Staff & Volunteers

The Prison Policy Initiative's accomplishments are those of a much larger organization. Thanks to your support, we've added staff and our capacity to help make social change is growing quickly. Learn more about our current and past staff.

Staff

picture of Peter Wagner Peter Wagner is an attorney and the Executive Director of the Prison Policy Initiative. He co-founded the Prison Policy Initiative in 2001 in order to spark a national discussion about the negative side effects of mass incarceration. His report, Importing Constituents: Prisoners and Political Clout in New York, launched the national movement to end “prison gerrymandering” more than a decade ago. His research and advocacy caught the attention of the press — including 21 New York Times editorials — and led multiple states and more than 200 local governments to end prison gerrymandering.

Under his leadership, the Prison Policy Initiative has helped propel other parts of the criminal justice reform movement forward by achieving critical victories in regulating the exploitative prison and jail telephone industry and quantifying the counter-productive effects of geography-based punishments.

Through strategic collaborations, he has brought the need for criminal justice and electoral reform to new audiences, including authoring reports exposing the "whole pie" of mass incarceration, helping Hank Green explain the failed mass incarceration experiment in a VlogBrothers video, working with Josh Begley to put each state’s overuse of incarceration into the international context, and putting the problem of prison gerrymandering onto theatre screens nationwide.

In recognition of the victories he led on this and other issues, he is the recipient of the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers’ Champion of State Criminal Justice Reform Award (2013) and the American Constitution Society’s David Carliner Public Interest Award (2014).

He is @PWPolicy on Twitter.


picture of Aleks KajsturaAleks Kajstura, JD, Legal Director. Aleks has worked with the Prison Policy Initiative in various capacities since 2003, and has been our Legal Director since 2009.

A 2008 graduate of the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law, Aleks helped build out the Prison Policy Initiative’s campaign against prison gerrymandering and continues to play a central role in guiding this work through the technical and messaging support she provides advocates. She is the author of numerous publications and factsheets that focus on various issues related to how the Census Bureau counts incarcerated people and the political ramifications this has for local municipalities, state governments, and constituents.

Aleks continues to shed light on other hidden aspects of mass incarceration, including women's experiences of incarceration. She is the co-author of our Women's Mass Incarceration reports and the author of States of Women’s Incarceration: The Global Context.

In her spare time, Aleks plays hockey, competes in triathlons, and serves on the Finance Committee for the Town of Sunderland.


Wendy SawyerWendy Sawyer is the Research Director at the Prison Policy Initiative. Wendy earned a Master's in Criminal Justice from Northeastern University and a Bachelor’s in Afro-American Studies from the University of Massachusetts. Before joining the Prison Policy Initiative, she worked as an investigator for the Civilian Complaint Review Board in New York City and as a research associate for Northeastern's Institute on Race and Justice.

Wendy is the author of numerous reports, including Mass Incarceration: The Whole Pie, which gives the big picture of mass incarceration in the United States. She's also authored or co-authored reports on the bail bond industry, youth confinement, the misuse of police and jails to respond to social problems, and gender disparities in incarceration.

In addition to these reports, Wendy conducted the Prison Policy Initiative's frequently-cited 2017 50-state surveys of wages for prison labor and medical copays charged to incarcerated people, and she frequently contributes shorter briefings on recent data releases, academic research, women's incarceration, pretrial detention, probation, and more.


Wanda BertramWanda Bertram is our Communications Strategist, serving as the Prison Policy Initiative's primary media contact and spokesperson. She was co-author or State of Phone Justice 2022: The problem, the progress, and what's next. She is also our expert on tablet computers in prisons, and has written for the Prison Policy Initiative about prison tablet contracts, bans on physical mail behind bars, and other policies that force incarcerated people and their families to shoulder the costs of incarceration. In her spare time, she is a freelance writer.



Emily WidraEmily Widra is a Senior Research Analyst. She oversees Prison Policy Initiative's work examining the public health effects of incarceration and has authored numerous publications on issues ranging from medical copays in prison, punitive responses to drug use behind the wall, and HIV prevalence in prisons. Emily was the lead author on our groundbreaking series of reports, Where People in Prison Come From: The geography of mass incarceration, which provide the clearest picture ever of which areas have lost the most residents to mass incarceration. She is also the author of States of Incarceration: The Global Context and One Size Fits None: How ‘standard conditions’ of probation set people up to fail. She is a 2017 graduate of the Smith College School of Social Work.


Mike WesslerMike Wessler is our Communications Director. He's the author of SMH: The rapid & unregulated growth of e-messaging in prisons. Mike has more than a decade of experience helping nonprofit organizations, campaigns, and elected officials accomplish their goals through strategic communication. He has done communications work at the Massachusetts Office of the State Auditor and the Office of the Montana Governor, as well as the Montana Department of Labor and the Montana Democratic Party. He has a Bachelor’s degree in Political Science from Florida State University.


