Staff & Board

Kevin Ring

Kevin Ring became president of FAMM in January 2017, succeeding founder Julie Stewart. Ring previously served as the group’s vice president and director of strategic initiatives.

Ring has testified before Congress and state legislatures across the country regarding sentencing and prison reform. He has been profiled in various national publications, including the Wall Street Journal, National Journal, and The Hill newspaper. He has appeared as a justice reform expert on FOX News, CBS News, MSNBC, Headline News, National Public Radio, Al Jazeera, and many other television and radio outlets. He has spoken at major conferences and events, including TribFest, Congressional Black Caucus Foundation Conference, Conservative Political Action Conference, and the Variety/Rolling Stone Criminal Justice Summit. His writings have been published in numerous outlets, including USA Today, The Washington Post, The Washington Times, The Hill, and Washington Examiner.

Read More >

Twitter: @KevinARing

Adam Bingman

Adam Bingman is an experienced organizer and communicator who brings his leadership experience to FAMM serving as Vice President of Communications. Before joining FAMM, he served as National Press Secretary at Sierra Club, the nation’s oldest and largest grassroots advocacy organization.

For over a decade, Bingman has served in integral and strategic roles within advocacy organizations that mobilize everyday people and achieve policy wins proven transformative for impacted communities. These experiences include, but not limited to amplifying the voices, experiences and intersectional realities Black, Indigenous and people of color in various public policy campaigns across the country, and  supporting voter mobilization efforts of advocacy, labor and social justice movements in his home state of Michigan and beyond. As a strong believer and witness to unified ‘people power,’ Adam understands it takes all of us to work towards building more just and equitable society, while growing and supporting the communities we each call home.

Molly Gill

As VP of Policy, Gill coordinates FAMM’s state reform campaigns and works with policymakers, the media, and the public to promote sentences that protect public safety and that are humane, individualized, and fit both the crime and the offender. She has appeared as an expert on mandatory minimum sentences, sentencing law, and executive clemency on American, British, Canadian, and German radio and television shows and has a background in criminal prosecution. Read More > 

Twitter: @mmgillwriter

Mary Price

Mary Price is General Counsel of FAMM. She directs the FAMM Litigation Project and advocates for reform of federal sentencing and corrections law and policy before Congress, the U.S. Sentencing Commission, the Bureau of Prisons, and the Department of Justice. Read More >

Twitter: @MaryfromFAMM

Roxana Rincones

Roxana is FAMM’s Vice President of Family Engagement and Mobilization. Prior to joining FAMM in 2007, she worked as the Director of Operations at the Susan B. Anthony Recovery Center, a nonprofit organization providing treatment and transitional housing to women recovering from substance abuse. Before that, she was Chief Financial Officer at the Justice Project and Vietnam Veterans of America Foundation.

Emily Bloomenthal

Emily Bloomenthal is Director of Research at FAMM. She writes reports, fact sheets, and other materials to support FAMM’s Second Chances Agenda advocacy. She also coordinates the Second Chances Working Group, a network of organizations from across the U.S. that are working to expand release opportunities for people in prison who are serving long sentences or have other circumstances warranting release. As part of this work, she conceived and oversaw the development of the Second Chances Resource Library, an online library designed to make it easier for advocates and others to find and share resources related to expanding second chances.

Prior to FAMM, she served as a Senior Research and Policy Associate at Fair and Just Prosecution, where she supported a network of reform-oriented elected prosecutors committed to promoting fairness, equity, compassion, and fiscal responsibility. She previously advocated for youth justice reform in Massachusetts at Citizens for Juvenile Justice, represented parents and children in child welfare cases as an attorney in the Children and Family Law Division of the Massachusetts state public defender agency, worked on impact litigation to advance educational equity while at the Education Law Center in Newark, New Jersey, and managed research studies focused on engaging students’ support networks through the Harvard Kennedy School’s Student Social Support R&D Lab. She graduated cum laude from Williams College and New York University School of Law. Emily spends much of her time outside of work dancing and has performed with several dance companies in the Boston area.

Matthew Charles

Matthew Charles was sentenced to thirty-five years in 1996 for nonviolent drug offenses and is the first beneficiary of the First Step Act signed into law in 2018. Since then, Charles has been a Criminal Justice Reform Fellow for two years, speaking as an advocate for sentencing and prison reforms throughout the Nation. Charles has met with state legislators, governors, college students, and Congress about the need of basic and major judicial reforms, as well as the need to reduce mass incarceration in America. Charles also testified before the United States Senate calling for the end of warehousing people with unnecessary enhanced sentences.

