held since 2000. Newman has more than 20 years of public relations experience. Before joining the organization, he was the media director for the human rights organization Global Exchange and co-founded the public relations firm Communication Works. Newman received his B.A. from the University of California Santa Cruz.
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Development
Alexis Martin
Development Coordinator
Alexis Martin is the development coordinator at DPA, where she supports all functions of the development department.
Alexis was drawn to drug policy as an undergraduate student at Columbia University, as she sought work that allowed her to combine her knowledge gained from personal experience of the drug war, as well as her commitment to social justice and liberation.
This commitment was strengthened by a variety of internship, organizing, and work experiences, including working with the New York Civil Liberties Union as a Communications Intern, the War Resisters League as a Sara Bilezekian Organizing Intern, and with DPA’s close ally, VOCAL-NY, as a Civil Rights Organizing Intern. She was also a Research Assistant for Professor Samuel Roberts at Columbia University, and aided his work on the history of harm reduction in New York City. During the 2016 election, she was an Election Fellow for BYP100, registering young Black New Yorkers to vote and engaging them on Election Day and beyond.
Alexis is based in New York City, with roots in the Philadelphia area. She is especially indebted to the Black and Brown writers, organizers, and dreamers who have inspired her work.
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Chelsea Ogun
Development Associate
Chelsea Ogun is the development associate at DPA, where she supports all operations within the development department.
During college, Chelsea spent time working with low-income communities of color facing a myriad of issues including housing instability, food insecurity, and education inequality. This gave her further perspective on the pervasively negative effects that our current drug policies have on minority populations’ ability to overcome systemic oppression. Realizing the connection between the war on drugs and issues of social inequity ignited her interest in drug policy. Before joining DPA, Chelsea interned at the Institute for Veterans and Military Families, the George Wiley Center, and the Rhode Island Department of Administration.
Chelsea was born and raised in Rhode Island. After spending some time living in Central Maine and Upstate New York, she is currently based in Brooklyn. She earned her B.A. in Policy Studies with a double major in Economics from Syracuse University.
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Cindy Mathew
Deputy Director, Development
David Glowka
Director, Development
David Glowka is DPA’s director of development and helps raise funds from institutional and individual donors to support the organization’s programs and campaigns across the country.
Before joining the organization in 2003, he worked at Community Servings, an AIDS service provider based in Boston, where he helped secure corporate, foundation and government grants. He was also involved for a number of years with the Prison Book Program, a volunteer-run group that provides educational materials and other support to incarcerated people. Prior to that, he worked as a research assistant in the Office of Boston City Councilor Paul Scapicchio.
Glowka received his bachelor’s degree in human services from Northeastern University in 2001.
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Elizabeth Sarnoff
Development Manager
As development manager, Elizabeth is responsible for creating and implementing strategies to engage philanthropists with the mission and programs of the Drug Policy Alliance.
Prior to joining DPA in 2015, Elizabeth was a development officer at the Center for Arts Education. Before that, she had a long career in the commercial art world, including 16 years at Christie’s.
Elizabeth is deeply committed to DPA’s mission and vision, and is alarmed to see a resurgence of hateful rhetoric and failed drug war policies.
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Ellen Flenniken
Managing Director, Development
Ellen Flenniken manages the Drug Policy Alliance’s development and donor engagement efforts.
Before joining DPA, Ellen worked extensively as a political campaign manager and fundraiser. She served as finance director for Oregon’s successful campaign to regulate, legalize and tax marijuana, campaign manager for Congresswoman Suzanne Bonamici (D-OR), finance director for Kate Brown’s winning campaign for Oregon Secretary of State, and deputy finance director at Oregon United for Marriage. Ellen received her B.A. in political science and Mandarin Chinese from Middlebury College.
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Jennifer Cabrera
Development Operations Manager
As Development Operations Manager, Jennifer Cabrera is responsible for overseeing DPA’s donor database, prospect management, and related functions.
Before joining DPA, Jennifer was the Prospect Research Manager for the United Way of New York City. She also served in development roles at Freedom to Marry and Family Equality Council. Prior to joining the nonprofit sector, Jennifer held positions at Citigroup and with Aramark.
Jennifer is a graduate of Hendrix College in Conway, Arkansas. She now lives with her spouse and child in Ossining, NY.
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Joe Salas
Deputy Director, Development
Joe Salas is the deputy director of development at the Drug Policy Alliance where he works to engage and grow the organization’s membership base. He brings with him close to a decade of experience in nonprofit communications, fundraising and community engagement.
As an urban planner by trade, Joe has a strong interest in creating inclusive, fair and just cities and communities of all sizes. Before joining DPA, Joe worked for a traditional New York City settlement house where he raised awareness and support for a menu of community based social service programs including a methadone maintenance treatment program and chemical dependency program. Prior to that, he served as the External Communications Manager for New York Cares, the city’s leading volunteer management organization, where he developed crisis communications in wake of Hurricane Sandy.
A native of Chicago, Joe has a degree in urban planning from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He currently lives in Brooklyn.
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Lesedi Ntsele
Membership Marketing Associate
Lesedi Ntsele is the Membership Marketing Associate at the Drug Policy Alliance. She is responsible for supporting all functions of the development department, with a particular focus on the organization’s digital fundraising and membership campaigns.
She received her B.A in Liberal Arts, with a concentration in journalism and politics, from Sarah Lawrence College in New York. Her interest in drug policy developed while she was enrolled in a combined writing course at a maximum-security women’s prison. The yearlong class allowed her to study alongside people incarcerated at the Bedford Hills Correctional Facility where the inequalities of the war on drugs were illuminated for her. Prior to joining DPA, Lesedi interned at various arts organizations including the Poetry Project, Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, and the New York City Ballet.
Lesedi is a native of Johannesburg, South Africa. Before moving to New York, she attended the Interlochen Arts Academy in Michigan where she majored in saxophone performance and creative writing.
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Finance and Administration
Boris Sporer
Director, Information Technology and Knowledge Management
Boris Sporer is director of information technology and knowledge management, based in New York. He has worked for over 20 years in the information field with a focus on non-profit, non-governmental and academic organizations.
His most recent position was senior director of information systems at the Fortune Society, a non-profit service provider and advocate facilitating successful reentry for ex-offenders and promoting alternatives to incarceration. He also has extensive experience in database development, website content management and project management at such institutions as Foreign Affairs Magazine, the United Nations and other international organizations in Russia, Croatia, Central Asia and the Caucasus.
