Speaker’s Bios

Juvenile Law Center

  • Riya Saha Shah, CEO
    • Riya Saha Shah is the Chief Executive Officer of Juvenile Law Center. Riya began her career at Juvenile Law Center in 2005 as a Sol and Helen Zubrow Fellow in Children’s Law. She is also a leader in Juvenile Law Center’s programmatic work. Since the beginning of her legal career, Riya has engaged in litigation, policy advocacy, and amicus efforts to reduce the harm of the juvenile and criminal legal system, and interrupt entry into the child welfare, or family policing system, and juvenile legal system. Riya is a graduate of Loyola University Chicago School of Law where she was a Civitas ChildLaw Fellow and Editor-in-Chief of The Children’s Legal Rights Journal, and of University of Michigan Ann Arbor where she earned her B.A. in Psychology and American Culture. Before going to law school, Riya taught second grade in Jersey City, New Jersey through Teach for America, and third grade to bilingual students in Detroit, Michigan. Riya is Co-Chair of the Children’s Rights Litigation Committee of the American Bar Association Section of Litigation. 
  • Jessica Feierman, Senior Managing Director
    • Jessica Feierman is the Senior Managing Director of Juvenile Law Center, where she manages Juvenile Law Center’s projects and programs. Jessica engages in impact litigation as well as amicus and appellate advocacy, including co-authoring the lead child advocates amicus briefs in Supreme Court cases successfully challenging harsh sentences and inadequate procedural protections for youth, and serving as lead counsel in federal cases challenging the use of solitary confinement and other harsh conditions in youth facilities. Jessica also engages in state and federal policy advocacy; in collaboration with youth, families, and other national partners, Jessica’s work has contributed to over 20 states eliminating fees and fines for youth in the juvenile legal system. Jessica works closely with youth and communities and has launched youth leadership groups to support these goals. Prior to joining Juvenile Law Center, Jessica was a litigation fellow at the ACLU National Prison Project, a teaching fellow at Georgetown University, and a law clerk to the Honorable Warren J. Ferguson on the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. 
  • Susan Vivian Mangold, Chief Executive Officer Emeritus.
    • Sue returned to Juvenile Law Center in October 2015 and retired in January 2025. She is a Professor Emeritus at University at Buffalo School of Law, where she taught for over 20 years and served as Vice Dean for Academics. She was co-editor of West Publishing’s casebook, Children and the Law: Doctrine, Policy and Practice (7th Edition, 2020). She was the primary investigator for a project funded by the Public Health Law Research Program of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation to study the impact of different types of funding on long-term outcomes for children in foster care. She was a member of The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine’s Committee on the Neurobiological and Socio-behavioral Science of Adolescent Development and Its Applications, which published “The Promise of Adolescence: Realizing Opportunity for All Youth (2019).” Sue is a graduate of Harvard College and Harvard Law School. During law school, she was Executive Director of Harvard Legal Aid and co-founder of the Children’s Rights Project. Upon graduation, she received a Harvard Law School Public Interest Fellowship to work at Juvenile Law Center in 1987, where she worked as a fellow then staff attorney for five years.
  • Marsha Levick, Chief Legal Counsel

  • Bobby Bostic
    • Bobby Bostic is a St. Louis native whose life reflects a powerful journey of adversity, transformation, and redemption. At age 16, in December 1995, he was involved in multiple armed robberies and assaults. After rejecting a plea deal, he was tried and sentenced to 241 years in prison—a controversial punishment that effectively condemned a juvenile to die behind bars. Despite the harsh sentence, Bobby chose the path of self-improvement. Over 25 years of incarceration, he endured personal tragedies, including the deaths of his mother and brother. Instead of succumbing to despair, he committed to change. He earned his G.E.D., a Paralegal Diploma, and an Associate of Science degree, while also completing rehabilitation programs. Passionate about education and expression, Bobby authored several books, including Humbled to the Rise: Still, I Rise, Dear Mama, Mind Diamonds, and Time: Endless Moments in Prison. His writings explore topics from personal growth to social issues, reflecting the depth of his transformation. Bobby’s story challenges the justice system’s treatment of juveniles and highlights the human capacity for change. He now advocates for second chances, juvenile justice reform, and the rehabilitation of incarcerated individuals. Bobby Bostic’s journey is a testament to resilience and the belief that no person is beyond redemption. He hopes to use his experience to inspire others, especially youth, and to push for a system that recognizes growth, not just punishment. His life’s mission is to turn his past into a platform for healing, education, and change.

