CJA Staff
Almudena Bernabeu
International Attorney / Transitional Justice Program Director
Carolyn Patty Blum
Senior Legal Advisor
Lindsay Bourne
Legal Fellow
Andrea Evans
Legal Director
Natasha Fain
Staff Attorney
Scott Gilmore
Researcher & Writer
Pamela Merchant
Executive Director
Kathy Roberts
Staff Attorney
Nushin
Sarkarati
Staff Attorney
Maria DeGaetano
Development & Outreach Associate
Almudena Bernabeu, International Attorney & Director of Transitional Justice Program, is licensed to practice law in Spain and joined CJA full time in 2003. Ms. Bernabeu works on US-based civil Alien Tort Statute litigation against human rights abusers and universal jurisdiction criminal human rights prosecutions before the Spanish National Court. Ms. Bernabeu is also Director of CJA’s Transitional Justice Program. She has worked on asylum and human rights cases for Amnesty International-Spain and researched and investigated cases before the European Court of Human Rights. She also serves as a board member at Equatorial Guinea Justice, a US based Human Rights organization. She is Vice-President of the Spanish Association for Human Rights (APDHE), and a member of the advisory board of the Peruvian Institute of Forensic Anthropology (EPAF), a forensic group providing evidence on human rights violations investigations and prosecutions. Ms. Bernabeu holds a Law degree from the University of Valencia School of Law, where she specialized in Public International Law.
Carolyn Patty Blum, Senior Legal Advisor, was a key member of the legal team in CJA’s El Salvador and Chile cases and is now working as a consultant for CJA. She is a Clinical Professor of Law Emeritus at U.C. Berkeley School of Law. She founded the law school’s International Human Rights Law Clinic which she directed from 1998-2002. She has been involved in a range of human rights policy and legal issues, including trafficking in women, the rights of migrant workers, and the protection of women and gay refugees. She is a Visiting Professor at the University of Oxford, Masters of International Law Program and Adjunct Professor at Columbia University Law School. Ms. Blum also consults with a range of other NGOs, including the International Center for Transitional Justice and the Center for Constitutional Rights on their Guantánamo Global Justice Initiative.
Lindsay Bourne, Legal Fellow, joined CJA in September of 2009 as a Legal Fellow. Before coming to CJA, she was a summer associate at the law firm Weil, Gotshal & Manges, LLP in Washington, D.C. She graduated from The George Washington School of Law in May 2009 with honors and was awarded the Jennie Hassler Walburn Award for excellence in civil procedure and the Judge Albert H. Grenadier Award for representing her school at the Jessup Moot Court Competition. During law school she volunteered at a workers’ rights clinic and wrote her legal thesis on the role of international humanitarian law in regulating riot control agents. Prior to law school she worked in Barcelona, Spain as an English teacher. She received her B.A. from Colgate University with a double major in History and Political Science.
Andrea Evans, Legal Director, comes to CJA with a decade of litigation and trial experience with the firms of Steptoe & Johnson LLP and Keker & Van Nest, LLP. She also worked as a consultant for Human Rights First on the viability of potential claims against the U.S. government for illegal detention and torture of prisoners of war in Iraq and Afghanistan. She has also worked for Kituo Cha Sheria, the legal aid organization in Nairobi, during Kenya’s first multi-party election. Ms. Evans was Associate Communications Director for Wesley Clark’s 2004 presidential campaign. She currently serves as a Member of the San Francisco Family Violence Council and as a Commissioner with the San Francisco Fire Commission. She has also served as a Commissioner for the San Francisco Commission on the Status of Women. She received her law degree from Harvard Law School and a B.A. in Political Science from Stanford University. She is admitted to practice in California, New York and Washington, D.C.
Natasha Fain, Staff Attorney, joined CJA in July 2008. Ms. Fain was a litigation associate with Morrison & Foerster LLP for four years, where she practiced complex civil litigation and worked pro bono on civil rights and human rights cases and publications with the ACLU, Stop Prisoner Rape, the California Habeas Project, and the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights. She currently serves as Chair of the Social Justice Committee of Congregation Emanu-El. She graduated with honors from Stanford University in 1998, receiving her B.A. in International Relations. She received her J.D. from the University of California, Berkeley School of Law in 2003. She is admitted to practice in California and is fluent in French and Spanish.
Scott Gilmore, Writer & Researcher, joined CJA in December 2008. He brings a background in social justice and experience as a writer, editor and performer. In 2001, he co-founded Le Petit Théâtre de l’Absolu, an international theater company performing original work on subjects of power, memory and conflict. Mr. Gilmore is also a professional musician: from 2001 to 2006, he performed and recorded four albums with the Silver Mount Zion Memorial Orchestra and Black Ox Orkestar. Scott received his B.A. in English and Jewish Studies from McGill University, where he specialized in the comparative literature of trauma. He speaks French and Yiddish and volunteers as an interpreter for Holocaust survivors and refugees from Central Africa. Mr. Gilmore is working for CJA part-time and is in his first year at George Washington School of Law.
Pamela Merchant, 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.
Kathy Roberts, Staff Attorney, joined CJA in June 2009. A philosopher and social theorist turned activist and litigator, Ms. Roberts has fought for workers deprived of their basic labor rights, including the right to minimum wages and overtime. She has led multiple class action and Unfair Competition Act cases in federal and state court. Before that, Ms. Roberts fought for the rights of poor people as a deputy public defender. She has published articles on extraterritorial application of US civil rights law and on US human rights diplomacy. Ms. Roberts has considerable teaching experience and currently serves as President of the Board of Trustees for the Playwrights Foundation. She received her BA with honors from the University of Tennessee, Knoxville in 1992, her PhD in Philosophy from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign in 2001, and her JD from the University of California, Berkeley in 2004. Ms. Roberts is admitted to practice in California, and she speaks Spanish.
Maria DeGaetano, Development & Outreach Associate, joined CJA in June 2010. She interned and worked at CJA for three summers as an undergraduate doing research, translations, and assisting the Development & Outreach Director. Ms. DeGaetano graduated with honors from Loyola University Chicago in 2009 with a B.A. in International Studies, a B.S. in Anthropology, and a double minor in Latin American Studies and Women & Gender Studies. Since moving from Guatemala to the United States in 2000, she has worked with immigrant communities seeking asylum both in the Bay Area and in Italy as an interpreter and translator. Ms. DeGaetano is fluent in Spanish, conversational in Italian, and has begun classes in Mayan K’iche’.