A native New Yorker, Boris received his B.A. in Computer Science from Columbia College and his Masters in International Media and Communications from Columbia’s School of International and Public Affairs.
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Christopher Soda
Executive Associate
David Abbott
Office Manager
David Abbott was born and raised in the Boston area and relocated to New York City after completing his BFA in painting, education and film at Massachusetts College of Art.
After first working in the private sector and then managing his own business, Abbott worked in the non profit area for the last ten years with organizations dedicated to human rights, environmental justice, and procuring health care and legal services for low income, physically and mentally challenged individuals.
For over twenty-five years Abbott has also volunteered at various HIV/AIDS organizations.
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Haneefah Vincent
Finance Coordinator
Jeffrey Chen
IT Systems Manager
Jim Clapes
Events Manager
As events manager, Jim Clapes handles logistics for DPA’s International Drug Policy Reform Conference, staff retreat and other organizational events. Jim has ten years’ experience in meeting and event management, including more than eight years coordinating events in the nonprofit sector. Before joining DPA, Jim served as the manager of conferences & events with the U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC) for more than seven years, where he spearheaded the Greenbuild International Conference & Expo. Prior to USGBC, Jim served as events director for the National Gay & Lesbian Chamber of Commerce in Washington, D.C., planning the organization’s two annual flagship events. Jim started his career in events and developed a passion for the industry as a conference director at Financial Research Associates, where he produced industry events in the financial services arena. Jim also served as a Congressional intern on Capitol Hill in the office of Representative Sam Farr (D-CA).
Jim grew up in Northern California and received his Bachelor of Arts in political science from the University of California, Santa Cruz.
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Lina Mingoia
Director, Human Resources
Lorraine Vittoriosa
Controller
Ryan Chavez
Managing Director, Finance and Administration
Ryan Chavez is managing director, finance and administration, based in New York. Ryan has over 20 years of progressive experience in government and nonprofit management, emergency feeding programs, technical assistance and AIDS housing services. Prior to joining the organization, Ryan served for seven years as deputy executive director of Community Health Action (CHASI), a community organization based in Staten Island that provides services to individuals and families challenged by health disparities.
Before joining CHASI, he was director of strategic planning for NYC’s HIV Health and Human Services Planning Council. Previously, he worked at Bailey House, a nationally-recognized AIDS housing provider, where he developed a technical assistance department providing program planning and evaluation, fiscal management, conflict resolution and trainings to NYC AIDS housing agencies. He was a member of NYC’s Housing Works Group and the Massachusetts statewide Housing Advisory Committee. While at Bailey House, he worked closely with the city to develop a number of new housing models, including the Sustainable Living Fund. Ryan has an M.S. from the University of Massachusetts at Boston with a concentration in nonprofit management, and a B.A. in Psychology from Cornell University.
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Public Policy
Stephanie Polito
Program Manager
Stephanie Polito is the program manager for DPA's public policy program. She is responsible for ensuring the program’s staff is set up to deliver on important strategic goals over the short and long term by developing and implementing systems that foster collaboration and streamline work. She also manages the department’s regular retreats and meetings and oversees the development of content for the bi-annual International Drug Policy Reform Conference.
Polito received a Bachelor’s Degree in psychology from Loyola University Maryland and continued her education in New York, receiving a Master’s Degree in forensic psychology from John Jay College of Criminal Justice and a Master’s Degree in mental health law from New York Law School. Prior to joining DPA and while pursuing her graduate degrees, Polito advocated for people with mental illnesses and survivors of interpersonal violence as they navigated various stages of the criminal justice system, including working with the Mental Health Court Advocacy Program in Brooklyn, a pre-arraignment diversion program for people with mental illness, and with the Crime Victims Treatment Center at Mount Sinai St. Luke’s Hospital as a certified rape crisis counselor.
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Widney Brown
Managing Director, Policy
Widney Brown is the Drug Policy Alliance’s Managing Director of Policy, overseeing work at the state and national level promoting drug policies that are compassionate, based in science and uphold the human rights of people who use drugs.
Prior to joining DPA, Brown was the Director of Programs at Physicians for Human Rights where she oversaw the organization’s research, documentation and training projects with a particular focus on Afghanistan, Democratic Republic of Congo, Myanmar and Syria. She writes extensively on human rights issues, recently publishing an article on the intersection of social justice and human rights. Previously Brown was the Senior Director for International Law and Policy at the Secretariat of Amnesty International in London where she was responsible for the organization’s legal analysis, policy development, and advocacy. Brown held a variety of positions, including deputy program director, at Human Rights Watch from 1997 through 2005.
Brown received her B.A. from the George Washington University and her J.D. from the New York University School of Law where she was a Root-Tilden Scholar.
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Advocacy Grants Program
Judh Grandchamps
Manager, Partner Outreach and Engagement
Judh Grandchamps manages partner outreach and engagement at the Drug Policy Alliance.
Before joining DPA, Judh worked as a supervisor and maintained the database for a market research company that conducted surveys, primarily with doctors, for pharmaceutical companies to analyze the effects of certain drugs prescribed to patients.
When he started at DPA in 2007, then tasked with improving and managing our database, he was a self-described drug policy reform skeptic. Now he regularly speaks and writes about the injustice of the drug war and the need to break down stigma and embrace a harm reduction approach to drugs. Judh credits his personal growth to his colleagues, our members, and the social justice organizations we partner with.
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Laini Madhubuti
Program Coordinator
Maria Russo
Grants Administrative Associate
Maria is a graduate of Brown University ('18) with two degrees in Public Policy and Latin American Studies. While in school, she worked at the Institute for the Study and Practice of Nonviolence (ISPN) in Providence, Rhode Island. At the Institute and while living in Providence, Maria did a considerable amount of nonviolent, anti-incarceration work in order to explore how we continuously engage with, redefine, and challenge various forms of individual and structural violence in our society.
Having grown up in the small town of Shepherdstown, West Virginia, Maria had an interest in restorative drug policy from a very young age. She saw how devastating insensitive drug policy can be and hoped that compassionate, safety-centered responses to these complex topics would someday be available for the community that she loves. Over the years, Maria has watched her community develop comprehensive treatment networks to address these issues, and she wants to continue finding ways to support low-income communities, communities of color, and otherwise underrepresented and under-supported communities access equitable, context-based resources.
