Executive Director: Lael Elizabeth Hiam Chester became the third Executive Director of CfJJ in March 2001, following five years of services on CfJJ’s Board of Directors. Lael is a graduate of Barnard College and Harvard Law School . Her prior work experience includes both litigating and researching juvenile justice, criminal justice and civil rights issues. She was the Albert Martin Sacks Clinical Fellow at the Criminal Justice Institute at Harvard Law School and an Assistant Attorney General in the Civil Rights/Civil Liberties Division of the Massachusetts Office of the Attorney General. She is a recipient of the Robert F. Kennedy Children's Action Corps' Embracing the Legacy Award (2011), Massachusetts Lawyers Weekly's Women of Justice Award (2009), and the Jay D. Blitzman Youth Advocacy Award (2004). She currently is a member of the Governor's Juvenile Justice Advisory Committee (JJAC) and serves on the JJAC's Executive Committee and chairs its Disproportionate Minority Contact Subcommittee.
From Our eNewsletter
Earlier this month, WBUR aired Anatomy of a Bad Confession, a two-part story describing how a Worcester 16-year-old was coerced into confessing to the murder of her infant son.
From Our Blog
- What Every Reader Asks: ‘What’s It Got to Do With Me?’
- Kids in the System
- Teen Prostitution–Criminal Behavior?
- Juvenile Justice and the War on Drugs
Staff
Director of Operations: Gale Munson joined CfJJ in January 2004. she is a graduate of Wellesley College and Harvard Law School. Following a clerkship for the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts, she joined the Boston firm of Palmer & Dodge. After twelve years of practice, focusing primarily in commercial real estate transactions, she resigned from the firm to devote time to family and volunteer projects. Prior to joining CfJJ, she worked for six years for the Henry P. Kendall Foundation in Boston as a grants administrator and program associate. Since 2004, in addition to working at CfJJ, she has worked for The Farm School, an educational farm in Central Massachusetts whose mission is to connect children to the land.
Senior Policy Associate: Naoka Carey joined CfJJ in September, 2011. Prior to her work at CfJJ, Naoka worked as the coordinator of the Massachusetts Campaign for the Fair Sentencing of Youth at the Youth Advocacy Department at CPCS. She has worked in private practice as a civil litigator and at a number of organizations serving youth in the juvenile justice and child welfare systems, including the Children's Law Center of Washington, D.C. and the Juvenile Rights Division of the Legal Aid Society in New York. She has also worked as a youth organizer and trainer in Seattle and Boston. Naoka is a graduate of Harvard College and New York University School of Law, where she represented youth in the juvenile justice system as part of the Juvenile Rights Clinic. Prior to attending law school, she received a Master's Degree in Education from Harvard, focusing on adolescent risk and prevention.
Program Associate: Hannah Caporello joined CfJJ in January 2012. She recently received her B.A. from New York University, where she studied public health and public policy. A New Hampshire native, she has served as a congressional intern for U.S. Senator Edward Kaufman (D-DE) and as a research intern for the New Hampshire Institute for Health Policy and Practice.