Steven Bennett President

Steve Bennett is currently the Chief of Staff of the Brookings Institution, an independent policy research organization, providing policymakers and the media the highest quality research, policy recommendations, and analysis on the full range of public policy issues. From 2003-2006, he served as co-founder and Executive Director of The Global Fairness Initiative (GFI), a global leadership project designed to nurture innovations in global economic engagement that drive globalization's benefits to the world's poorest and most marginal populations. From 1996 to 2003, Steven Bennett served as Executive Director of Witness for Peace (WFP), a LAWG member organization dedicated to changing those US policies and corporate practices that exacerbate poverty and oppression in the Americas. WFP works in Mexico, Cuba, Nicaragua and Colombia, has a substantial grassroots presence in 31 states, and focuses primarily on U.S. economic and trade policies, international financial institution reform, the Cuban embargo and counter-narcotics policies in the Americas. Mr. Bennett holds a Masters in Public Policy from Georgetown University, and a B.A. from Colgate University

Heather Foote

Heather Foote is the Political-Community Outreach Coordinator for SEIU United Healthcare Workers-West in Sonoma County, California. She served as Washington Office director for the Unitarian Universalist Service Committee (1989-2003) and most recently the American Friends Service Committee. Previously, she worked for a decade with the Washington Office on Latin America, focusing on U.S. policy to Chile and El Salvador and serving as interim director her last year. She has organized or traveled with congressional delegations to Central America, Colombia and Cuba. With an advocacy background including Latin America, Central Africa, Burma and women's rights, Heather first became involved in human rights and public policy issues in Chile soon after the 1973 coup d'etat. She has an MA in international public policy from Johns Hopkins University (School of Advanced International Studies). In October 2006, Heather relocated to northern California where she will be applying her policy skills in a new environment.

Gary Cozette

Gary L. Cozette is the Program Director of the Chicago Religious Leadership Network on Latin America (CRLN), a 600-member network of both lay and clergy leaders who together work for human rights, justice and peace in Latin America. Prior to this, Gary served as a Presbyterian Church (USA) lay mission worker in El Salvador from 1984-1987 doing human rights reporting from the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of San Salvador to an ecumenical urgent action network in North America. Gary has led over 30 delegations of religious and community leaders to Latin America, including delegations to El Salvador with three current members of Congress from Illinois (1989), Cuba with the Illinois Conference of Churches (2000), and Colombia with Chicago area African-American leaders (2003). Previously, Gary has served on the Board of Governors of the Human Rights Campaign (HRC) as well as the board of CRISPAZ in El Salvador. Gary lives in Chicago with his domestic partner of 16 years, Joseph M. Lada.

Rev. Dr. Stan Hastey

Stan Hastey is the Minister for Mission and Ecumenism of the Alliance of Baptists, a national association of congregations and individual members committed to historic Baptist freedoms. Among its priorities are: siding with the poor, pursuing justice with and for the oppressed, caring for the earth, and working for peace. A native of Oklahoma, Stan grew up in a missionary family in Mexico. He earned his B.A. from Oklahoma Baptist University, where he majored in U.S. government, and his M.Div. and Ph.D. from Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, where his concentrations were in church history and church-state studies. After seminary, Stan worked as a journalist at the Baptist Joint Committee in Washington, covering the White House and the Supreme Court, and reported on and analyzed the rise of the Christian right and the crisis in the Southern Baptist Convention. He has directed the Alliance of Baptists since 1989. Stan participates in his local congregation's (First Baptist Church of Washington) Cuba mission team. He is married and has two adult children.

Reverend Joseph T. Eldridge

Rev. Eldridge is University Chaplain and Adjunct Faculty for School of International Service at American University. Until assuming the position of University Chaplain in 1997, Rev. Eldridge spent more than twenty years working in the public policy arena as advocate and analyst on international human rights and humanitarian issues. In 1991 he established the Washington office of the Lawyers Committee for Human Rights and served as its director for six years. During the mid-1980s he worked in Honduras with a development agency and consulted on development and human rights issues. In 1974 he co-founded the Washington Office on Latin America, a public policy and human rights organization, and served as its director for twelve years. He lived in Santiago Chile from 1970-1973 where he worked for an agency of the United Methodist Church. Rev. Eldridge has a Masters in Theology from the Perkins School of Theology at Southern Methodist University and an MA in International Studies from American University’s School of International Service. He is married to Maria Otero and they have three children.

Daryl Yoder-Bontrager

Daryl Yoder-Bontrager is the director for programs in Latin America and the Caribbean for the Mennonite Central Committee. The Mennonite Central Committee seeks to demonstrate God's love by working among people suffering from poverty, conflict, oppression and natural disaster. MCC's development work around the world is in areas such as education, health, agriculture, peace and justice issues, relief work and job creation.

Jolene Smith, Treasurer

Jolene Smith is the Executive Director and co-founder Free the Slaves, a Washington, DC-based non-profit, non-partisan organization dedicated to eradicating modern slavery around the world. Free the Slaves conducts social science-based research, supports grassroots anti-slavery organizations, works to eliminate slave-made goods from product supply chains, educates the public about the existence of slavery and encourages governments to enforce anti-slavery laws. Before launching Free the Slaves, Jolene worked at the Center for International Policy and the Center of Concern, both in Washington, DC, and at Anderson Consulting in Houston, TX. She graduated from the University of Notre Dame where she was a Notre Dame Scholar and a recipient of the National Security Education Program scholarship to study Quichua in Ecuador.