Maria Goellner

Maria Goellner (“gell-ner”) is a public interest attorney and advocate for equal justice. As FAMM’s Deputy Director of Policy, she works with policymakers, families, the public, and the media on criminal justice priorities in multiple jurisdictions across the United States.

Maria has protected the rights and dignity of thousands. She came to FAMM from the Federal Defender’s Office for the Western District of Pennsylvania, where she was the sole attorney for the Erie Division. She also served as a trial lawyer on Florida’s Gulf Coast and clerked with the Legal Aid Society in Queens. Maria sat on the Third Circuit Lawyers Advisory Committee and the Board of the Erie County Bar Association. She supports participatory defense hubs, and was recognized by the Pennsylvania Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers for exceptional advocacy.

Maria graduated from Fordham University and New York Law School with bachelor’s degrees in political science and international relations and a Juris Doctor. She is a second-generation American and lives near the beach in Erie, Pennsylvania, with family. Her nickname is MJ.

Daniel Landsman

Daniel Landsman is the Deputy Director of State Policy. In this role, Daniel works with advocates and legislators to promote FAMM’s Second Chance Agenda and pass second look sentencing and compassionate release legislation. Daniel returns to FAMM, where he previously served as Director of Federal Legislative Affairs, following a year working on criminal justice reform in New York state with New Yorkers United for Justice. Daniel received his B.A. and M.P.P. from the George Washington University.

Dr. Shaneva D. McReynolds

Dr. Shaneva D. McReynolds (PhD) is the Vice President of Contracts Management for a Native Hawaiian-owned enterprise in the Department of Defense industry. She holds a doctoral degree from Walden University in Public Policy & Administration. She has a Bachelor of Science in Business Administration with a concentration in Finance from the University of Alabama Huntsville where she also earned the Certified Federal Contract Management professional designation. Shaneva has an MBA from the University of Phoenix with a concentration in eBusiness.

Shaneva is an advocate for policy reform that embraces evidence-based sustainable crime management frameworks, that’s based on judicial discretion and rehabilitation. In 2013, in the fight to see her husband freed (while facing a 235-month sentence handed down October 20^th, 2005), she came across FAMM. She is honored to now be working for the organization.

Celeste Trusty

Celeste is so excited to return to her role as Pennsylvania State Policy Director for FAMM, where she will continue her work with impacted community members, lawmakers, and other stakeholders to advocate reforms to our overly-punitive sentencing laws and policies.

During her tenure as Secretary of the Pennsylvania Board of Pardons in the final year of the Wolf and Fetterman administration, Ms. Trusty oversaw the commonwealth’s clemency process and supported the administration’s goals of an historic dedication to second chances.  Celeste also served as Political Director for John Fetterman’s U.S. Senate campaign in 2021 prior to her appointment as Secretary of the PA Board of Pardons.

Ms. Trusty was appointed by Gov. Tom Wolf to serve on the Judicial Conduct Board of PA in 2020, where she served as a Board member from 2020 to 2022 as Board Secretary from 2021 to 2022, and on the personnel committee from 2020 to 2022.

A proud former volunteer for the Pennsylvania Innocence Project, you can see Celeste in “The Prosecution: Wrong Place, Wrong Time” episode of The Innocence Files on Netflix, which details the harrowing and powerful story of Chester Hollman’s 28 year fight for freedom from a wrongful conviction.

Celeste is dedicated to the liberation of people impacted by the legal system, and is so grateful for the opportunity to work closely with so many incredible organizations, lawmakers, and community members to transform our system into one that more closely resembles justice.

Shanna Rifkin

Shanna Rifkin is an attorney with both litigation and public policy experience dedicated to reforming the criminal legal system, with a particular passion for sentencing law. As FAMM’s Deputy General Counsel, Shanna works alongside the General Counsel to advance the initiatives of the legal department – advocating for reform of federal sentencing and corrections law and policy before Congress, the U.S. Sentencing Commission, the Bureau of Prisons, and the Department of Justice.

