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.

Linda Malott , Office Administrator
Ms. Malott joined the Southwest Women’s Law Center in October, 2009. She grew up in New Mexico and has been a career paralegal. Before joining the Center, she served as Office Administrator and Paralegal at Malott Law Offices. She has over twenty-five years’ legal experience with primary emphasis in civil litigation, including torts, product liability, wrongful death, and personal injury claims. She has previously served on the Paralegal Advisory Board of CNM Community College and Escuela del Sol Montessori. She is also a Realtor and member of Greater Albuquerque Association of Realtors and NAR.

Elizabeth Buchen, MD, Director of Women’s Health Policy
Dr. Buchen is a trained Obstetrician/Gynecologist with a long history of reproductive rights work, both as an advocate and provider. She has served as a board member for both the New Mexico NARAL and Planned Parenthood chapters, and as an organizer for Medical Students for Choice. She is a recipient of the NARAL Pro-Choice New Mexico Pass the Torch Award. She completed medical school and residency at the University of New Mexico. As a physician, she provided family planning services at a community health center serving a diverse population of low-income and immigrant women. She recently left her medical practice to pursue community education and advocacy to promote women’s health. A native New Mexican and fluent Spanish speaker, she is excited about the opportunity to advance access to health care services for New Mexico women.

Jennifer Vega-Brown, Senior Staff Attorney
Ms. Vega-Brown is a 2003 University of New Mexico Law School graduate. During law school she was a research assistant for the Innocence and Justice Project, as well as secretary, vice-president and president of the organization, and a member of the Clemency Project. After law school she worked at the Second Judicial District Attorney’s Office as an Assistant District Attorney. She prosecuted domestic violence and DWI crimes in metropolitan court and then moved to the Community Crimes Division where she worked under a H.I.D.T.A. grant (High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area) prosecuting felony narcotic crimes in the Second Judicial District Court. From late 2005 to 2010 she worked at the City of Albuquerque City Attorney’s Office assigned to the Safe City Strike Force and DWI Vehicle Seizure Unit. She was the Supervising Attorney of the Seizure Unit from 2007 to 2010. In 2009, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration informed her that the program would be featured as one of the ten most successful self-sustained DWI prevention programs in the country. Prior to attending law school she was a stay at home mother of three children, did volunteer work for several non-profit organizations, worked as a freelance journalist, and completed a Master’s degree in Curriculum and Instruction from the NMSU college of Education with particular emphasis in multicultural education.

Erin Armstrong, Reproductive Justice Fellow, Summer 2010
Ms. Armstrong is in her third year of law school at the University of California, Berkeley School of Law. During the summer of 2009, she was a legal intern at UCSF's Advancing New Standards in Reproductive Health (ANSIRH) where she worked to support a study that trained advanced practice clinicians in the provision of early abortion care. Before law school, Erin worked for the Society of Family Planning, a national membership and grants organization composed of medical and social researchers in the areas of contraception and abortion. Before moving to California, she worked in drug policy reform and HIV/ADIS advocacy in New Mexico, providing further familiarity with issues of sexual health and the struggle to prioritize science, social justice, and human rights in health policy. She also currently serves on the board of NARAL Pro-Choice California PAC and on the national board of Law Students for Reproductive Justice. Erin has also volunteered as a patient escort at an abortion clinic to help ensure safe access to reproductive health services.

Kyle Marie Stock, Reproductive Justice and Health Law Fellow, 2010-2012
Ms. Stock will be joining the staff of the SWLC at the end of the summer. She is the recipient of a two-year George M. Fleming Fellowship in Health Law from the University of Texas School of Law. She has just graduated from the UT School of Law, where she was a co-founder and one of the Student Coordinators of the Texas chapter of Law Students for Reproductive Justice. Kyle also serves as the Vice President of the Public Interest Law Association at UT and is a member of the Student Advisory Board of the William Wayne Justice Public Interest Law Center. Kyle spent a summer working as a law clerk at the South Texas Civil Rights Project on cases concerning deaf individuals’ access to services under the Americans with Disabilities Act. She also worked as a law clerk at the Texas Advocacy Project, a non-profit organization devoted to assisting domestic violence survivors with their legal needs. In addition Kyle participated in the Capital Punishment Clinic and the Immigration Clinic at the UT School of Law. Kyle is the Class of 2010 recipient of the Equal Justice Scholarship, a full tuition award for individuals pursuing a public interest law career, which will support her to reproductive justice advocacy at the SWLC beginning in the fall of 2010.

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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.