Panel 1: State Court Litigation

  • Jessica Heldman
    • Jessica K. Heldman is the Fellmeth-Peterson Associate Professor in Child Rights at the University of San Diego School of Law and Executive Director of its Children’s Advocacy Institute (CAI). Since joining the USD Law faculty in 2018, she has taught upper-level courses in Child Rights & Remedies and Youth Law, and all three of CAI’s experiential courses: the Dependency Practicum, the Youth Justice Practicum, and the Child Advocacy Policy Clinic. As Executive Director of CAI, she leads a team of attorneys and student interns in legal and policy advocacy to improve outcomes for children and youth on the local, state, and federal levels. Prof. Heldman writes and presents frequently on issues related to child welfare, youth justice, child safety, and the rights of system-impacted children, with a focus on trauma-informed practices, dual status youth, and commercially sexually exploited children. She co-authored the 4th edition of the casebook Child Rights and Remedies and has published numerous scholarly articles and practical guidebooks on cross-system reform, probation practices, and child welfare policy. Before joining the USD faculty, Prof. Heldman served as Associate Executive Director at the Robert F. Kennedy National Resource Center for Juvenile Justice, where she oversaw national policy and practice reform initiatives. Prof. Heldman earned her J.D. magna cum laude from the University of San Diego School of Law and is a member of the State Bar of California. She is the proud mother of bright and hilarious twin sons.
  • Melissa Lee
    • Melissa Lee is Director of the Center for Civil Rights and Critical Justice, Assistant Teaching Professor, Seattle University School of Law. She co-directs the Center for Civil Rights and Critical Justice and co-teaches the Civil Rights Clinic. Melissa engages in a broad range of civil rights litigation before state and federal court. Through both direct representation and amicus curiae advocacy, she works to address issues of structural inequality, racism, and explicit and implicit bias in the legal system with a focus on state constitutional law, the criminal legal system, and executive overreach. For nearly two decades, Melissa has advocated for systemic reforms related to the prosecution of children in adult court and sentencing practices for youth convicted of crimes. Melissa’s experience before directing the Center for Civil Rights and Critical Justice includes 7 years at the Fred T. Korematsu Center for Law and Equality, where she served as both a staff attorney and assistant director, as well as 12 years in civil legal services, most recently as the Directing Attorney for the Institutions Project at Columbia Legal Services from 2011-2016. In her work, she has focused on high impact litigation, research, and policy work related to race equity, the health and safety of people in carceral institutions, sentencing reform, reentry, and fair treatment in employment for agricultural workers. She has experience litigating in federal and state courts, at both the trial and appellate court levels.
  • Courtney M. Alexander
    • Courtney M. Alexander is a senior attorney at Juvenile Law Center who joined the organization in 2023. Prior to joining Juvenile Law Center, Courtney worked as an assistant public defender in the Harris County Public Defender’s office in Houston, Texas where she helped establish the Holistic Division. During her time with the public defender’s office Courtney trained other attorneys to litigate the collateral consequences of their clients’ involvement in the criminal system, including but not limited to the loss of federally subsidized housing, the loss of employment, mitigation and bail matters, and the assessment of fines and fees.