As the Grants Administrative Associate at Drug Policy Alliance, Maria assists the Grants, Partnerships, and Special Projects Team. In this role, she helps manage the Advocacy Grants in order to strengthen DPA’s long-standing Partner Network and support funding opportunities for innovative drug policy reform around the country.
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Mariela Alburges
Manager, Advocacy Grants Program
Mariela G. Alburges is the Manager of the Advocacy Grants program within the Grants, Partners, and Special Projects department. She joined DPA in September 2017.
For over 15 years, Mariela has been committed to movement building, leadership and organizational capacity development around issues of socioeconomic justice, interpersonal/institutionalized gender violence, and reproductive justice. Her path has brought her to work in collaboration with Indigenous, Black and Immigrant communities in the U.S., Latin America and East Africa who in diverse and often parallel ways continue to resist policies of forced displacement and political disenfranchisement. She is deeply committed to augmenting the visibility, reclaiming the legitimacy and adapting the tools/lessons learned from economic solidarity systems in which women are core decision-makers and active participants.
In her capacity as Advocacy Grants Manager, Mariela oversees all aspects of DPA's Promoting Policy Change and Special Opportunities grants programs. She is humbled by the opportunity to learn from and support innovative ways in which communities are working in solidarity to denounce and repair the harms inflicted upon them by the drug war. Mariela continues to build and grow with DPA's Partner Network where she is committed to connecting partners across the country to resources, space for collective strategizing and broader and more intentional community engagement. She also brings her logistical expertise and creative vision to support the development and execution of special projects with the aim of promoting resource and experience sharing, narrative shifting and collective actions.
Mariela is originally from Maracaibo, Venezuela and spent her formative years in Salt Lake City, Utah. She holds a Masters in Urban and Regional Planning with a focus in asset-based community economic development from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and a Bachelors in Latin American and Gender Studies from Wellesley College.
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Criminal Justice Reform Strategy
Alyssa Stryker
Criminal Justice Reform Manager
Alyssa Stryker is DPA’s Criminal Justice Reform Manager. She is committed to ending the War on Drugs so that it can no longer be used as rhetorical cover for the criminalization of poor communities and communities of color.
Prior to joining DPA, Alyssa oversaw the casework portfolio at the British Columbia Civil Liberties Association (BCCLA) in Vancouver, Canada. In this role, she worked to integrate community concerns about policing and the criminalization of poverty into the BCCLA's organization-wide policy development. Alyssa holds an MA in Human Geography from the University of British Columbia and a BA (Honors) from Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario, but has learned just as much from those outside academia as she has from those within it.
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Art Way
Senior Director, National Criminal Justice Reform Strategy and State Director, Colorado
Art Way is a Senior Director for DPA’s National Criminal Justice Reform Strategy and State Director for DPA’s Colorado Office. As Senior Director, Art co-leads an internal process to generate a multi-year criminal justice reform strategy to guide DPA’s efforts in the field and is responsible for establishing DPA’s criminal justice policy and advocacy priorities.
Art brings substantial public policy and criminal justice reform experience to DPA. He is a graduate of Florida Coastal School of Law where he was appalled at the gap between our constitutional liberties and what he witnessed growing up during the escalation of the drug war in the 1980s. Prior to joining DPA, Art directed the Racial Justice Program at the Colorado Progressive Coalition, where he worked to halt the overrepresentation of people of color in the state's criminal justice system. He successfully spearheaded a legislative campaign amending state law regarding police duties during searches. As a result, Colorado has the only consent-to-search legislation in the nation that protects pedestrians as well as motorists.
A belief in the ills of mass incarceration and drug war policies fuel Art's desire to manage DPA's efforts in Colorado, where his work involves minimizing the role of the criminal justice system in addressing drug-related issues. This work includes the passage and implementation of overdose prevention efforts, such as third-party naloxone distribution and the state’s 911 Good Samaritan law. Art has also been deeply involved in the passage and implementation of Colorado’s marijuana legalization law, and has travelled domestically and internationally as a speaker addressing this historic policy shift.
His on-the-ground efforts in Colorado and nationally have expanded the base of drug policy reformers to include prominent racial justice and criminal justice stakeholders.
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Emily Kaltenbach
Senior Director, National Criminal Justice Reform Strategy and State Director, New Mexico
Emily Kaltenbach is a Senior Director for DPA’s National Criminal Justice Reform Strategy and State Director for DPA’s New Mexico Office. As Senior Director, Emily co-leads an internal process to generate a multi-year criminal justice reform strategy to guide DPA’s efforts in the field and is responsible for establishing DPA’s criminal justice policy and advocacy priorities, convening and coordinating a departmental criminal justice team to inform and advise priorities and strategy, devising and outlining reform campaigns that advance the organization’s goals and objectives, and ensuring that criminal justice policy and advocacy campaigns across the organization are strategic, coordinated, and maximally efficient.
Based in New Mexico, Kaltenbach also manages the staff of the New Mexico Office. As state director since 2011, she helped start the second Law Enforcement Assisted Diversion program in the nation and was deeply involved in reforming New Mexico’s asset forfeiture law, a model for the rest of the country.
Kaltenbach joins the organization following 15 years working in New Mexico implementing rural community-based health centers, helping reform the long-term care system, and setting the stage to implement federal health care reform in the state. Prior to joining DPA, she served as the director of Policy and Planning at the New Mexico Aging and Long-Term Services Department and served as the acting director for New Mexico's Office of Health Care Reform.
Born and raised in rural New Mexico, Kaltenbach graduated from Beloit College with a BA in sociology and a minor in health care studies. She later completed a master’s degree in health administration at the University of Washington's School of Public Health before returning to New Mexico.
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International
Hannah Hetzer
Senior International Policy Manager
Hannah Hetzer is senior international policy manager at the Drug Policy Alliance, based in New York. She serves as DPA’s liaison for Latin American and broader international issues, closely following, supporting and informing developments in drug policy reform in the region. Hetzer spent 2013 in Uruguay, working on the campaign that made it the first country in the world to legalize marijuana.
Hetzer received her bachelor’s degree in Economics, Politics and International Studies from the University of Warwick (UK) and has previously worked with the Latin America Unit of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, the Americas Division at Human Rights Watch, and the Human Rights Foundation.
