Board of Directors

Jason Bell

Jason Bell has dedicated more than 21 years of his life to better understanding the motivations of crime, punishment and the legal system. He is currently an adjunct professor in the Department of Criminal Justice, Sociology and Counseling at San Francisco State University. Starting as program director at SF State Project Rebound in 2005, Bell became regional director of the then-nine Project Rebound chapters in 2016. Since 2019, he has served as both executive director at SF State and director of programs for the CSU Project Rebound Consortium, comprising 19 campuses and growing. With an extensive history of working with the prison and jail population, Bell – himself formerly incarcerated for nearly 10 years – has worked with the community beyond campus borders, helped establish the San Francisco Safe Communities Reentry Council, and assisted programs modeled after Project Rebound at Rutgers University, Portland State University and UNLV. Bell serves on the board of directors of the SF State University Corporation and as an advisory board member of the California System-Involved Bar Association, and he serves as one of the newest board members of the Prison Law Office. He earned his M.S. degree in counseling from SF State University in 2011, and recently received the award for Distinguished Contribution to Justice from the American Society of Criminology (ASC) 2024.

Chesa Boudin

Chesa Boudin is the founding executive director of Berkeley's Criminal Law & Justice Center, a policy and advocacy hub. He served as San Francisco’s elected district attorney from 2020 until 2022. During that time, Boudin implemented bold reforms to ensure that the criminal legal system delivered safety and justice for all San Franciscans. His achievements include a significant expansion of the office’s victim services’ division; eliminating prosecutors’ use of money bail; prosecuting police for excessive force; suing the manufacturers of ghost guns; expanding diversion to address root causes of crime, and an historic reduction in incarceration. During his time in office, both violent and non-violent crime fell by double digits. Prior to his election Boudin clerked for two federal judges and worked for years as a deputy public defender. He is a graduate of Yale College and Yale Law School and attended Oxford on a Rhodes Scholarship. His biological parents spent a combined 62 years in prison starting when he was a baby.

Vanita Gaonkar

Vanita is a Managing Director at DFO Management, LLC, the family investment office of Dell Technologies Founder, Chairman, and CEO Michael Dell and his family. At DFO Vanita oversees investments across asset classes, on behalf of the Michael and Susan Dell Foundation and the family. Prior to joining DFO, Vanita was Managing Director of Public Investments at the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, where she spent seven years focused on the management of the public investments portfolio. Before joining RWJF, Vanita was the Director of Research at Ehrenkranz Partners, L.P., a New York-based multi-family office, where she was responsible for investments across asset classes. Prior to joining Ehrenkranz Partners, L.P. Vanita was a Director in Alternative Investments at Credit Suisse, where she oversaw research and portfolio management across several investment strategies. Prior to Credit Suisse, she held roles in asset management at The Blackstone Group and J.P. Morgan Chase.

Vanita serves on the Investment Committee of Wesleyan University, the Board of the Prison Law Office, a California-based organization that strives for fair and humane treatment of incarcerated people, and Verger Capital Management, an outsourced CIO firm managing money for non- profit clients. She earned her BA in Mathematics and Economics from Wesleyan University, Middletown, Connecticut.

Nick Gregoratos

Nick Gregoratos recently retired as  Director of San Francisco Sheriff’s Office, Prisoner Legal Services (PLS), a prisoner advocacy unit unique to law enforcement. Gregoratos interned for PLS in 1997 while attending law school. He became a PLS attorney in 1999 and was appointed its Director in 2008.

PLS helps justice-involved people in myriad ways. This includes filing court actions separate from an individual's current charges, registering incarcerated people who are eligible to vote, and dealing with out-of-county warrants. PLS directs people in custody to information and community-based resources, which may assist individuals with preserving their housing, and managing child custody and support matters. PLS also provides referrals to human services agencies, supporting the needs of returning residents.

As a young man, Gregoratos struggled with addiction and served time in the old San Bruno jail. In 1987, after the birth of his first son, he got clean and sober and turned his life around while attending Massachusetts Bay Community College.

Continuing his education, Gregoratos earned Bachelor’s degrees in Theater Arts and Elementary Education from the University of Massachusetts and a Certificate of Special Education from San Francisco State University. He taught fourth and fifth grade in the San Francisco Unified School District for five years. In 1999, Gregoratos earned a Juris Doctorate from the University of San Francisco School of Law and was admitted to the California Bar in December of the same year. 

Gregoratos is inspired to help people in the criminal justice system change, returning the help he received when he was in need. In addition to his work with the Prison Law Office, serves on the Board of San Francisco-based Alcoholics Rehabilitation Association House First Step Home, and is Trustee-at-Large for the California Alpine Club’s Echo Lodge in El Dorado County.

Jean Lu

Jean is the managing director of research team strategy at Parnassus Investments. Prior to joining Parnassus Investments in 2023, Jean was a managing director at Cambridge Associates and chief investment officer for the firm’s outsourced investment-office (OCIO) business. She led an investment team, focusing on manager selection across public and private asset classes. She authored two white papers on risk management. Previously, she worked at JPMorgan Asset Management, managing U.S. equity portfolios.

She received an MBA with honors from the University of California at Berkeley and holds undergraduate degrees in business and math from MIT. Jean serves on a number of non-profit boards and committees. Jean lives in the San Francisco Bay Area and is mother to two boys.

Claire McDonnell

Claire has dedicated her career to using ingenuity and technology to solve real human problems, especially as a leader of diverse teams of hardworking, compassionate people. Claire is a co-founder and President of True Link Financial, a mission-driven financial technology company that provides life-changing financial tools for people with complex needs and their family and professional caregivers.

