Michela Bowman is a Soros Fellow graduate of New York University's (NYU) School of Law and has a master's degree from NYU's Law and Society Program. She joined Vera in March 2005 as counsel to the Commission on Safety and Abuse in America's Prisons.She has helped to develop standards for the National Prison Rape Elimination Commission and is now a project director in Vera’s Washington DC office, where she is working with states and counties to learn more about the most effective models of oversight for prisons and jails and to promote stronger correctional oversight. Michela has worked at the Prisoners' Rights Project of the New York City Legal Aid Society and has done research on Hepatitis C care in Georgia’s prisons for the Southern Center for Human Rights in Atlanta. Michela has also taught an undergraduate seminar at NYU on race and the criminal justice system.