Hetzer’s interest in drug policy stems from her concern about the dire consequences of the war on drugs in Latin American countries and has been magnified since learning about the myriad negative effects of punitive drug policies on human rights globally.
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Office of Academic Engagement
Julie Netherland
Director, Office of Academic Engagement
Julie “Jules” Netherland, PhD, is the Director of the Office of Academic Engagement for the Drug Policy Alliance. In that role, she advances drug policy reform by supporting scholars in doing advocacy, convening experts from a range of disciplines to inform the field, and strengthening DPA’s use of research and scholarship in developing and advancing its policy positions.
Dr. Netherland previously served as the Deputy State Director of DPA’s New York Policy Office, where she was instrumental in passing two laws to legalize the use of medical marijuana in New York and advancing a number of harm reduction and public health approaches to drug policy.
Dr. Netherland is the editor of Critical Perspectives on Addiction (Emerald Press, 2012). More recently, her work with Helena Hansen, MD, PhD on the racialization of the opioid epidemic has appeared in the American Journal of Public Health, Biosocieties, and Culture, Psychiatry and Medicine. She holds a PhD in sociology from the City University of New York Graduate Center, a Masters in Social Work from Boston University, and B.A. from Bryn Mawr College. She teaches at John Jay College of Criminal Justice and is a social work field instructor for Columbia University and the Silberman School of Social Work at Hunter College.
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Sheila P Vakharia, PhD
Policy Manager, Office of Academic Engagement
Sheila P Vakharia is the Policy Manager of the Office of Academic Engagement for the Drug Policy Alliance. In that role, she helps DPA staff and others understand a range of drug policy issues while also responding to new studies with critiques and analysis. Additionally, she is responsible for cultivating relationships with researchers from a wide range of disciplines aligned with DPA’s policy interests and working to mobilize academics in service of DPA policy campaigns.
Dr. Vakharia’s research and teaching interests include harm reduction therapy, drug policy reform, drug user stigma, overdose and overdose prevention, and social work education. Sheila is on the Board of HAMS Harm Reduction Network and is a member of the Harm Reduction Therapy Research Group. Dr. Vakharia earned her doctorate at Florida International University’s School of Social Work. She received her Master’s in Social Work from Binghamton University and a Post-Master’s Certificate in the Addictions from New York University.
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Office of Legal Affairs
Jolene Forman
Staff Attorney
Jolene Forman is a staff attorney with the Drug Policy Alliance’s office of legal affairs. She engages in legislative and initiative drafting, policy advocacy, litigation, and public education in support of drug policy reform.
Forman received her earned J.D. from UC Berkeley School of Law, M.Sc. in Criminal Justice Policy from the London School of Economics and Political Science, and her B.A. with honors in Psychology and Business Management Economics from the University of California, Santa Cruz.
Since joining DPA, Forman has authored multiple pieces of state legislation, including marijuana legalization and racial and ethnic impact statement bills. She has also drafted amicus briefs challenging draconian drug laws that are applied to people who sell drugs and pregnant women who use drugs. In addition, Forman has written several reports for DPA, including analyses of racially disparate drug arrests in California.
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Lindsay LaSalle
Director, Public Health Law and Policy
Lindsay LaSalle is Director of Public Health Law and Policy with the Drug Policy Alliance’s Office of Legal Affairs and an expert and strategist in the areas of harm reduction and treatment as it relates to drug policy. LaSalle has advocated for a public health approach to problematic drug use that is grounded in science and compassion and for alternative solutions to supply-side tactics, criminalization, and incarceration.
She drafts harm reduction, treatment, criminal justice, and health-related legislation across the country, including bills that provide legal protections for people who seek medical assistance in the event of an overdose, improve access to the overdose antidote naloxone, permit syringe exchange programs, remove barriers to treatment medications such as methadone and buprenorphine, authorize new interventions such as supervised consumption sites and drug checking services, and advance novel drug research. LaSalle pushes back on attempts to criminalize overdose through, for instance, drug-induced homicide, involuntary commitment, or fentanyl mandatory minimum laws. She also works to repair the harms of racialized drug policies that have devasted communities of color and exacerbated health and other disparities.
LaSalle has been published in peer-reviewed journals and also regularly drafts reports for the Drug Policy Alliance. She has testified before numerous legislative and government bodies in the United States, including the United States Sentencing Commission, and is regularly invited as an expert to present at conferences and universities.
LaSalle, or her work, has been cited in The New York Times, New York Post, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, Chicago Tribune, San Francisco Chronical, Los Angeles Times, CNN.com, Huffington Post, Business Insider, Rolling Stone, and many other media outlets. Lindsay has also been featured on NPR’s national “Morning Edition” program as well as a variety of podcasts and local radio programs.She received both her B.A. and J.D. from the University of California, Berkeley, where she served as development editor of the California Law Review. Prior to joining DPA, LaSalle worked at Morrison & Foerster LLP for three years on commercial litigation matters, while maintaining an active pro bono practice.
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Michelle Wright
Policy Manager
Michelle Wright is a policy manager at the Drug Policy Alliance, where she works to implement statewide policies that reframe the narrative around regulating drug use. By actively partnering with state-based organizations, she is committed to working towards criminal justice reform, strategizing on best movement building practices, and tackling racial inequities that have decimated communities of color.
Prior to joining the Drug Policy Alliance, Michelle worked at the intersections of anti-Black, social justice and queer advocacy, as a trainer, organizer and advocate. She has facilitated public narrative trainings, implemented non-violent direct actions and has trained at national conferences.
A California native, with deep-seeded roots in Oakland, Michelle has seen firsthand the devastating results of the war on drugs and is ready to use her expertise to contribute to the dynamic organizational landscape at DPA.
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Rodney Holcombe
Legal Fellow
Rodney Holcombe is a legal fellow with the Drug Policy Alliance’s office of legal affairs. He will engage in a year-long record reducing and clearing project focused on implementing the record change provisions of the Adult Use of Marijuana Act (Prop 64).
Holcombe is an avid supporter of compassionate and evidence-based solutions that curb drug addiction, prioritize public health, and promote responsible use, as well as efforts to call attention to and end the Drug War’s devastating impact on communities of color.