Shanna came to FAMM from a position at Northwestern Law School’s Children and Family Justice Center, where she was fighting for clemency on behalf of incarcerated youth in Illinois. Prior to that role, Shanna was a litigation associate at a large international law firm known for its commitment to pro bono. In private practice, Shanna took on an array of pro bono criminal defense matters at both the trial court and appellate court, including successfully suppressing evidence that, if introduced against her client, would have led to the imposition of a mandatory minimum. Shanna’s love of sentencing law is in large thanks to her federal clerkships – first as a Law Clerk on the Western District of New York and then as a Law Clerk on the First Circuit Court of Appeals, where she was involved in nearly every aspect of federal criminal proceedings. She is a licensed attorney in New York and Illinois.

Shanna graduated magna cum laude from Duke University School of Law, where she was both a notes editor and published author on the Duke Law Review, a recipient of the Dean’s Award for excellence in Constitutional Law, and awarded with the Scribes Award for legal writing. She graduated cum laude from Brandeis University where she studied health care policy and gender studies. Shanna grew up in Buffalo, New York, and currently lives in Chicago with her husband and COVID dog, Lewis.

Sonora Bostian-Posner

Sonora Bostian-Posner brings over a decade of experience in the nonprofit sector. She was a fact checker for the Humane Society of the United States for four years, and served as Communications and Research Manager for The Stafford Foundation. Prior to working with FAMM, she worked for over five years as Project Manager of Digital Communications with Bread for the World. She has also worked as a freelance digital consultant for various clients, including Bob Woodward. Sonora holds a Bachelor of Arts in Communication – Media from N.C. State University; and a Master of Arts in Communication, Culture, and Technology from Georgetown University. Her expertise is in email communication, website communication, social media, and blogging.

Travis Edwards

With work ranging from commercial to documentary to narrative, Travis’s focus has always been on the impact of storytelling through video. His award-winning work has taken him across the country and has involved everything from filming undercover in puppy mills to filming politicians in D.C. He strives to present ideas and stories through innovative and engaging content that can help improve people’s lives.

Tripp Laino

Tripp brings nearly a decade of experience in communications and media relations to his work at FAMM. For the last five years, he worked at Columbia Association, coordinating publications and assisting with media relations, as well as volunteer work coordinating media relations for Baltimore Improv Group. Previously, he was a community reporter for a now-defunct newspaper, The Gazette, in Frederick, Maryland. He holds a bachelor’s degree in journalism from the University of Maryland, College Park.

Alexis Mitchell

Two- time Emmy® Award winner, Alexis M. Mitchell is a native of Charlotte, North Carolina, and is a graduate of Bennett College for Women, where she received her Bachelor of Arts degree in Mass Communications with a Sequence of Broadcast Production & Broadcast Journalism.

Alexis is the Senior Social Media and Community Manager for FAMM (Families Against Mandatory Minimums). Before transitioning to the digital world, she comes with a wealth of knowledge and experience of over 20 plus years. Alexis was a News Content Specialist for the WBTV News This Morning, WBTV News This Morning on Bounce TV, WBTV News at Noon, and lifestyle show “Morning Break” for 12 years. Her broadcasting journey led her to WTVI Charlotte (PBS affiliated) and radio stations: WPEG Power 98 (Charlotte, NC) and 97.1 WQMG (Greensboro, NC).

Alexis played a vital role in the images the WORLD would now remember for the “#StandwithBennett” Campaign. She created imagery for the campaign by adding motions and sound to pictures. Through hard work and persistence, for 60 straight days, Alexis and a core group of women worked together to assist the college is raising 9.5 million dollars to maintain their accreditation.

Alexis was awarded the “2013 Outstanding Young Alumni Award” from UNCF, Urban League of Central Carolinas “Young Professional Leadership” Award. In 2017, Alexis was awarded by the nationally syndicated radio show, Cafe Mocha Salute Her: “Media Innovator Award” for her groundbreaking career as a game-changer in the broadcast industry.

Alexis is a member of several professional associations; National Association of Black Journalists, Charlotte Area Association of Black Journalists, National Association of Professional Women, Association of Woman in Communications, National Association of Black Female Executives in Music and Entertainment, National Academy of Television Arts & Sciences -Nashville/Midsouth Emmy® Chapter, and Women in Film and Television – Atlanta.

Alexis is a proud member of Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, Incorporated.

Twitter: @LexisTV

John Norton

John, as Communications Manager, works to raise greater awareness about sentencing and prison reform legislative and regulatory solutions at the state and federal levels. Media relations are at the heart of those efforts.

He has 20 years of experience in communications, mostly working for nonprofits, including the National Community Pharmacists Association and the Children’s Defense Fund. John previously worked in sports entertainment for NBA Entertainment and ABC Sports. John is a graduate of Occidental College.

