President & Director

The Vera Institute of Justice is powered by hundreds of advocates, researchers, and policy experts working to end mass incarceration, protect immigrants’ rights, restore dignity to people behind bars, and build safe and thriving communities. Founded in 1961 to advocate for alternatives to money bail in New York City, Vera is a leading and nonpartisan national organization that partners with impacted communities and government leaders to advance evidence-driven solutions that deliver safety, accountability and justice a Action, the Institute’s 501(c)(4) sister organization founded in 2021, harnesses the power of advocacy, lobbying, and political strategy to achieve the same aims.

The new leader will be charged with guiding Vera and Vera Action at a pivotal moment in its history. Criminal justice and immigration reform are facing significant opposition and escalating threats from government. From mass deportations, to punitive policy approaches, and unprecedented attacks on the legal community and civil society, the agenda to advance safety, accountability and justice is facing its gravest environment in decades.

Vera and Vera Action not only advance transformative policy and practice in cities and states across the country, but serve as hubs for information sharing, coordination, organizing and strategy to combat these threats and advance justice.

With a staff of about 200 people, the organizations are headquartered in Brooklyn, New York, with offices in Washington, DC, Los Angeles, and New Orleans. Vera and Vera Action are equal opportunity employers with a commitment to diversity in the workplace. We expect our staff to embody our values of racial equity, collaboration, respect, commitment, and independence—both in our outward-facing work and the internal culture of our workplace.

We value a range of experiences in people’s educational backgrounds and encourage people who have been directly impacted by the criminal justice and immigration systems to join our efforts.

For more information, visit vera.org and veraaction.org.

The next leader will guide Vera and Vera Action through the next phase of evolution, overseeing all aspects of both organizations, continuing to drive innovation and sustain impact. Leveraging Vera’s unmatched track record of identifying, testing, and spreading evidence-based solutions, they will continue to advance nationwide and place-based efforts to end the overcriminalization and mass incarceration of people of color, people experiencing poverty, and immigrants.

Deploying Vera Action’s advocacy acumen, political strategy and networks, they will amplify and scale solutions and work to mitigate the politics of crime and fear that stand in the way of good policy and practice. They will also serve as the primary external spokesperson, fundraiser, and advocate for both organizations and the millions of people impacted by the criminal justice and immigration systems.

Responsibilities include, but are not limited to:

• Serve as the senior-most executive tasked with achieving Vera and Vera Action’s missions;
• Oversee the implementation and refinement of programmatic work, which includes:
  • Pursuing a portfolio of initiatives that maximize the reach, depth, scalability, and durability of Vera’s impact, focusing on work that represents the highest and best use of Vera’s unique capabilities;
  • Continuing to evolve Vera’s innovation, planning and strategy development processes;
  • Building initiative strategies that deploy the right mix of research, technical assistance, communications and advocacy capacities to deliver maximum impact;
  • Ensuring high-performance and outcome-focused execution and adaptation of strategies through robust deployment of monitoring, evaluation and learning.
• With Vera Action’s Director, set and build out the strategy for Vera Action, driving decision-making related to lobbying, advocacy, and political initiatives in service of changing both narratives and policies around the criminal legal and immigration systems;
• Work closely with both organizations’ boards to ensure strong governance, fostering a collaborative relationship to achieve each…