Program Speakers
Alan Mills - Executive Director, Uptown People's Law Center
Alan Mills is a Human Rights Lawyer based in Chicago. Dedicating his life to advocating for our marginalized and often invisible neighbors, Alan’s primary focus in litigation is violations of inmates’ rights. Alan started volunteering at UPLC in 1979 while attending Northwestern University School of Law. He served as a staff attorney for two years before taking on the role of Legal Director in 1992. In 2014, Alan was appointed UPLC’s Executive Director. Under his leadership, UPLC has developed the largest docket in the state of Illinois of civil rights cases filed on behalf of Illinois prisoners. UPLC currently has seven pending class action cases protecting Illinois prisoners’ civil rights.
Vanessa del Valle - Clinical Assistant Professor of Law, Bluhm Legal Clinic MacArthur Justice Center
Vanessa del Valle joined the MacArthur Justice Center in November 2015 after serving for two years as a law clerk for U.S. District Judge Rubén Castillo in the Northern District of Illinois. Her work focuses on enforcing the civil rights of victims of police misconduct and prisoners in Illinois correctional facilities. She has also litigated suits to address issues facing immigrant communities.
Dr. Federica Coppola – Lecturer & Presidential Scholar in Society and Neuroscience, Social Relations Lab, Columbia University
Federica Coppola, PhD, JD is a Presidential Scholar in Society and Neuroscience at Columbia University. Her work uses psychological and neuroscientific knowledge about the role of emotions in moral decision-making and social behavior to inform changes in criminal law doctrines, theories of punishment and correctional interventions. Currently, her main focus is to use this branch of scientific findings to reform restrictive and retributive approaches to criminal violence and redirect criminal justice towards social rehabilitation. She has published articles and book chapters on criminal culpability, excuse doctrines, punishment, as well as on the use of neuroscientific tools for forensic purposes. In addition, Hart Publishing has just released her new book, The Emotional Brain and the Guilty Mind : Novel Paradigms of Culpability and Punishment.
Renaldo Hudson – Education Director, Illinois Prison Project
Renaldo is an educator, minister, and community organizer, and focuses his work on ending perpetual punishment in Illinois. After being sentenced to death row, Renaldo worked for 37 years while incarcerated in the Illinois Department of Corrections, founding groundbreaking programs including the prison-newspaper Stateville Speaks and the Building Block Program, a transformational program run by incarcerated people within the Illinois Department of Corrections. Renaldo’s work and life have been featured in media outlets throughout the state, and are the subject of the documentary Stateville Calling.
Shelia Leen, MSN, APN-BC – Rush Community Health Center on St. Leonard Ministries Campus
Shelia earned her bachelor’s at Rush and returned for her master’s with a focus on adult primary care. She is passionate about patient education for management and prevention and can often be found working with nurse practitioner students.
Dr. Leticia Setrini-Best – OB/GYN with Morris Hospital Obstetric
Dr. Leticia Setrini-Best is a board-certified obstetrician/gynecologist with Morris Hospital Obstetrics & Gynecology Specialists. Dr. Setrini-Best sees patients in the Morris and Channahon offices, and she is fluent in Spanish.
Chris Roach – Program Director, St. Leonard’s House, St. Leonard’s Ministries
Chris Roach is the Program Director and Intake Coordinator of St. Leonard's Ministries' St. Leonard’s House. St. Leonard's House provides interim housing and supportive services for formerly incarcerated men returning to the community from Illinois prisons. Chris Roach is also a former resident of St. Leonard's House after his release from prison in 2004.
Gwyn Troyer - Director of the Prison Monitoring Project at the John Howard Association
Gwyn Troyer became the Director of the Prison Monitoring Project at the John Howard Association in 2012 after first acting as a volunteer. Prior to joining JHA, Gwyn practiced law in a boutique civil litigation firm. There she represented whistleblowers in cases involving multimillion dollar corporate fraud in government contracts and partnered with State and Federal investigators and prosecutors to recover penalties and misspent taxpayer funds, primarily in the healthcare and military sectors.
Other areas of her legal practice included plaintiff-side complex litigation, class action, civil rights cases, and criminal defense work. Gwyn is a Department of Justice-certified Prison Rape Elimination Act Auditor for both adult and juvenile facilities. She serves on the Northwestern University Institutional Review Board and is active in several national professional associations advancing independent oversight, transparency and accountability, and improvements in law enforcement and corrections policies and practices.
Amanda Antholt, Senior Attorney, Civil Rights Team, Equip for Equality
Amanda Antholt is the Senior Attorney in Equip for Equality's Civil Rights Team. EFE is a private, non-profit disability rights organization. Amanda’s work focuses on the intersection of disability and the criminal justice system. Prior to joining EFE, she spent 12 years in private practice litigating civil right cases including involving police misconduct, prisoners’ rights, and employment discrimination. Amanda has taught courses on civil rights litigation as an adjunct professor at the University of Wisconsin Law School and Chicago-Kent College of Law.
Jimmie King – St. Leonard's House, St. Leonard's Ministries
St. Leonard’s House provides interim housing and supportive services for formerly incarcerated men returning to the community from Illinois prisons. Residents are as broadly diverse as the neighborhoods from which they come. Program participants come to St. Leonard’s House to find a safe environment in which they can develop skills to rebuild their lives and reshape their futures.