Before True Link, Claire worked at a range of mission-driven organizations. At The Bridgespan Group she advised nonprofits on how to increase their social impact; at Teach for America, she helped recruit college students to become teachers; at the venture capital firm Innovation Endeavors, she was a Runway Entrepreneur focused on social innovation.

Claire has also volunteered with a range of nonprofit organizations, including as a college instructor for people incarcerated at San Quentin State Prison with the Prison University Project (Now Mt. Tamalpais College), as a Leadership Council member at Shepherd’s Center Of America, an interfaith organization which focuses on supporting elders to age well in community, and as Board Member for the Prison Law Office, which advocates for the civil rights of incarcerated people. Claire is dedicated to contributing to equity within the technology sector, as a member of communities like Leaders in Tech and as advisor to other mission-driven startups. Claire was a Fulbright Scholar in Argentina and holds a BA (Phi Beta Kappa) from Columbia University.

Seth Morris

Seth grew up in Los Angeles, moved to New York to attend college at Columbia University, and then moved back to California to teach third grade in Compton from 2001-2003. Teaching in Compton lit a fire within him to go to law school and make a positive change in the world.

After graduating law school from the University of California, Berkeley School of Law in 2006, Seth began his legal career working for one of the largest firms in the world, Latham & Watkins LLP. Although his career started at a well-known firm, he felt disconnected and sought something more fulfilling.

This led him to accept the role of Deputy Public Defender in Alameda County, CA, where he gained experience representing clients charged with all sorts of crimes. As a public defender, Seth’s experience gave him room to navigate complex situations for his clients and give them hope in their lowest moments. Following his years as a public defender, he knew he wanted something bigger for himself. He became a partner at Cooper, Cooper & Morris for five years, expanding his practice to all nine Bay Area counties and beyond. In 2021, he was ready to launch his own firm and started Morris Law.

Seth is currently the Managing Attorney of Morris Law, PC, a criminal defense firm based in Berkeley, California and serving clients throughout the Bay Area in state and federal court.  He manages a team of three attorneys and the firm has been called upon in recent years to represent clients in some of the most complex and significant criminal cases in Northern California.  Seth has conducted over 35 jury trials, currently focusing primarily on clients who are facing a possible sentence of life in prison.  A jury trial is a unique craft, combining oral advocacy, fierce cross-examination, and compelling storytelling. Through both trial work and negotiations, Seth and his team have resolved hundreds of cases favorably for their clients. 

Throughout his experience, Seth has been called on to comment on current events in the legal industry and has been viewed as a thought-leader on topics like the use – or misuse – of police body cameras.

Keramet Reiter

Keramet Reiter is Professor in the Department of Criminology, Law & Society and at the School of Law at the University of California, Irvine. She holds an M.A. from the John Jay College of Criminal Justice at the City University of New York and a J.D. and Ph.D. in Jurisprudence & Social Policy from the University of California, Berkeley. She has evaluated the impacts of: medical experimentation on prisoners, gun control laws, and long-term solitary confinement in the United States and internationally. She is the author of two books: 23/7: Pelican Bay Prison and the Rise of Long-Term Solitary Confinement (Yale University Press, 2016) and Mass Incarceration (Oxford University Press, 2017), and the co-editor (with Alexa Koenig) of the anthology Extreme Punishment: Comparative Studies in Detention, Incarceration and Solitary Confinement (Palgrave Press, 2015). She is the principal investigator on projects funded by the Bureau of Justice Assistance, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the National Science Foundation, and the Langeloth Foundation. In addition to her research, she has a long-standing commitment to prison education; she has taught in prisons in Massachusetts, New York, and California and is now the Director of LIFTED, a program to offer University of California bachelor's degrees to incarcerated students. She is also the co-founder of UCI PrisonPandemic, a digital archive of incarcerated Californian’s stories of living through the COVID-19 pandemic. Finally, and proudly, she worked as a litigation assistant at the Prison Law Office in the early 2000s.

Vishal Shah

While in college, Vishal had the privilege of teaching a year-long creative writing workshop to a group of incarcerated men.  The experience led Vishal to join Teach for America as a middle school math teacher in New York City.  Post-teaching, Vishal worked as a consultant at Cambridge Associates where he managed assets for large non-profit endowments, primarily focusing on venture capital and private equity portfolios, and later at the Bridgespan Group where he supported nonprofits and state governments on large-scale impact strategy.

Vishal has spent the past decade in education and education technology, as an executive at Summit Public Schools and College Track. He currently works at a mission-driven startup, Handshake, focused on expanding access to jobs for early career talent.  He has maintained a focus in prison education and reform through his work as an instructor with the Prison University Project, consultant for Five Keys Charter School, and his board service with Prison Law Office and the Insight Garden Program. 

Vishal holds an MBA from UC Berkeley where he was named a Dean’s fellow, a Masters in Education Leadership from the Broad Center at Yale School of Management, a MS in Teaching in Secondary Mathematics from Pace University, and a BA in Economics with Honors from the University of Michigan.

Adrienne Yandell

Adrienne Yandell is a non-profit leader and social entrepreneur specializing in post-crisis economic recovery. Her work has included the creation and scale of three international social enterprises, resulting in directly attributable growth of the Jordanian tech economy and the enablement of female and refugee access to the formal economy. She has additionally served in the US Foreign Service and led the award-winning design and development of our nation’s most complex and impactful national security systems. Her most recent work focuses on the economic recovery of individuals and communities impacted by mass incarceration in the United States. Her achievements have been recognized by the Skoll Centre for Social Entrepreneurship, the Saïd Foundation, the Open Hands Initiative, and the Oklahoma Center for Non-Profits among others.

Adrienne holds a bachelor’s in Ocean Engineering from MIT and an MBA from Oxford, where she graduated with distinction. In her spare time, she can be found training for her next Ironman or exploring a new corner of the world.