Prior to joining DPA, Holcombe interned at the Southern Center for Human Rights, the Attorney General’s Office for the State of New Jersey, Marriott International, Inc., The Huffington Post, and NBCUniversal. While in law school, he was a student intern in the Interdisciplinary Child Advocacy and Mediation Clinics, and co-directed a documentary on the cumbersome process Pennsylvania inmates must endure to seek medical transfer – or “compassionate release” as it is known in many states – called A Dignified Death: Compassionate Release in Pennsylvania State Prison.
Holcombe received his J.D. from the University of Pennsylvania Law School, and his B.A. with honors in Journalism from Howard University. He grew up in Houston, and enjoys CrossFit, running, and watching Netflix in his free time.
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Tamar Todd
Senior Director, Office of Legal Affairs
Tamar Todd directs DPA’s Office of Legal Affairs. She is responsible for developing and overseeing the organization’s legal work as it relates to legislative drafting, policy advocacy, litigation, and public education in local, state and federal jurisdictions.
Todd has particular expertise in marijuana decriminalization, legalization, and regulation, and she co-authored several state and local ballot initiatives and statutes, including Amendment 64 in Colorado and Proposition 64 in California. She has advised on efforts to legalize the production and distribution of marijuana internationally, and she has testified in numerous legislative and government bodies in the United States and abroad on the issue of drug policy and the intersection of state and federal law.
Todd currently serves as the Vice Chair of the California Bureau of Cannabis Control’s Advisory Committee, which was established to assist with the implementation of California’s legalization law. She also teaches a course on Marijuana Law and Policy at U.C. Berkeley School of Law and a course on Drug Law and Policy at U.C. Davis School of Law.
Todd received her B.A. from the University of Vermont and her J.D. from the Georgetown University Law Center. After law school, she clerked for the Hon. Emmet Sullivan on the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, and she spent several years representing death row inmates as a staff attorney with the Southern Center for Human Rights in Atlanta.
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Theshia Naidoo
Legal Director, Criminal Justice
Theshia Naidoo is the legal director of criminal justice with the Drug Policy Alliance’s office of legal affairs and an expert and strategist in the area of criminal justice reform as it relates to drug policy. In her role as an attorney and as a member of the San Francisco Sentencing Commission, Naidoo has pushed for the creation and adoption of innovative criminal justice reforms, including playing a pivotal role in the advancement and implementation of Law Enforcement Assisted Diversion (LEAD) in a number of jurisdictions across the country.
Naidoo drafts criminal justice reform legislation across the country related to areas such as reducing criminal penalties for drug offenses, protecting immigrants from deportation based on drug offenses, asset forfeiture reform, and minimizing the collateral consequences of criminal convictions. Naidoo’s work also focuses on ballot initiatives, including playing a key role in the drafting of California’s Proposition 5 (the Non-Violent Offenders Rehabilitation Act of 2008), Colorado’s Amendment 64, which legalized marijuana in 2012, and California’s Proposition 47 (the Safe Neighborhoods and Schools Act of 2014), which reduced numerous felony offenses to misdemeanors.
Naidoo presents regularly on drug policy reform issues across the country and internationally, including presenting at a White House convening on LEAD. She has testified before state legislatures and other government bodies on criminal justice reform and drug policy and often serves as a guest speaker at law schools, universities and other institutions.
Naidoo received her B.A. in political science from the University of California Berkeley and she received her J.D. from the UCLA School of Law. Prior to joining DPA, she worked in private legal practice for four years representing clients in employment law and commercial litigation matters. She left private practice to join the struggle to make drug laws and policies more just, more compassionate, and more effective.
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Office of National Affairs
Grant Smith
Deputy Director, National Affairs
As deputy director of DPA’s office of national affairs, Grant Smith lobbies to reduce the harms associated with drug use and the war on drugs. Smith works to advance DPA’s federal legislative agenda in Washington and helps to shape policy both at the federal level and within the District of Columbia. His areas of focus have included drug overdose prevention, emerging drugs, collateral consequences, marijuana law reform, and the intersection of immigration and drug policies.
Before joining the organization, Smith served as a victim services advocate with the federal Court Services and Offender Supervision Agency for the District of Columbia, completed a one-year legislative internship with the Unitarian Universalist Association of Congregations focused on advancing drug policy reform in Washington, and completed internships with DPA and Transform Drug Policy Foundation in the U.K.
Smith completed a B.S. in political science with a concentration in criminal justice and congressional politics at American University. A native of Savannah, Georgia, where he was engaged in antiracism activism, Smith was drawn into drug policy reform after learning about the racial disparities inherent in the drug war.
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Michael Collins
Interim Director, National Affairs
Michael Collins is interim director at the Drug Policy Alliance's Office of National Affairs, in Washington, D.C., where he works with Congress on a wide variety of drug policy issues including drug war spending, syringe access funding, appropriations, and Latin America. He is originally from Scotland, and lived in France, Spain and Mexico, before moving to the U.S.
Before joining DPA, Michael worked at the Information Technology Industry Council, interned for Rep. Joe Crowley (D-NY) in the U.S. House of Representatives, and worked on drug war issues in Mexico for the CIP Americas Program. He holds a Master’s degree from Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service, where he studied international relations. He also has an undergraduate degree from Strathclyde University in his hometown of Glasgow. He speaks French, Spanish and Catalan. Michael has discussed drug policy issues on the BBC, NBC’s Telemundo, TVE and Telesur. He has also appeared in the Baltimore Sun and Proceso magazine.
In his free time, he enjoys watching football (soccer), especially his beloved Glasgow Celtic and FC Barcelona, reading books, watching films, and occasionally dj’ing – on special request.
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Norrell Edwards
Administrative Associate
Queen Adesuyi
Policy Coordinator
Queen Adesuyi is a policy coordinator at the Drug Policy Alliance’s Office of National Affairs in Washington, D.C., where she supports ONA’s work to advance DPA’s federal legislative agenda. Her areas of focus include marijuana legalization with a racial justice focus, collateral consequences, and reentry hurdles for those involved in the criminal justice or juvenile justice systems. She also co-chairs the Reentry and Housing Coalition, a broad coalition of advocates with the mission of expanding access to affordable housing for the justice-involved.
