Our Team

 

STAFF

Amika Mota (she/her) - Executive Director

Previously the Policy Director at Young Women's Freedom Center, Amika is the Executive Director of Sister Warriors Freedom Coalition and Sister Warriors Action Fund. She began organizing for Reproductive Justice and young mothers’ rights over twenty years ago, as a teen mama and midwife. Her passion for criminal justice reform is rooted in her own experience. She began advocating for women in prison during her seven-year incarceration in the California Department of Corrections, where she served time at both CIW and CCWF. During her time inside, she was a jailhouse lawyer, paralegal, firefighter, and mentor to many young folks on the yard.

The sisterhood and resilience of the women on the inside are what motivate her to revolutionize the criminal justice system, transform what true rehabilitation and reentry look like, and promote a culture of healing and restorative justice to those most impacted by the system. She is committed to lifting up the voices, visibility, and leadership of incarcerated and formerly incarcerated women.

 

Niki Martinez (she/her/we) - Deputy Director

Niki Martinez is a seasoned social justice leader who is fueled in her work by her experience being incarcerated and serving twenty-five years in state institutions. Niki was charged as an adult at 17 and sentenced to 45-years-to-life in prison. Throughout her incarceration, she became a certified Drug and Alcohol counselor and the co-founder and director of an organization providing policy advocacy for young people in the juvenile legal system. Niki also received certifications in Relapse Prevention Counseling, Denial Management Counseling, Trauma-Informed Counseling, Motivational Interviewing, Domestic
Violence, Healthy Relationships, Anger Management, Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, and Restorative Justice.

Since her release in March 2019, Niki has excelled in providing trauma-informed mentorship and practices in the community and has been involved in the Credible Messenger Movement working with system-impacted and formerly incarcerated people. As the Deputy Director of Sister Warriors, Niki, is working toward healthy and humane alternatives to terminate the endless harm created by punitive systems. She is dedicated to ending mass incarceration and the criminalization of women and trans people of all genders.

 

April Grayson (she/they) - Policy Associate

April is formerly incarcerated and spent a lot of time in systems that harmed her rather than helping her escape cycles of abuse, exploitation and the street economy. She understands first hand the criminalization of women of color for the ways they survive and the harm caused by various systems. Based on her own childhood experience and the lack of advocates, April is a strong advocate for children and youth caught in the pipelines to prison.

She works to shed light on mass incarceration as a modern form of slavery and the particular ways in which girls and young women of color are criminalized. April’s role is to build out Sister Warriors engagement in policy work and champion the bills we sponsor.

 

Christine Wei (she/her) - Executive Project Manager

Christine is a 1.5-generation immigrant who grew up on Basay land in the area known as Taipei, Taiwan. With a background in journalism and communications, she comes to YWFC with experience in policy, political education, campaigns, and conflict resolution. She's deeply committed to dismantling all systems of oppression, building collective care, and centering lived experience.

Christine’s dedication to abolitionist work and practices is rooted in a strong conviction in our ability to care for each other and in our capacity to transform. She also believes that everyone has a fundamental right to heal and thrive.

 

Emily Wonder (they/them) - Advocacy Manager

Emily is a long-time advocate for women, girls, and trans folks and a firm believer in the transformative power and collective wisdom of community. Originally from the Midwest, Emily has a background in policy and communication and a history of organizing within the higher education system and at the local level. For the past several years, they have been in Sacramento, advocating for policies that recognize our shared humanity and bring greater support to those who have been most harmed by the many systems that perpetuate suffering.

Emily is part of the Sister Warriors policy team, encouraging community members to participate in the political process and advocating for legislation that will bring us all one step closer to freedom. They are also helping to lead the expansion of Sister Warriors's participatory defense work to support and empower folks navigating California's court systems.

 

ADVISORY BOARD

Kim Carter (she/her)

Kim Carter is the Founder and Ambassador of Time for Change Foundation. Certified in Accounting with an emphasis on not-for-profits, Kim was inspired to leave the corporate world in 2002 to start Time for Change Foundation. Motivated by her own experiences as a formerly incarcerated woman, Kim made it her mission to help women and children make the transition from homelessness and recidivism to self-sufficiency. Today she is a powerful voice for women who bear the scars of poverty, homelessness, and incarceration. It is Kim’s belief that by providing these women with training and the opportunity to develop life skills, in a nurturing and supportive environment, they will become independent, active, participants in their communities. She aspires to the work of her idol, Harriet Tubman, by lighting a path and leading others to freedom from addiction and incarceration. Her motto is that “a lit candle loses nothing when it lights another.”