Wynette Yao

Wynette Yao is gratified to join FAMM as Director of Video Production. Yao is an award-winning filmmaker who has produced, directed and written films on subjects as wide-ranging as Egypt, bees and bog mummies. She relishes image-making and storytelling that brings alive the human experience behind history, science, or modern life, and takes pride in conceiving and directing powerful or intriguing images. In 2012, Yao spent a year producing for the Discovery ID series “Prison Wives.” This experience was a revelation, and with her work at FAMM, she’s happy to return to helping to tell the stories of families impacted by incarceration in this country.

Debi Campbell

Debi researches and writes FAMM’s Success Stories — stories of people who have been impacted by harsh sentencing laws and are now released, adjusting to life outside of prison. Debi has daily contact with prisoners and their families as she documents their stories. Before joining FAMM, Debi served 16 years in Federal Prison for her participation in a 1993 drug conspiracy. Since her release in 2010, she has been a vocal advocate for criminal justice reform.

Twitter: @DebiLCampbell

Ann Espuelas

Ann brings more than 25 years of communications experience to her work at FAMM. She focuses on how best to tell the stories of prisoners and their families impacted by harsh sentencing laws. Before she came to FAMM, Ann worked with other non-profits to reach “beyond the choir,” to engage with out-of-the-box messaging that conveys the heart of the matter and motivates people to take action. Ann has four published books to her credit, and has worked for numerous magazines, websites, and publishers.

Twitter: @AnnEspuelas

Hayden Mytelka

Hayden Mytelka is the Director of Digital Engagement and Mobilization at FAMM, where they combine their passion for social justice with their expertise in digital to build effective programs that drive action and create change.

Hayden is a seasoned digital strategist with a background in creating digital advocacy campaigns for nonprofits, labor unions, candidates, and various progressive causes. They were Program Manager at the Amazon Aid Foundation for several years, where they traveled from the remote jungles of Peru to the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Paris as an advocate for tropical conservation. They also served as an associate producer and writer for the documentary River of Gold which outlines the consequences of the Amazon gold rush. Prior to joining FAMM, Hayden worked at Revolution Messaging where they developed ads-driven, integrated mobile, calling and rapid response campaigns.

Hayden first discovered their passion for digital while working with the Centre International d’Art et de Musique de Ouidah (CIAMO), an innovative nonprofit school, on the award-winning PSA music video “Kids Against Malaria.” They hold degrees in Art History and Medieval Studies from the University of Virginia.

Alexia Pitter

Alexia Pitter (sometimes referred to as Lexie Pitter) was born in Evanston, Illinois. She is a current resident of Maryland and attends Howard University. She is in her senior year and is working towards her Bachelor of Science in Psychology. Her father has been incarcerated since she was three and she grew up in a single-mother household. As she fights for the liberation of all Black and Brown people, she also fights for her father’s freedom from incarceration. Lexie can be found participating in local protests, food drives, and community outreach in Chicago, as well as D.C. Her focus is on abolition and the support of the Black Lives Matter Movement. She has worked with the Black Abolition Network, Blck Rising Organization, Black United Front, and YWCA’s Empowered Girls organization, a mentorship program for young ladies in the DMV area- and now she is working for FAMM. Whether it is volunteering for the John Walt Foundation, Project Giveback, or Safeshore DC her focus as an activist, poet and student is not only to give back to her community but to promote black liberation, equality, and a forward-moving justice system. In 2014 she performed her notable “I Can’t Breathe” poem at the opening of the Holocaust Museum: Race Are We So Different exhibit. In 2015 she received the Women of Achievement Award and has been featured in Another Magazine, Voyage Chicago, and recently the Chicago Tribune. Her daily goals are to promote unity, self-love, holistic mental health practices, and push for prison reform.

Colie Levar Long

Colie Levar Long was sentenced to Life without Parole in 1998 for a violent offense as a youth offender and is a beneficiary of a D.C. law called the Second Look Act signed into law in 2022. Since then, Colie is a Program Associate for Georgetown’s Prison and Justice Initiative, became a published author, speaker, and criminal justice reform advocate well after serving over 26 years of incarceration. In his role at PJI, he supports program administration, returning citizens, and Prison Scholars at the D.C. Jail. Since his release in July 2022, Long has also served as a Justice Reform Fellow at FAMM. He is the subject of an upcoming documentary about D.C.’s Second Look legislation and is an agent for change in his work with at-risk youth in underserved communities in the District.