LAWG Education Fund Board of Directors

William Goodfellow President

William Goodfellow is the executive director of the Center for International Policy in Washington, D.C. The Center sponsors scholarly research and leads activist campaigns to advance policies based on multilateralism, demilitarization, democracy and respect for human rights. Prior to helping establish the Center for International Policy in 1975, Goodfellow was an associate with the Indochina Resource Center, an anti-war think tank.

Bernice Romero is the Advocacy Director for Oxfam International. Oxfam International is an international confederation, comprised of 12 independent non-government organizations, dedicated to fighting poverty and related injustice around the world. Its mission is a just world without poverty and our goal is to enable people to exercise their rights and manage their own lives. Bernice is a vigorous advocate for debt relief and cancellation, fair trade policies, disaster relief and sustainable aid programs.

Carolyn Gallaher

Carolyn Gallaher is an assistant professor in the School of International Service at American University. She teaches courses on Human Geography, Latin American Politics, and Political Violence. Professor Gallaher frequently takes student groups to Mexico. Carolyn's research is closely aligned with her teaching interests. She studies patterns of political violence,and has done extensive research on the Zapatistas in Mexico, the UVF in Northern Ireland, and the US Militia Movement. Her recent book, On the Fault Line: Race, Class, and the American Patriot Movement, chronicles the Kentucky State Militia from 1997-2002.

Todd A. Eisenstadt

Todd A. Eisenstadt teaches political science at American University’s Department of Government. He directs a USAID Higher Education and Development Program grant: “Uniting Law and Society in Oaxaca, Mexico: A Research and Teaching Program” and is finishing a related manuscript “Indians by Choice: Traditional Societies and the State in Southern Mexico.” He is also the author of Courting Democracy in Mexico: Party Strategies and Electoral Institutions (Cambridge University Press, 2004), and academic work, op-ed columns, and policy papers on Mexico’s democratization, US-Mexico relations, and border immigration issues. Formerly an award-winning "police beat" reporter at the Nashville Tennessean, Eisenstadt has conducted research throughout Mexico, as well as in Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, and Peru. He got his PhD at the University of California-San Diego and spent two years as visiting professor of international relations at El Colegio de México.

Eliezer Valentín-Castañon

Eliezer Valentín-Castañon is the Associate General Secretary for the General Commission on Religion and Race at the United Methodist Church. He works on racial justice issues for the United Methodist Church, training United Methodists on inclusiveness and identification of systemic racism in the church and society. Before working for the General Commission, Eliezer worked on public policy issues regarding civil and human rights, anti-racism, public education, separation of church and state, Latin America and the Caribbean, and immigration issues among other things.

Martin Shupack

Martin Shupack is Church World Service’s Associate Director for Public Policy Service and manages CWS's policy advocacy work in Washington, D.C. Church World Service is the global humanitarian aid agency and ministry of 35 Protestant, Orthodox and Anglican denominations in the U.S., working in partnership with local organizations in some 80 countries and addressing the root causes of poverty and powerlessness. Prior to coming to Washington in 1995 Marty and his family served with Mennonite Central Committee in Mexico City. Before that he served in pastoral ministry in Illinois for many years. Marty is married and has three children, and is a member of the Mennonite Church. He is a graduate of the University of Illinois and Harvard Law School.

Jeanne Lemkau

Jeanne Lemkau is a psychologist, writer, and Professor Emerita of Family Medicine and Community Health at Wright State University School of Medicine in Dayton, Ohio. She holds a doctorate in clinical psychology and a master’s in creative non-fiction writing. In the early 1970s she served with the Peace Corps in rural Nicaragua. Subsequently, as a faculty member in academic medicine, she developed curricula in global health, led medical delegations to Nicaragua, and studied and taught about health care in Cuba. She has published widely on cultural issues, psychology, family medicine, and Cuba, and recently collaborated with Dr. David Strug of Yeshiva University on a study of the effects of travel restrictions on Cuban-American families. She currently practices clinical psychology in Yellow Springs, Ohio and teaches at the McGregor School of Antioch University. Since 2000 she has focused her writing and activism efforts on Cuba and U.S.-Cuba policy.

Winifred Tate

Winifred Tate is an assistant professor of anthropology at Colby College in Waterville, Maine, and a visiting research fellow at the National Security Archive. She is the author of Counting the Dead: The Culture and Politics of Human Rights Activism in Colombia (University of California Press Public Anthropology Series, 2007). She has researched political violence, drug trafficking and US foreign policy as a consultant for a number of international organizations, including UNICEF, Human Rights Watch, the Centre for Humanitarian Dialogue, the U.S. Institute of Peace, Human Rights First and Freedom House. She also worked as a senior fellow and Colombian analyst for three years at the Washington Office on Latin America. Her current research focuses on U.S. foreign policy debates during Plan Colombia, and the impact of these policies on the Putumayo department of southern Colombia.

Adriana Beltrán

Adriana Beltrán serves as Washington Office on Latin America’s (WOLA) Associate for Organized Crime and Police Reform. During her ten years with WOLA, Beltrán has worked extensively on Guatemala, including leading WOLA's Central America Advocacy Training Program. Her research into Guatemala's clandestine groups led to the book "Hidden Powers." As part of this work, Beltrán has been a long-time advocate for the establishment of a UN commission to investigate illegal armed groups, an effort that has recently seen positive developments with the approval and establishment of the International Commission against Impunity in Guatemala (CICIG). She holds a Bachelors degree in International Studies and Political Science from Loras College in Dubuque, IA.