Leah Wang is a Senior Research Analyst at the Prison Policy Initiative. She is the author of Punishment Beyond Prisons: Incarceration and supervision by state as well as Chronic Punishment: The unmet health needs of people in state prisons. Leah is the coauthor of reports including Beyond the count: A deep dive into state prison populations and Building exits off the highway to mass incarceration: Diversion programs explained, as well as briefings on topics such as the environmental hazards experienced by incarcerated people. Leah holds a M.S in Sustainability Science from the University of Massachusetts Amherst, and a B.A in Economics and Environmental Studies from Bowdoin College. Prior to joining the Prison Policy Initiative, Leah was an analyst at the Massachusetts Department of Correction, and has worked in agriculture, local food systems, and outdoor education.


Danielle Squillante Danielle Squillante is Prison Policy Initiative’s Development and Communications Associate. In this position, she handles the day-to-day fundraising activities for the organization and helps it reach new audiences with its work. She previously worked for ROCA as a program manager and education support specialist. Danielle is also a former public school teacher. She has a master’s degree from Mount Holyoke College and a bachelor’s degree from Hampshire College.


Sarah Staudt Sarah Staudt is the Policy & Advocacy Director at the Prison Policy Initiative. She is the author of publications on a range of issues including pretrial reform, challenging misconceptions about recidivism, and resisting charge-based exclusions in criminal legal reforms. She is also the author of our annual guide to Winnable criminal justice reforms. Sarah holds a B.A. in Law, Letters and Society from the University of Chicago and is a graduate of the University of Chicago Law School. Prior to joining the Prison Policy Initiative, Sarah was the Director of Policy at the Chicago Appleseed Center for Fair Courts where she worked intensively on the Pretrial Fairness Act in collaboration with the Illinois Network for Pretrial Justice. She also worked as a Staff Attorney at the Lawndale Christian Legal Center where she represented young people accused of crimes in juvenile and adult court.


Brian Nam-Sonenstein Brian Nam-Sonenstein is the Senior Editor and Researcher at the Prison Policy Initiative. He is the author of numerous publications including the reports Cut-rate care: The systemic problems shaping 'healthcare' behind bars and Bad Behavior: How prison disciplinary policies manufacture misconduct. Before joining the organization, Brian worked as a columnist and reporter for news outlets including the Portland Phoenix, Marijuana Moment, and Shadowproof, where he is a co-founder and publishing editor. He also organized the Marvel Cooke Fellowship to produce reporting by incarcerated writers. Brian is a co-host of the Beyond Prisons podcast and has been actively producing media for over a decade on issues ranging from drug decriminalization to prisoner-led organizing. His work has been published in Solitary Watch, Truthout, Prison Legal News, SF Bay View, and more. In addition to his work as a journalist, Brian served as the Director of Public Relations for NisonCo, a cannabis & psychedelics PR firm. He holds a B.A. in International Relations from Wheaton College.


Emmett Sanders is the Policy and Advocacy Associate at the Prison Policy Initiative. He has authored several publications including briefings on pushing back against common jail construction arguments, parole grant rates, and debunking electronic monitoring as an alternative to incarceration. Emmett is a critically impacted researcher, writer, and advocate who holds a B.A. in English and a Master of Public Affairs from the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley. Prior to joining the Prison Policy Initiative, Emmett was the Project Researcher and Organizer on MediaJustice’s Challenging E-Carceration and Unshackling Freedom campaigns where he became an expert on electronic monitoring. He worked previously as the Justice and Reentry Advocate at Cunningham Township Supervisor’s Office in Urbana, Illinois. He has been engaged in advocacy work with the Illinois Coalition to Challenge Electronic Monitoring as well as the Urbana Fair Housing Coalition.


Regan Huston is the Prison Policy Initiative's Digital Communications Strategist. She is passionate about making sense of the world's chaos and improving media literacy across all social platforms. She holds a B.J. in Convergence Journalism from the University of Missouri-Columbia. Before joining the Prison Policy Initiative, Regan worked as a Senior Social Media Manager for The Messenger and developed content and social strategies for NowThis and Vice News. She also serves on the board of the iSpeakMedia Foundation which is focused on advancing media literacy education across the nation.


Jacob Kang-Brown is a Senior Researcher at the Prison Policy Initiative. Before joining the organization, Jacob was a Senior Researcher at the Vera Institute of Justice where he specialized in analyzing incarceration trends. His work has appeared in The Lancet Public Health, The New York Review of Books, Contexts, SSM-Population Health, The Atlantic, Dissent, USA Today, and American Jail Magazine, in addition to the Vera Institute of Justice. He holds a PhD in Criminology, Law & Society from the University of California, Irvine and bachelor’s degree from Wheaton College (Ill). Jacob has also worked for Physicians for Social Responsibility-Los Angeles and the L.A. County Commission on Human Relations.




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