Board of Trustees

Laura’s earliest memories with her grandmother at organizing events ignited a passion for community work, and ultimately, led to Laura’s legal and advocacy work in the area of human rights. After law school, Laura began her legal career in 2003 in New York City as a plaintiff’s side employment law attorney. For the next 13 years, Laura continued her career in Colorado and New York with an unwavering commitment to advocacy in the area of labor and employment law.

In 2016, Laura was hired as a full-time staff attorney at the Worker Justice Center of New York (WJCNY) in Kingston, New York —seeking client-centered justice through legal representation, community empowerment and advocacy for institutional change. During her time at WJCNY, Laura developed specialized knowledge in the area of labor exploitation in agricultural and low-wage industries with a focus on sexual and physical violence in the workplace. Through this work, Laura led trauma-informed labor trafficking investigations in collaboration with both federal and state law enforcement partners. Laura has presented at national and regional conferences on the subject of trauma-informed legal services and has a deep commitment to building trauma-conscious, person-centered practices within the legal community. As a staff attorney at the WJCNY, Laura was a proud union member of the National Organization of Legal Services Workers (NOLSW, UAW Local 2320), and served as the bargaining unit’s Shop Steward and Union President from 2017 – 2023.

In the summer of 2023, Laura accepted a job with the New York State Office of the Attorney General and continues her work with the NYS-OAG today. Laura is a photographer, certified yoga instructor and reiki practitioner — and has a deep appreciation for meditation and its relationship to spiritual health. Laura currently lives in Kingston, New York.

During her academic journey, Lucia gained valuable experience as an intern at the Sanar Institute, where she contributed significantly to grant writing and submission, collaborated on a Human Trafficking Task Force, and managed various social media platforms. In her current role within Human Resources for an Ashley Furniture licensee, Lucia’s responsibilities encompass employee wellness program management, the development of professional training initiatives, and the oversight of employee rewards, recognition, and feedback programs.

Seamus graduated with a BS in Accounting from Ramapo College of New Jersey. Seamus has expertise in project management with his Lean Six Sigma Black Belt, Disciplined Agile Scrum Master, and Project Management Institute Agile Certified Practitioner. He has also received his Certified Fraud Examiner Certification. Seamus is training to be an ICF certified Coach.

Through coaching, training, and education, she helps veterinary professionals and animal welfare workers build resilience, regulate stress, and prevent burnout and compassion fatigue.

Julie’s work centers on a simple truth: those who care for animals deserve care, too. She provides practical, nervous system informed tools that help animal care professionals feel steadier in their bodies, clearer in their boundaries, and more connected to what matters most, even in high demand environments.

She is honored to serve as a Trustee of the Sanar Institute and to support its mission of healing and trauma informed care.

The goal of the program is to empower and support Peer Advocates to use their own experience and knowledge to build trusting relationships and connect people to resources.

Nancy previously worked for Breaking Ground as a Social Enterprise Director and for Housing Works, managing their Used Book Cafe in Soho.

She has a Master’s in Organizational Change Management from the Milano School of Policy, Management and Environment. 

After receiving his doctorate from Columbia University in development psychology, he served as the Juvenile Justice Administrator for the City of New York for from 1982 to 1995. In 1993, he was appointed to the American Psychological Association’s Cadre of Experts in Youth Violence.

He subsequently was appointed as the founding Executive Director of the Violence Institute of New Jersey at the University of Medicine and Dentistry (now Rutgers University) at which he was the Principal Investigator on several federal and state grants, including a Department of Justice Children Exposed to Violence grant.

He then founded the Center for the Prevention of Violence at a large not-for-profit in New Jersey.

He currently serves on the Board of Directors of the National Prevention Science Coalition and serves as its Chair of the Violence Prevention Task Force. 

He also serves as a founding member of the Youth Advisory Board for Newark, N.J. and on the Advisory Board of New Jersey Child Assault Prevention organization.

In addition, he serves on the Board of the Sanar Wellness Institute and the Partnership for Maternal and Child Health of Northern N.J. 

He has written numerous journal articles, book chapters, and book reviews on youth violence, human rights, and positive youth development.

As an RLA, she managed the anti-human trafficking portfolio in Mexico (2021-2025) and prior to that the criminal justice reform program in Mali (2017-2021). 

Prior to her federal service with DOJ, Gigi worked as an Assistant Essex County Prosecutor in New Jersey from 2005 to 2013. In 2010, she was detailed to OPDAT from Essex County as the Intermittent Legal Advisor to Djibouti on Human Trafficking. Upon her return to the Essex County Prosecutors Office, she was assigned to be the Human Trafficking Liaison for the office and worked with the State Attorney General’s office to write a human trafficking training curriculum for prosecutors throughout the State. For the majority of her term in Essex County, Gigi worked in the Special Victims Unit, handling child sexual abuse and human trafficking cases. In 2013, she left the courtroom and became the Director for Human Rights at Vital Voices Global Partnership, focusing on developing legal initiatives to fight gender based violence around the world. She worked with international human rights leaders in Cameroon, Uganda, Mexico, Colombia, Thailand, South Africa, India, Nepal, China, and Rwanda to build capacity in their own countries to respond to gender-based violence and human trafficking in a more victim-centered manner. 

Gigi joined the Board of Trustees of Sanar Institute in January 2026, to support Sanar’s vision of healing from trauma. After experiencing vicarious trauma herself after years of working special victims cases as an assistant prosecutor, she is proud to have an opportunity to help others address their trauma – whether direct or vicarious – in a different way.

Gigi obtained her bachelor’s degree from McGill University in Montreal in 1998, her Juris Doctor degree from Rutgers School of Law in Camden, New Jersey in 2002.  During law school, she externed for Federal Magistrate Joel B. Rosen, U.S.M.J. and served as research assistant to Prof. Sally Goldfarb, primarily focusing on Family Law in her research.  After law school, she served as law clerk to esteemed Superior Court Judge F. Lee Forrester, J.S.C. (now deceased), who was widely viewed as the long-time leading authority on juvenile justice in the State of New Jersey.  She earned an LL.M. Adv. in Public International Law from the University of Leiden in the Netherlands in 2004 and interned at the Permanent Court for Arbitration in the Hague. She speaks fluent French, Italian, English and Spanish and conversational Dutch.