Julie Stewart

Julie is founder and former president of FAMM, a position she held since starting the group in 1991. In 1990, Julie was public affairs director at the Cato Institute when she became aware of mandatory sentencing laws. Her decades of experience in sentencing reform has led her to become an expert in this field. She serves on the board of the Public Defender Services of Washington D.C., and was formerly a member of the DC Sentencing Advisory Commission, which develops sentencing guidelines for prisoners from the District of Columbia. Julie lives in Washington, D.C. (Independent) Read More >

Jason Flom

Jason is the CEO of Lava Records. He has had an extensive career as a leader in the music business, including his roles as the president and CEO of Capitol Music Group, Chairman and CEO of Atlantic Records and the founder of Lava Records. As a former drug addict who successfully transformed his lifestyle, Jason has since become a vocal activist for sentencing reform, especially among his many influential contacts in the music industry. Jason resides in the United States. (Independent)

Shon Hopwood

Hopwood’s unusual legal journey began not at law school, but federal prison, where he learned to write briefs for other prisoners while serving a 12-year sentence for bank robberies. Two petitions for certiorari he prepared were later granted review by the U.S. Supreme Court, and he won cases for other prisoners in federal courts across the country. His scholarship on the courts and the criminal justice system has been published in the Harvard Civil Rights-Civil Liberties, Fordham, and Washington law reviews, as well as the American Criminal Law Review. He is currently an associate professor of law at Georgetown. Shon lives in the United States.

Norman Brown

In 1993, Brown was sentenced to life in prison for a nonviolent drug offense. He served 24½ years in federal prison before President Barack Obama commuted his sentence in 2015. Since leaving prison, Brown has become a well-known advocate for criminal justice reform. He had lunch with President Obama after receiving clemency in 2015 and participate in several panel discussions at the White House on how to reform federal sentencing laws, and has been profiled in major newspapers and media, including The Washington Post, Chicago Sun-Times, National Public Radio, and The Huffington Post.

Debi Ghate

Debi Ghate is President of Steadfast as well as Vice President of Partnerships at The Center for the Rights of Abused Children, Executive Fellow with the Institute of Citizens & Scholars, Executive Fellow at the State Policy Network and Initiative Director for the George Mason University’s “Voices for Liberty: Free Speech, Civil Rights and Social Progress” program.

Ms. Ghate is a trained lawyer, previously practicing civil litigation in Ontario, Canada before moving to California to join the Ayn Rand Institute. At the Institute, she oversaw the education and policy programs before serving on leadership teams at two Foundations, including the Charles Koch Foundation and the Anthem Foundation for Objectivist Scholarship. She was previously the Senior Director of Grant Strategy at The Snider Foundation and most recently the Vice President of Strategy and Programs for Philanthropy Roundtable.

Ms. Ghate serves on the boards of Americans for Fair Treatment, Anthem Foundation for Objectivist Scholarship, Empire Center for Public Policy, FAMM, and the Government Justice Center. She received a Bachelor of Science in Psychology, Biology and French at the University of Toronto and a Bachelor of Laws at the University of Calgary.

Rajiv Srinivasan

Rajiv Srinivasan is the Global Clients Director for LinkedIn. Rajiv Srinivasan previously held executive roles at VMware and MobileIron. Rajiv was on the founding team of Morta Security — a cyber security company funded by A16z, Greylock, and Norwest Ventures — which was acquired by Palo Alto Networks in 2013.

Rajiv began his career as a US Army Officer where he served as a Stryker Platoon Leader in Kandahar Afghanistan. He received the Bronze Star, Combat Action Badge for his service. He holds a BS from the US Military Academy at West Point, an MS in Applied Mathematics from Columbia University, and an MBA from the Wharton School of Business.

John Wetzel

John Wetzel is the founder and CEO of Phronema Justice Strategies LLC, a Harrisburg-based national management consulting firm.

In 2010, Wetzel was nominated by former Pennsylvania Governor Tom Corbett to serve as the secretary of the Pennsylvania Department of Corrections. He was subsequently renominated by Governor Tom Wolf in 2015 and served until he resigned in October of 2021 as the longest serving Secretary of Corrections in the state and the only one to work under both Democratic and Republican governors.

Under Wetzel’s leadership, the Pennsylvania Department of Corrections marked the first prison population reduction in more than forty years and saw the elimination of a 24-year average growth of 1,500 incarcerated people annually. He also oversaw the restructuring of the community corrections and mental health systems, and program delivery in Pennsylvania.