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Staff
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Anita Khashu
Director [ON LEAVE], Center on Immigration and Justice
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Anita Khashu manages Vera’s projects involving immigrants in the justice system. These projects include a national program to provide detainees in immigration detention facilities with legal rights presentations and pro se legal assistance; a national pro bono outreach program to provide legal representation to unaccompanied children in the immigration system; and a program to provide people with limited English proficiency language access to policing services. Anita joined Vera at the Bureau of Justice Assistance in South Africa in May 2002, where she managed Vera’s technical assistance to the Legal Aid Board of South Africa, including helping to implement recently-passed legislation creating a formalized system of plea bargaining. In April 2003, Anita returned to New York and moved to the Institute's planning department, where she worked on projects involving immigrant relations with the police. Prior to joining Vera, Anita worked as a staff attorney at the Legal Aid Society of New York. Anita received her B.A. from Tufts University and a J.D. from Boston University School of Law.
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Oren Root
Interim Director, Center on Immigration and Justice
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e-mail:
tel: (212) 376-3106
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Oren Root has been affiliated with Vera or its spinoff organizations since 1992. He was national director from 1997 to 2000 of Vera’s Appearance Assistance Program, a successful pilot alternative to detention program for immigrants facing deportation. From 2001 to 2007 he was deputy director of the Police Assessment Resource Center (PARC), which fosters police accountability and civilian oversight of law enforcement. He previously served as interim director of Vera’s Bureau of Justice Assistance in South Africa and as director of the Court Employment Project, an alternative to incarceration program for young felony offenders run by the Center for Alternative Sentencing and Employment Services (CASES). Prior to that, Oren was a criminal defense lawyer in New York for 18 years. He is a graduate of Columbia College and Fordham Law School.
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Nina Siulc
Director of Research, Center on Immigration and Justice
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e-mail:
tel: (212) 376-3130
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After working as a supervision officer and researcher at Vera’s Appearance Assistance Program, Nina Siulc re-joined Vera in spring 2005. As director of research for the Center on Immigration and Justice, Nina has managed a national evaluation of the Legal Orientation Program, research on unaccompanied children, and design of a new data collection instrument to assess the extent of human trafficking in New York City. Nina previously worked on a number of interdisciplinary research projects on migration. As a Fulbright Scholar and fellow of the Social Science Research Council, she spent several years studying how Dominicans deported from the United States following criminal convictions reintegrate into Dominican society, and how Dominican law enforcement agencies respond to deportation. Nina holds graduate degrees in cultural anthropology and a certificate in culture and media from New York University.
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Susan M. Shah
Senior Planner, Center on Immigration and Justice
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e-mail:
tel: (212) 376-4026
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Susan Shah directs Vera’s projects dealing with improving police-immigrant relations, including the Translating Justice technical assistance project, which assists law enforcement and other justice and public safety agencies in serving multilingual communities. Previously, she was a project director at New York University School of Medicine's Center for Immigrant Health (CIH) where she directed projects to facilitate immigrant access to health care and cultural competence in health care. Before joining CIH, she was an associate attorney in the immigration practice of Bryan Cave LLP. Susan earned her J.D. from Northeastern University School of Law, her M.P.H. from Tufts University, and her B.A. in journalism from Drake University.
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Stacey Strongarone
Director of Legal Orientation and Unaccompanied Children Programs, Center on Immigration and Justice
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e-mail:
tel: (212) 376-3074
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Stacey Strongarone joined Vera in September 2006 to work on a national program to provide detainees in immigration detention facilities with legal rights presentations and pro se legal assistance and a national pro bono outreach program to provide legal representation to unaccompanied children in the immigration system. Previously, Stacey worked as a senior project director at New York University's Center for Community Problem Solving on projects related to criminal justice and reentry, immigrant health, and community economic development. Before law school, Stacey was a legal assistant at San Francisco’s La Raza Centro Legal, working on housing and youth law matters. Stacey received her B.A. from the College of the Holy Cross and J.D. from New York University School of Law.