Lunch

  • Address by Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Alaska: Susan Carney
    • Justice Susan M. Carney was appointed to the Alaska Supreme Court in May 2016. Justice Carney was born and raised in Massachusetts and attended Harvard-Radcliffe College and Harvard Law School. After graduating from law school in 1987, she worked as a law clerk for Justice Jay Rabinowitz of the Alaska Supreme Court. From 1998 until her appointment to the Supreme Court, she served as an assistant public advocate based in Fairbanks and representing clients throughout the Interior and North Slope. Justice Carney served on the Alaska Bar Association’s Board of Governors from 2015–2016, and she was a member of the Supreme Court’s Criminal Pattern Jury Instruction Committee from 2006–2016. She currently chairs the Supreme Court’s Child in Need of Aid Rules and the Fairness, Diversity, and Equality committees. She serves as a presenter and mentors for the Color of Justice youth program and the We the People high school civics competition.

Panel 2: Abolition and Movement Lawyering

  • jasmine Sankofa
    • jasmine Sankofa (she/her) is the Executive Director of Movement for Family Power (MFP), a national, abolitionist movement hub and incubator, cultivating and harnessing community power to end family policing and build a world where all families can thrive. Prior to joining MFP, jasmine managed decarceration campaigns in Oklahoma and led the mass incarceration storytelling work at FWD.us. While there, she drafted several bills and wrote an issue brief highlighting the punishment of survivors and mothers living in poverty through Oklahoma’s vague and overly broad child abuse and neglect statute. jasmine also previously worked at Human Rights Watch and the ACLU, where she researched and wrote a 121-page report documenting the experiences of mothers separated from their children and at risk of having their parental rights terminated while detained pretrial. jasmine graduated from UCLA School of Law with specializations in Critical Race Studies and Public Interest Law and Policy, and UC San Diego with degrees in Sociology and Critical Gender Studies and a minor in African-American Studies.
  • Sarah Katz
    • Sarah Katz is a Clinical Professor of Law at Temple University Beasley School of Law and a current Senior Fellow with the Stoneleigh Foundation. She directs and teaches the newly created Family Justice Clinic at Temple Law, which advocates in partnership and solidarity with families whose family stability and integrity have been impacted by state intervention. Her scholarship focuses on family policing abolition, anti-racist and trauma aware legal education and advocacy, and other family law topics. Katz also frequently speaks on these topics at scholarly conferences and trainings for attorneys.
  • Doreen Govari
    • Doreen Govari is a movement lawyer committed to building community-based alternatives to youth incarceration. She currently serves as a Senior Program Associate with the Ending Girls’ Incarceration team at the Vera Institute of Justice, where she works to end the incarceration of girls and gender-expansive youth nationwide. Doreen’s legal practice is grounded in her background as an educator and organizer. Following law school, she was a Legal Fellow at the National Center for Youth Law. As a law student, she represented clients in felony bail hearings with the Los Angeles County Public Defender’s Office and interned with the ACLU’s Criminal Law Reform Project. She was the lead writer for UCLA’s Criminal Justice Program’s Youth Justice Navigator Project and volunteered with multiple initiatives, including the El Centro Education Rights Legal Clinic, the COVID-19 Behind Bars Data Project, and the Incarcerated Persons Correspondence Project.
  • Hyeji Jim
    • HyeJi Kim is a Senior Youth Defense Counsel at the Gault Center, where she works to strengthen youth rights by upholding the fundamental right to counsel for all youth who come into contact with the juvenile legal system. HyeJi dreams of one day living in a world where all children are free to thrive in communities of care and is driven by the belief that our humanity is interdependent—that in the words of Desmond Tutu, “my humanity is caught up, is inextricably bound up, in yours.” HyeJi’s work focuses on probation and system transformation as she works alongside the youth defense community to transform systems of harm and punishment from the inside. HyeJi first worked as a fellow at the Gault Center, followed by the Legal Aid Society in New York City where she represented children and youth caught between the family regulation and delinquency systems. HyeJi returned to the Gault Center in 2022 and finds joy in being in community with youth defenders to uphold youth rights together. HyeJi graduated cum laude from the University of Pennsylvania Law School and summa cum laude from the George Washington University. HyeJi is a lifelong student of emergence and is committed to building toward a shared horizon of interdependent thriving, as taught by Norma Kawelokū Wong.
  • April Lee