Vera Institute of Justice

Savannah Castañeda was a program associate with Vera’s Reshaping Prosecution initiative to help district attorneys center racial equity while being accountable to their communities. She was instrumental in the team’s work to advance a non-traffic safety stop legislative campaign in Suffolk County, Massachusetts.

Before joining Vera in 2021, Savannah worked at the Los Angeles Mayor’s Office of Public Safety within the Department of Gang Reduction & Youth Development managing programs and partnerships that provided housing, employment, and health care to system-impacted people and their families, before transitioning to the New York City Mayor’s Office, where her work helped lead to the city reducing stop-and-frisks of marginalized youth.

In addition to her work, Savannah is an organizer and facilitator at the Anti-Recidivism Coalition.

Savannah is a first-generation Latina scholar who holds bachelor’s degrees in communications and sociology from the University of California, Santa Barbara, and an MBA and MSW from Columbia University.