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Olga Byrne
Program Associate, Center on Immigration and Justice
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e-mail:
tel: (212) 376-3031
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Olga Byrne joined Vera in December 2006 to work primarily on the Unaccompanied Children Project within the Center on Immigration and Justice. Previously, Olga worked as a staff attorney at University Settlement, The Door and, prior to that, as an associate attorney in the commercial litigation department of Thelen, Reid & Priest, LLP. While at Thelen Reid, she worked on several pro bono immigration cases, involving asylum and special immigrant juvenile claims. Olga earned her bachelor’s degree from Cornell University and J.D. from Fordham University School of Law.
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Zhifen Cheng
Research Associate, Center on Immigration and Justice
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e-mail:
tel: (212) 376-3175
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Zhifen Cheng joined Vera in January 2006 to work on several immigration and justice projects, including the evaluation of the Legal Orientation Program, the Human Trafficking project, and the Unaccompanied Children Project. She specializes in research design, statistical analysis, and program evaluation. Before coming to Vera, she worked in a large health facility in New York City, providing statistical analysis and doing measurement research in clinical psychology. She holds an M.A. in measurement, statistics, and evaluation and an M.A. in sociology. She is currently working on her Ph.D. in measurement, evaluation, and statistics at Teachers College, Columbia University.
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Rodolfo Estrada
Program Associate, Center on Immigration and Justice
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e-mail:
tel: (212) 376-3045
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Rodolfo joined Vera in October 2007 to work on Vera's national Translating Justice language access project with law enforcement and other criminal justice stakeholders. Rodolfo comes to Vera with experience in language access and ensuring immigrant access to government services, particularly education. Previously, he worked as a policy analyst at Advocates for Children, where he worked on the Immigrant Students Rights Project. He has also served as a law clerk for a plaintiff’s side employment law firm and spent two summers as a legal fellow with La Raza Centro Legal, a Latino/immigrant’s rights nonprofit in San Francisco. Rodolfo has a B.A. from Stanford University, a law degree from the University of California, Hastings College of the Law, and a master's degree in bilingual/bicultural education studies from Columbia University’s Teachers College.
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Nicole Akai Hala
Senior Research Associate, Center on Immigration and Justice
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e-mail:
tel: (212) 376-3560
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Nicole Akai Hala joined Vera in March 2007 to work on the Human Trafficking Assessment Project. She recently earned her Ph.D. in sociology at Columbia University, where she was an Andrew Wellington Cordier Fellow, teaching in Columbia’s School of International and Public Affairs. Prior to graduate school, Nicole worked in the fields of human rights, publishing, and journalism. Her research interests include transnational social processes and the impact of international institutions and nongovernmental organizations on national citizenship and minority policies.
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Joe Hirsch
Research Associate, Translating Justice
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e-mail:
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Joe Hirsch conducts research on relations between U.S. law enforcement and immigrant communities, and immigrants in detention awaiting deportation. He also works as a freelance reporter. Joe joined Vera in 1999 as a supervision officer for the Appearance Assistance Program, which tested intensive community supervision as an alternative to detention for immigrants in immigration removal proceedings. Between 2000 and 2003, Joe led research projects in Chile and Brazil studying the effectiveness of national and local criminal justice reforms. Previously, he worked as a case manager for a court diversion program, a court interpreter, a crime victim counselor, and a teacher.
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Rose Holandez
Program Analyst, Center on Immigration and Justice
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e-mail:
tel: (212) 376-3101
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Rose Holandez joined Vera in October 2007 to work primarily on the Legal Orientation Program and Unaccompanied Children Pro Bono Project. She recently completed her M.P.A. at Princeton University’s Woodrow Wilson School. Among other things, she has worked as an intern with the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees in Bangkok, Thailand, where she helped improve protection programs for women and girl refugees on the Thai-Burma border. This past year, she also served as a graduate consultant with a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation initiative to rebuild mental health care services for low-income women and children in New Orleans.
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Arnold Son
Research Associate, Center on Immigration and Justice
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e-mail:
tel: (212) 376-3051
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Arnold Son joined Vera in January 2006 after completing his coursework for an M.S. in urban policy at Milano New School for Management and Urban Policy. While pursuing his master’s degree, he worked as a research associate for the Community Development Research Center at the New School University, performing both qualitative and quantitative analyses. He also worked with the New York City Charter Revision Commission, evaluating the City’s system of reporting against national standards of good governance in order to offer suggestions for improvement. Arnold received his bachelor’s degree in economics from Colgate University in 2002.
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