Executive Director
Jane Wishner is the founder and Executive Director of the Southwest Women’s Law Center. An attorney with over 20 years of litigation experience and significant public policy experience, Jane left the private practice of law in 2005 to start the Center.

Before founding the Southwest Women’s Law Center, Jane worked for nearly fifteen years with the law firm of Peifer, Hanson & Mullins, P.A., a litigation firm in Albuquerque, New Mexico. She was one of the three founding members of the firm. Her practice involved a wide variety of civil litigation, including complex commercial litigation, civil rights litigation, class actions, employment disputes, and a variety of contract and other business disputes. Before then, Jane was an Assistant Attorney General of the State of New Mexico, serving as a white-collar prosecutor in the Special Prosecutions Division of the Attorney General’s Office. She also practiced with a private law firm in San Francisco before moving to New Mexico.

Jane received her B.A. from Harvard University and received Radcliffe’s Gerta Richards Crosby Prize for the highest-ranking woman in the Harvard Government Department. After college, Jane worked as a research associate on the national staff of Common Cause in Washington, D.C. She obtained her law degree from Boalt Hall School of Law at the University of California at Berkeley and clerked for the Honorable Abner J. Mikva, Circuit Judge, United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.

Throughout her legal career, Jane has been actively engaged in women’s rights, church-state, poverty, and civil rights issues. She has also been a leader and active in numerous community and national organizations. Jane is the immediate past National Chair of the Commission on Social Action of Reform Judaism, the public policy arm of the reform Jewish Movement, which represents over 900 synagogues and 1.5 million Jews in North America. Jane has held many leadership positions within the Commission on Social Action, serving as Vice Chair of the Commission and as Chair of the Women and Minorities Task Force and the Domestic Policy Task Force. Jane is also a member of the Executive Committee and the National Board of Trustees of the Union for Reform Judaism. Jane served on the national Board of Governors of the American Jewish Committee (AJC) and continues to serve on its National Legal Committee, which makes recommendations regarding AJC participation in amicus briefs before the Supreme Court.

In the 1990s, Jane edited a book for the American Bar Association, entitled Abortion and the States: Political Change and Future Regulation. Since starting the Center, Jane has taught two Continuing Legal Education Seminars for the NM State Bar. The first was on the Terry Schiavo case and federalism and separation of powers issues. The second was on government funding of faith-based organizations, which was part of a program on the changing law of church-state separation. Jane regularly makes public presentations and speeches on a wide variety of civil rights and civil liberties issues, particularly in the areas of church-state separation and reproductive freedom.

Community Education and Outreach Coordinator
Jessica Aranda serves as the Center’s main link with service providers, grassroots organizations, and other community stakeholders around a variety of issues including education and Title IX compliance, reproductive health and rights, immigration, and Latina issues. Before joining the Center, she served as the Executive Director of the Latino Union of Chicago, a grassroots organization focused on labor, immigration, and civil rights. With over ten years of organizing and advocacy experience, Ms. Aranda has worked on a range of other issues including affordable housing, sexual harassment, access to healthcare, land use and displacement. As an organizer in Chicago, her efforts led to the opening of the first day laborer workers' center in the Midwest. An accomplished facilitator and popular educator, she has extensive experience in creating and implementing strategic planning, analysis and skills building workshops. As part of the Immigrant Defense Committee, she took the lead in creating the nation’s most comprehensive curriculum for community preparation and response to immigration raids and detentions. Ms. Aranda served for two years on the board of the National Day Laborer Organizing Network and as Chicago’s media coordinator for the 2006 and 2007 mass mobilizations calling for immigration reform. She has a B.A. in Cultural Anthropology and Latin American Studies from Beloit College and is also a certified interpreter.

President
Cristy Carbon-Gaul, Attorney and Shareholder, Sutin, Thayer and Browne with special expertise in non-profit law; has participated in numerous community boards and activities, including past President of the New Mexico Women’s Bar Association and Board Member of Emerge New Mexico, an organization that helps train Democratic women to run for public office.

Secretary
Erica Bearman, former educator for the Albuquerque Public Schools with a focus on math and science; currently the State of New Mexico Account Manager for Wright Group/McGraw-Hill, a PreK-8th grade educational materials company; member of the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics and the Association of Supervision and Curriculum Development.

Chair, Legislative Committee and Member of Executive Committee
Julianna Koob, former Director, Sheila Wellstone Institute, where she organized and mobilized constituencies to end violence against women and children by engaging in systems change; implemented first ever VotePower project in Arizona through the National Network to End Domestic Violence, a unique nonpartisan project that engaged survivors of domestic and sexual violence and their advocates in the voting process; graduated from the University of New Mexico School of Law.

Chair, Legal Committee
Shannon Bacon, Attorney and Shareholder, Sutin, Thayer and Browne civil litigation practice; past President and current board member of the New Mexico Women’s Bar Association, a board member of Emerge New Mexico, and an Albuquerque Community Foundation Future Fund member.

Bonnie Bell Cundiff
Strategic Planning, Business Consultant extensive experience in advising large corporations and nonprofits

Alexandra Freedman Smith
Attorney, Freedman, Boyd, Daniels, Hollander & Goldberg criminal defense and civil litigation practice
volunteer attorney with the Homeless Legal Clinic, an ACLU cooperating attorney, a member of the New Mexico Criminal Defense Lawyers Association, and a member of the Women’s Bar Association.

Danice Picraux
Member, New Mexico House of Representatives former Democratic Majority Leader of the NM House of Representatives; currently, Vice Chair of House Appropriations and Finance Committee; Vice-Chair, Interim Committee on Health and Human Services. Representative Picraux was recognized as an emerging state leader by the Council of State Governments and awarded its Henry J. Toll Fellowship in 1997. In 2002, she completed the John F Kennedy School of Government Program for Senior Executives in State and Local Government.

Antoinette Sedillo Lopez
Professor of Law and Associate Dean for Clinical Affairs at the University of New Mexico School of Law teaches courses ranging from election law to family law and the access to justice clinic; Associate, UNM Feminist Research Institute; Associate, Southwest Hispanic Research Institute.