Adesuyi, who hails from the Morris Heights section of the Bronx, is an alumna from Georgetown University, where she majored in American Studies and minored in Women’s and Gender Studies. Her undergraduate research examined competing models of racial and social justice in the District of Columbia’s pro- and anti-marijuana legalization campaigns, one of the nation’s first legalization campaigns where racial justice was intimately a part of the messaging on both sides.
Prior to joining DPA, Adesuyi worked with the Georgetown University Prisons and Justice Initiative, the National Reentry Network for Returning Citizens, Office of Congressman Jose E. Serrano (D-NY), Mic.com and the New York Times.
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California
Armando Gudiño
Policy Manager, Southern California
Armando Gudiño is California Policy Manager at the Drug Policy Alliance’s Los Angeles office, where he focuses on Latino outreach strategies and legislation. His portfolio includes issues of mass incarceration, taxation and regulation of marijuana, transnational criminal organizations, immigration and drug laws, and drug policy in the Latino community throughout the US and Latin America.
Gudiño is a political scientist who started his professional career as a human rights observer working in Latin America documenting human rights violations in armed conflict zones. For more than 20 years, he has worked in journalism and public policy, in places such as Mexico, Venezuela, Colombia, the Middle East and Southeast Asia. In 2001 he joined the Pacifica Radio Network, where he rose to the position of Program Director at the Los Angeles station KPFK, becoming the first Latino Program Director in its 50-year history. Over the last several years Armando has worked on key California legislation including the historic marijuana legalization initiative Proposition 64, civil asset forfeiture reform, deferred entry of judgement (retroactive), equalization of penalties for crack and powder cocaine, Proposition 47, and the state’s 911 Good Samaritan Law.
Gudiño lives in Los Angeles and when not working on drug policy issues he enjoys spending time with his family, traveling, and working on issues of space policy.
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Laura Thomas
Deputy State Director, California
Laura Thomas is the deputy state director, California, based in the San Francisco Bay Area. She oversees the organization's municipal drug strategy work in San Francisco and leads DPA’s California harm reduction and public health legislation. She has over 25 years of experience in HIV and public health policy, along with a strong commitment to community advocacy, thoughtful policy analysis and coalition building. She first became involved in AIDS activism with ACT UP in San Francisco. Before joining DPA, she was a consultant specializing in HIV policy and planning, with clients ranging from the California State Office of AIDS to the National Association of People with AIDS. She has also worked for Tenderloin Health, a nonprofit health and social service provider serving a predominantly homeless population in San Francisco's Tenderloin neighborhood, the San Francisco AIDS Foundation, and the San Francisco Department of Public Health.
Thomas has been a syringe access volunteer for more than 18 years, and helped organize a successful 2007 symposium on safe injection facilities. She is proud to have received the AIDS Hero Award from the 2000 AIDS Candlelight Memorial. She serves on the HIV Prevention Planning Council and the San Francisco Cannabis State Legalization Task Force and is on the Steering Committee for the national HIV Prevention Justice Alliance.
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Marsha Rosenbaum
Director Emerita
Marsha Rosenbaum is director emerita of the San Francisco office of the Drug Policy Alliance, where she spearheaded DPA's work on youth and drugs and created the Safety First booklet. She received her doctorate in medical sociology from the University of California at San Francisco in 1979. From 1977 to 1995, Rosenbaum was the principal investigator on National Institute on Drug Abuse-funded studies of heroin addiction, methadone maintenance treatment, MDMA (Ecstasy), cocaine, and drug use during pregnancy.
She is author of three books:
- Women on Heroin
- Pursuit of Ecstasy: The MDMA Experience (with Jerome E. Beck)
- Pregnant Women on Drugs: Combating Stereotypes and Stigma (with Sheigla Murphy)
Four booklets:
- Just Say What?: An Alternative View on Solving America's Drug Problem
- Kids, Drugs, and Drug Education: A Harm Reduction Approach
- Safety First: A Reality-Based Approach to Teens and Drugs (currently in its sixth printing and translated into Spanish, Russian, Hebrew, Polish, Ukrainian, Chinese, Czech, Portuguese and Romanian)
- Making Sense of Student Drug Testing: Why Educators are Saying No (1st and 2nd editions with Jennifer Kern, Fatema Gunja, Alexandra Cox and Judith Appel)
As well as numerous scholarly articles about drug use, addiction, women, treatment, and drug policy.
Rosenbaum has written opinion pieces for the San Francisco Chronicle, Oakland Tribune, Chicago Tribune, San Jose Mercury News, The Detroit News, Newsday, The San Diego Union-Tribune, USA Today, Los Angeles Times, Los Angeles Daily News, The Orange County Register, La Opinión, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Seattle Post-Intelligencer, AlterNet, The Daytona Beach News-Journal, The Times (Trenton, New Jersey), and Pittsburgh-Post Gazette.
She co-chaired the international conferences:
- "Just Say Know: New Directions in Drug Education" in 1999
- "The State of Ecstasy: The Medicine, Science and Culture of MDMA" in 2001
- And organized the California Statewide Task Force on Effective Drug Education in 2003
Rosenbaum regularly speaks to PTAs, other parent groups, schools, drug treatment and prevention professionals and the media about teenagers and drugs, Ecstasy, and drug policy issues. She currently serves on the California Blue Ribbon Commission to study marijuana legalization in California.
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Norma Palacios
Administrative Assistant
Colorado
Amanda Bent
Policy Manager, Colorado
As Colorado Policy Manager, Amanda Bent works to engage communities and reform local and state drug policies to promote human dignity, racial equity, social justice and public health. Before relocating to Colorado, Bent was a policy coordinator in DPA’s New Jersey office.
Bent grew up in New Jersey and earned her bachelor’s in English and linguistics at Rutgers College and master’s in public policy with a concentration in social policy and women’s issues at the Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy. She went on to complete her master’s in social work with a concentration in clinical practice at Temple University. Bent has interned and volunteered in various harm reduction service settings including street outreach programs, drop-in centers, syringe access programs and gender-based violence crisis hotlines.
Bent is especially interested in lifting up harm reduction as an ethical imperative underscoring social work practice and in advocating for intersectional, humane approaches to drug policy that empower caregivers, children and families.
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Art Way
Senior Director, National Criminal Justice Reform Strategy and State Director, Colorado
Art Way is a Senior Director for DPA’s National Criminal Justice Reform Strategy and State Director for DPA’s Colorado Office. As Senior Director, Art co-leads an internal process to generate a multi-year criminal justice reform strategy to guide DPA’s efforts in the field and is responsible for establishing DPA’s criminal justice policy and advocacy priorities.