Alongside her role as an executive director at Time for Change, Kim has traveled throughout the country training, empowering and motivating others to reach their highest potential in her role as President / CEO of the Center for Housing Advancement and Motivational Projects (CHAMP). As one of a few Black women in the United States to actually build affordable housing for low-income communities, her projects exemplify her model of excellence. Her clients have included governmental agencies, medical professionals, law enforcement, and other nonprofits where her motto “Giving the Best to Those who Take Care of the Rest” pushes all boundaries.​

Kim is the author of Invisible Bars: Barriers to Women’s Health and Well-Being During and After Incarceration, a scientific quantitative-qualitative health report which provides a road map for addressing issues that both lead and eliminate incarceration.

 

Raj Jayadev (he/him)

Raj Jayadev is a community organizer and criminal justice advocate. He is the co-founder of Silicon Valley De-Bug, a storytelling, community organizing, and advocacy nonprofit based in San Jose, California. Through De-Bug's criminal justice community program, the Albert Cobarrubias Justice Project, they created "participatory defense”  a community model that was developed for families whose loved ones are facing the criminal court system. The model will help impact the outcome of the case and transform the landscape of power in the courts. De-Bug now trains and coordinates a National Participatory Defense Network with hubs in more than 30 cities. The organization also has initiated campaigns around bail reform, police accountability, sentencing reform, and more. 

As an outgrowth of his organizing and advocacy work, Raj has become a nationally recognized pioneer in criminal defense reform. He is a 2010 Soros Justice Fellow, a 2015 Ashoka Fellow, a 2015 Leading Edge Fellow, a 2017 Stanford Entrepreneur in Residence, and a 2018 MacArthur Fellow. His work and writings have been featured in the New York Times, TIME Magazine, NPR, PBS, The Atlantic, and various other news outlets across the country.

Raj holds a BA in political science from the University of California-Los Angeles.

 

Jessica Nowlan (she/her)

Jessica is deeply committed to the liberation and freedom of cis and trans women and girls and gender non-conforming people. Jessica has spent the majority of her career working to develop and implement innovative programming and strategies based on the principles that those most impacted must be at the forefront of decision making about their own lives.

Jessica Nowlan first came to Young Women's Freedom Center in 1996, when she was hired from juvenile hall at age 17 as a Community Health Outreach Worker. She returned to YWFC in 2014 first as a board member and then agreeing to come on as the Executive Director in 2016, Jessica had grown YWFC from one to four sites and launched the Sister Warrior Freedom Coalition with 12 chapters as a co-founder of the coalition. She is now President at Reimagine Freedom Center.

Her own experience as a young person navigating the juvenile justice system, as a single mother dealing with poverty, homelessness, and intimate partner violence, coupled with her experience in movement work, propels her work to advance the field and she was recently named a 2019-2021 Leading Edge Fellow. Prior to her current role, Jessica worked for several years as a Social Entrepreneur and as a consultant to organizations working with women and girls and at the intersections of violence, poverty, racial justice, incarceration/ re-entry and workforce development. Jessica is a Bay Area native and currently lives in Oakland with her family.

 

Romarilyn Ralston (she/her)

Romarilyn Ralston is the Executive Director and former founding Program Director of Project Rebound at Cal State Fullerton. She is also the Chair of the CSU Project Rebound Consortium Policy and Advocacy Committee. A Black feminist prison abolitionist scholar working to interrupt criminalization at the intersections of race, gender, and education, Ralston earned a Bachelor’s degree in Gender & Feminist Studies from Pitzer College and a Master’s degree in Liberal Arts from Washington University in St. Louis.

Romarilyn is the recipient of Pitzer College’s 2020 Distinguished Alumni Award, California State Senator Ling Ling Chang’s 2020 Woman of Distinction Social Justice Champion Award, and the 2018 Civil Rights and Advocacy Award from the Orange County Chapter of the National Council of 100 Black Women. Ralston was a 2018 Fellow of the Women's Policy Institute, where as a member of the criminal justice reform team she helped to pass several pieces of legislation into law. Ralston has also held fellowships with Just Leadership USA, CORO Public Affairs, and the Napier Initiative for Justice and Peace.

 

Laura Ridolfi (she/her)

Laura Ridolfi is a Racial Justice and Well-Being Strategist with the W. Haywood Burns Institute (BI). Laura has over fifteen years of experience at BI challenging racial hierarchies in the administration of justice. Laura works at the local, state and national level changing policy and practice to promote equity and eliminate racial and ethnic disparities.

Laura partners with community-rooted organizations and advocacy groups on policy change in California that invest resources into community alternatives to the legal system and reduce the harms of system involvement on the lives of people of color. The direction of Laura’s policy work is guided by those closest to the harms of the legal system and centers the voice and experience of directly impacted youth and families. The policy advocacy has resulted in numerous changes in California law. Laura advocates for democratizing youth justice data and promoting data transparency in service of system change and promoting equity. She is the author of numerous BI reports that highlight inequities in the criminal legal system and advocate for change.

Prior to joining BI, Laura worked for several youth and criminal justice organizations and was a Fulbright Fellow in Kenya, where she studied the youth justice system. Laura is a graduate of UC Berkeley, School of Law.