Our Staff

Sia is, first and foremost, in love with Black people. She is an attorney, racial justice activist, and abolitionist who has spent over a decade engaging in criminal legal system reform work. In addition to founding and serving as Executive Director of the Hood Exchange, she is the Associate Director of Policy and Advocacy at the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies where she is advocating for Black, indigenous, and other communities of color to have meaningful access to transformative healing opportunities. Sia previously worked with the Restorative Justice Project at Impact Justice where she collaborated with communities across the country to establish pre-charge restorative justice diversion programs that, without relying on prosecution or incarceration, bring those who have caused and been impacted by harm into healing and accountability processes. In 2019, Sia organized and led a delegation of 23 state and local officials, formerly incarcerated and social justice leaders, attorneys, philanthropists, journalists, and an architect on a trip to Finland and Norway to tour prisons and meet with incarcerated people, facility staff, government agencies, and abolitionist groups. The purpose of this trip was to inspire the group to challenge and reimagine ways we think about and respond to crime. Sia also spent years doing conditions of confinement work, engaging in impact litigation and training to improve conditions for incarcerated people with physical and developmental disabilities and mental health issues and those most at risk of sexualized violence.

 

For several years Sia served on the Board of Directors for Mount Tamalpais College (formerly the Prison University Project) at San Quentin State Prison (the country’s first, tuition-free and independently accredited college situated inside a prison). She graduated from Harvard Law School and summa cum laude from Duke University, has traveled to 46 countries, and is originally from Brooklyn, NY with ancestral roots in Barbados.