Art brings substantial public policy and criminal justice reform experience to DPA. He is a graduate of Florida Coastal School of Law where he was appalled at the gap between our constitutional liberties and what he witnessed growing up during the escalation of the drug war in the 1980s. Prior to joining DPA, Art directed the Racial Justice Program at the Colorado Progressive Coalition, where he worked to halt the overrepresentation of people of color in the state's criminal justice system. He successfully spearheaded a legislative campaign amending state law regarding police duties during searches. As a result, Colorado has the only consent-to-search legislation in the nation that protects pedestrians as well as motorists.
A belief in the ills of mass incarceration and drug war policies fuel Art's desire to manage DPA's efforts in Colorado, where his work involves minimizing the role of the criminal justice system in addressing drug-related issues. This work includes the passage and implementation of overdose prevention efforts, such as third-party naloxone distribution and the state’s 911 Good Samaritan law. Art has also been deeply involved in the passage and implementation of Colorado’s marijuana legalization law, and has travelled domestically and internationally as a speaker addressing this historic policy shift.
His on-the-ground efforts in Colorado and nationally have expanded the base of drug policy reformers to include prominent racial justice and criminal justice stakeholders.
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New Jersey
Ami Kachalia
Policy Coordinator
As Policy Coordinator for DPA’s New Jersey office, Ami Kachalia works on a variety of drug policy issues.
Kachalia earned her B.A. in Political Science, with a minor in women’s and gender studies, from Rutgers University – New Brunswick, where she was a Lloyd C. Gardner Fellow in Leadership and Social Policy. While in college, she worked at the Center for American Women and Politics and completed internships with the New Jersey Department of Education and the Office of Congressman Frank Pallone, Jr.
Most recently, Kachalia served as the Program Associate at The Fund for New Jersey. There, she contributed to grantmaking on a range of issues, including civil rights and criminal justice, poverty, educational equity, environmental justice, and immigrant rights.
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Meagan Glaser
Deputy State Director, New Jersey
As Deputy State Director for DPA's New Jersey office, Meagan Glaser works to diminish the harms associated with both drug use and the war on drugs.
Prior to joining DPA, Glaser served as the director of legislative services for a New Jersey state assemblyman, worked in public affairs for Planned Parenthood Affiliates of New Jersey, and completed an internship at the Princeton Public Affairs Group, the largest government affairs firm in New Jersey.
Glaser is a magna cum laude graduate of The College of New Jersey, where she received a BA in political science, with minors in law and philosophy, and women's and gender studies. Glaser completed a master's degree in public affairs and politics at the Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy at Rutgers University. While pursuing her graduate studies, Glaser was awarded a Governor's Executive Fellowship from the Eagleton Institute of Politics. Through this fellowship, Glaser studied at the Institute and worked in New Jersey Governor Jon Corzine's Intergovernmental Affairs Office.
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Roseanne Scotti
State Director, New Jersey
Before joining the Drug Policy Alliance, Roseanne Scotti, State Director, New Jersey, was a research coordinator at the University of Pennsylvania’s Center for Studies of Addiction in the HIV Prevention Research Division. As a research coordinator, she worked on various research projects studying the incidence of HIV among injection drug users with the goal of designing effective prevention interventions. Scotti received her B.A. from the University of Pennsylvania and her J.D. from Temple School of Law.
Scotti has authored and co-authored law review and medical journal articles on HIV prevention and drug policy. She founded the Prevention Point Philadelphia Harm Reduction Law Project, which provides free legal assistance for drug users and sex workers in Philadelphia. She lectures often on the issues of harm reduction and drug policy.
In 2004, Scotti received the award for Outstanding Achievement in the Field of HIV Prevention from the New Jersey HIV Prevention Community Planning Group. In 2005, she was appointed to New Jersey's Gang Land Security Task Force.
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New Mexico
Emily Kaltenbach
Senior Director, National Criminal Justice Reform Strategy and State Director, New Mexico
Emily Kaltenbach is a Senior Director for DPA’s National Criminal Justice Reform Strategy and State Director for DPA’s New Mexico Office. As Senior Director, Emily co-leads an internal process to generate a multi-year criminal justice reform strategy to guide DPA’s efforts in the field and is responsible for establishing DPA’s criminal justice policy and advocacy priorities, convening and coordinating a departmental criminal justice team to inform and advise priorities and strategy, devising and outlining reform campaigns that advance the organization’s goals and objectives, and ensuring that criminal justice policy and advocacy campaigns across the organization are strategic, coordinated, and maximally efficient.
Based in New Mexico, Kaltenbach also manages the staff of the New Mexico Office. As state director since 2011, she helped start the second Law Enforcement Assisted Diversion program in the nation and was deeply involved in reforming New Mexico’s asset forfeiture law, a model for the rest of the country.
Kaltenbach joins the organization following 15 years working in New Mexico implementing rural community-based health centers, helping reform the long-term care system, and setting the stage to implement federal health care reform in the state. Prior to joining DPA, she served as the director of Policy and Planning at the New Mexico Aging and Long-Term Services Department and served as the acting director for New Mexico's Office of Health Care Reform.
Born and raised in rural New Mexico, Kaltenbach graduated from Beloit College with a BA in sociology and a minor in health care studies. She later completed a master’s degree in health administration at the University of Washington's School of Public Health before returning to New Mexico.
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Jessica Gelay
Policy Manager
Jessica Gelay is the policy manager for the Drug Policy Alliance’s New Mexico office. Her dedication to public health and social justice organizing is lifelong. Gelay works to end the prohibition of drugs and to stop the criminalization of people who use drugs. This entails engaging with community members and elected officials to lift up the stories of people negatively affected by current policies to create pressure for change. Gelay primarily works on issues related to marijuana law reform and is DPA’s point person on issues related to military veterans.
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Rebecca Elicio
Administrative Associate
New York
Ashley Marrero
Administrative Associate
Ashley Marrero is an administrative associate with the New York Policy Office at the Drug Policy Alliance. As an administrative associate, Ashley offers administrative, logistical and financial support to the New York Policy Office and Office of Academic Engagement. She assists with managing and creating an open and inviting environment for the DPA staff at our satellite office in New York City. Her commitment to the work enables the satellite office to thrive, as she continues to support any and all visitors to the office.
