Board of Directors
William Aceves, Secretary, Strategic Planning Committee Chair, is a Professor of Law and Associate Dean for Academic Affairs at California Western School of Law. Professor Aceves frequently works on projects involving the domestic application of international law and has represented several human rights and civil liberties organizations as amicus curiae counsel in cases before the federal courts, including the U.S. Supreme Court. He has authored numerous publications on human rights and international law including The Anatomy of Torture, the Amnesty International USA Safe Haven report and is coauthor of The Law of Consular Access. He serves of the National Board of the International Law Students Association and on the Executive Committee of the American Branch of the International Law Association. He has also served on the National Boards of Amnesty International USA and the American Civil Liberties Union. Professor Aceves has appeared before the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, the U.N. Special Rapporteur on Migrants, and the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights.
Chester Atkins, is Founder and Director of ADS Ventures, Inc. He served as a U.S. Representative from Massachusetts 5th District (1985-93), Massachusetts Democratic State Chair, and a member of the Massachusetts State Senate and House of Representatives. He was a Board Member of the U.S. Section of Amnesty International and remains an active member of several nonprofit and for-profit boards. Chet is also the Board Chair of Oxfam America.
William Belding, Treasurer, is an adjunct professor at American University’s School of International Service in Washington, D.C. He was President and CEO of Vietnam Veterans of America Foundation, an international humanitarian organization that co-founded the International Campaign to Ban Landmines, the winner of the 1997 Nobel Peace Prize. He also served as Chief of Staff of Common Cause. Mr. Belding is an attorney and practiced real estate law in California before becoming fully engaged in the nonprofit world. He was a Navy SEAL and served in Vietnam.
Maryam Elahi, is the Director of the International Women’s Program at the Open Society Institute. Prior to OSI, Ms. Elahi was the founding director of the Human Rights Program at Trinity College. Ms. Elahi was previously the Advocacy Director on the Middle East, North Africa and Europe for Amnesty International in DC. She has also worked at the Lawyer’s Committee for Human Rights. Ms. Elahi is the chair of the International Human Rights Committee of the American Bar Association and has served on numerous boards including the Women’s Commission for Refugee Women and Children, the ACLU of CT and AI’s Policy Board.
Gerald Gray, a psychotherapist and licensed clinical social worker, founded CJA in 1998. His experience with torture survivors in private practice motivated him to found Survivors International, which was one of the first torture treatment centers in the country. He saw that organization’s first patient in 1990. While working at Survivors, he discovered the pervasive problem of torturers living in the U.S. This injustice spurred him to create CJA to provide legal redress to survivors of human rights violations. In 2001 he left CJA to direct a new torture treatment program in San Jose, the Center for Survivors of Torture, affiliated with Asian Americans for Community Involvement. He is now co-director of the Institute for Redress & Recovery at Santa Clara University. Mr. Gray serves on the boards of directors of The Canadian Centre for International Justice, and The International Institute for Criminal Investigation.
Richard Leigh is a retired businessman. He has held positions in several credit unions since 1967, including CEO and President of the Auto Club Federal Credit Union and of the California State Employees Credit Union No. 2. Mr. Leigh was Chief of Party for the Caribbean Region of The U.S. Economic Mission to the Credit Union Development Program. He also worked as a stock broker with J. Barth & Co. and was a registered representative with the New York Stock Exchange. He helped establish credit unions in Chile during three years with the Peace Corps (1964-1966).
Pamela Merchant, President and Executive Director, joined CJA in October 2005. She is an attorney with twenty years experience in the conduct and management of complex state and federal litigation. Ms. Merchant spent eight years as a federal prosecutor with the U. S. Department of Justice, Criminal Division, where she specialized in white collar prosecutions. More recently, she was Special Counsel to the California Attorney General where she coordinated the affirmative litigation filed by the State in connection with the California energy crisis. She has also been a civil prosecutor for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, in addition to representing clients in private practice. She serves on the Board of Directors of the International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission and the Northern California Community Loan Fund. She graduated with honors from Georgetown University and Boston College School of Law and is admitted to practice in California and Massachusetts.
Eileen M. O'Connor, Chair, is Counsel at McDermott Will & Emery, LLP, where she co-leads the Legal Crisis Management section of McDermott's Government Strategies Group and does pro bono work on asylum and trafficking issues. O'Connor received a BS in Business Administration, a JD from Georgetown, and a post-graduate Diploma in World Politics from the London School of Economics. Prior to becoming a lawyer, she spent 24 years as an award-winning journalist for both ABC News and CNN as well as serving as Moscow bureau chief and White House correspondent. O'Connor's coverage won some of journalism's highest awards, including a DuPont, a Peabody, the Overseas Press Club Award, and National Headliner Awards, including one for her investigation into Al-Qaeda after 9/11. She also served as President from 2004 to 2005 for the International Center for Journalists, a non-profit organization dedicated to enabling journalists to build free and independent media worldwide. O'Connor serves on the Advisory Board of the Women's Refugee Committee and FairFund.
Jane Rocamora, Audit Committee Chair, Supervising Attorney in the Harvard Immigration and Refugee Clinic of Greater Boston Legal Services, has spent more than two decades litigating civil, criminal, immigration and human rights cases. She worked for the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights in Rwanda investigating genocide and human rights during its first deployment after the 1994 genocide and for Rwanda's Ministry of Justice as it reconstructed its judicial system. In 2000, Ms. Rocamora was appointed Acting Chief of the Judicial Support Section in Kosovo of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe. She was a Co-Founder of the International Criminal Defense Attorneys Association and currently is an individual member of the Coalition on Women's Human Rights in Conflict Situations, based in Montreal, Canada.
Beth Stephens, Litigation Committee Chair, is Professor at Rutgers University School of Law, Camden. She has written extensively on the enforcement of international human rights norms in domestic courts. She co-authored the leading book on Alien Tort Statute litigation, International Human Rights Litigation in U.S. Courts (Martinus Nijhoff 2nd Ed. 2008). She spent six years working on legal system reform in Nicaragua and another six years as Staff Attorney responsible for the international human rights docket at the Center for Constitutional Rights in New York. She has served as counsel and legal consultant on many international human rights lawsuits.
Wilma B. Wallace, Development Committee Chair, is Vice President and Deputy General Counsel at Gap Inc., a publicly traded, San Francisco based retailer. Prior to joining Gap Inc., in 1994, Ms. Wallace practiced with the law firms of Folger Levin & Kahn and Orrick, Herrington and Sutcliffe where she focused on commercial and employment litigation. Ms. Wallace recently served as Gap Inc.’s representative on the Business Leaders Initiative on Human Rights, an international organization of business leaders which promotes human rights. She also serves on the Steering Committee for Gap Inc.’s African-American affinity group. Ms. Wallace received her undergraduate degree from Brown University and her J.D. from University of Virginia School of Law.