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Dionna King
Policy Manager
Dionna King is a policy manager with the New York Policy Office of the Drug Policy Alliance. As policy manager, Dionna is assisting in the development of the reparative justice campaign and will work to repair the harms caused by the drug war in New York State.
Prior to joining DPA, Dionna worked as a community organizer for the Education from the Inside Out Coalition. There she led successful campaigns to ban the box at SUNY and increase funding for in-prison higher education programs.
Coming from a family of Rattlers, Dionna is a proud alumna of Florida Agricultural and Mechanical University and a graduate of The New School. She hails from Atlanta and has a painfully reluctant relationship with Falcons.
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Kassandra Frederique
State Director, New York
Kassandra Frederique is New York State Director at the Drug Policy Alliance (DPA).
Frederique previously ran the day-to-day operations of the statewide campaign to end New York’s racially biased marijuana arrests, which cut the number of NYC marijuana arrests in half. Frederique also represented DPA as a member of Communities United for Police Reform, which focused on addressing Stop & Frisk and broader police reform/accountability measures bridging the gap between the War on Drugs and policing.
In addition to working for policy solutions to reduce the harms associated with drug use, Frederique works with communities throughout the state to address and resolve the collateral consequences of the War on Drugs – state violence. As a co-author of Blueprint for a Public Health and Safety Approach to Drug Policy and as technical advisor to Ithaca Mayor Svante Myrick’s The Ithaca Plan, Frederique cultivates and mobilizes powerful coalitions in communities devastated by drug misuse and drug criminalization to develop municipal strategies to foster healthier and safer communities.
Frederique’s professional focus includes building a reparative justice framework that positions Black and Latinx leaders to create solutions that not only end and repair the harms of the drug war but also create accountability structures between policymakers and people who use drugs. She is currently working on an emerging body of work that discusses Black recreation and drug use.
A native New Yorker, Frederique holds a M.S. in Social Work from Columbia University and earned a B.S. in Industrial Labor Relations at Cornell University.
Follow Kassandra on Twitter.
Connect with Kassandra on Facebook.
Read Kassandra's writings.
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Katharine Celentano
Policy Coordinator
Katharine Celentano is a Policy Coordinator with the New York Policy Office of the Drug Policy Alliance. Based in Ithaca, Katharine helps manage the development and implementation of municipal efforts to address drug use throughout Central and Western New York as well as statewide efforts regarding opiate overdose.
Katharine brings almost a decade of experience in political communication and campaigns, government and grassroots organizing. A coalition builder at heart, she has worked in diverse contexts—from neuroscience lab to Capitol Hill, lived in rural, suburban and urban areas of New York, Vermont and the Midwest and helped forge partnerships across party lines and life experience.
Prior to DPA, Katharine worked for the Law Enforcement Action Partnership, the New York State Psychiatric Institute, a governor’s office, the U.S. Senate and a presidential campaign, and she has led and advised national, local and campus campaigns regarding drug policy as well as mental health, veterans and academic pipeline issues. In 2013, Katharine was appointed to the Vermont Children and Family Council on Prevention Programs, and she was one of 125 leaders invited by SAMHSA to the National Leadership Summit on Youth Recovery. Katharine has also served on the board of Students for Sensible Drug Policy and the Young Professionals Board of the Washington Heights CORNER Project, and she has been invited to speak at conferences across the country.
A graduate of Columbia University, Katharine serves on the board of the Columbia Alumni Association. Katharine’s experiences as a former client of a residential psychiatric facility and losing loved ones to overdose, incarceration and trauma motivate her work.
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Melissa Moore
Deputy State Director, New York
Melissa Moore's fifteen years of experience managing media and campaign strategy for progressive nonprofits focused on criminal justice reform, immigrant rights, poverty, community-led international development, and resource rights shape her role at Drug Policy Alliance. Throughout her career, Melissa has worked toward social change by bridging policy analysis and targeted campaigns with direct engagement. She has trained advocates across the country and internationally on effective communications, helping activists leverage their voices to target key audiences to move campaigns and policy forward and make a lasting impact.
Melissa's experiences growing up in Los Angeles and seeing firsthand the devastation wrought by the War on Drugs motivated her to join the Drug Policy Alliance.
Her work at DPA centers on shifting New York's approach to drug policy and repairing the harms that the War on Drugs has caused to individuals and communities, particularly through her work leading the Start SMART campaign to legalize marijuana and contributions to the EndOverdoseNY campaign. She has been invited to give keynotes and has delivered testimony at municipal and state government hearings.
Melissa's expertise and views on drug policy issues have been featured by CNN, The Hill, Forbes, NPR, POLITICO, CBS News, NBC News, NY1, Fox5, Daily News, Newsweek, Times-Union Huffington Post, Gothamist, and more.
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Board
Angela Pacheco
Former District Attorney, 1st Judicial District, New Mexico
Christine Downton
Former Vice Chairman and Founding Partner of Pareto Partners
David C. Lewis, MD
Founding Director, Center for Alcohol and Addiction Studies, Brown University
Derek Hodel
Independent Consultant
George Soros
Chairman, Soros Fund Management
Ilona Szabó de Carvalho
Director, Igarapé Institute
Ira Glasser, President
President of Board; Former Executive Director, American Civil Liberties Union
James E. Ferguson, II
Senior Partner, Ferguson, Stein, Chambers Law Offices, Charlotte, North Carolina
Jason Flom
President, Lava Records
Jodie Evans
Co-founder, CODEPINK
Josiah Rich, MD
Professor of Medicine and Community Health, The Warren Alpert Medical School of Brown University
Kenneth Hertz
Senior Partner, Hertz Lichtenstein & Young LLP
Pamela Lichty
President, Drug Policy Forum of Hawai'i
Rev. Edwin Sanders, Secretary
Senior Servant, Metropolitan Interdenominational Church; Coordinator, Religious Leaders for a More Just and Compassionate Drug Policy
Departments & State Offices
Departments & State Offices
DPA has offices working to promote sensible drug policy in five key states. Learn more about the victories and current campaigns in each resident state and what you can do to help.
DPA also has an office of academic engagement in New York City, which works to bridge the divide between research and effective drug policies, an office of legal affairs in California, and an office of national affairs in Washington, DC, which works for federal reform.