Meet Our Team

Leadership

Lindsay
Toczylowski
Executive Director and Co-Founder
Lindsay Toczylowski is a social entrepreneur whose diligent work to increase access to justice for immigrants is at the forefront of the movement for universal representation—the right to counsel for anyone facing deportation. Lindsay is the Co-Founder and Executive Director of the Immigrant Defenders Law Center (ImmDef), one of the largest non-profit organizations that provides universal legal representation to marginalized immigrant communities. Lindsay also makes frequent trips to the U.S.-Mexico border to get first-hand experience with our nation’s border policies and their effects on migrants and asylum seekers. For the past 15 years, Lindsay has provided legal representation to thousands of immigrants and asylum seekers through her work at various nonprofit organizations in the United States and abroad, including the Immigrant Rights Project for Catholic Charities of Los Angeles, Kids in Need of Defense, and Asylum Access. She is also a member of the Board of Directors of Asylum Access since 2017, an international nonprofit that fights for the rights of refugees in the global South. Lindsay has appeared in major media outlets, including MSNBC, The New York Times, Los Angeles Times and ABC. She is the proud mother of two revolutionaries-in-training, and they are her inspiration to keep fighting for social justice every day.

Susan
Alva
Associate Director and Co-Founder
Susan was born in New York City to Mexican and Dominican immigrant parents. Beginning her social justice activism while a Los Angeles high school student in the 1960's, she went on to work for the CA Rural Legal Assistance in the San Joaquin Valley before joining the United Farm Workers Union during the height of their state-wide organizing campaign following passage of the groundbreaking Agricultural Labor Relations Act in 1975. While in law school, Susan worked for the San Diego Legal Aid Society's Immigration Project, focusing on deportation defense and border work. Since then, she has worked for several immigrant rights and community-based organizations, including the L.A. Center for Law and Justice, where she played a key role in the implementation of the 1986 amnesty law and the founding of CHIRLA, the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights of L.A. She has been an adjunct professor at Occidental College, a delegate in numerous international migrant rights campaigns, and led the successful campaign to create L.A.’s first Mayor’s Office of Immigrant Affairs in 2004. Susan is a long-time member and past Board Chair of the National Immigration Project of the National Lawyers Guild and the National Network for Immigrant and Refugee Rights.

Yliana
Johansen-Mendez
Associate Director
Yliana is originally from Pasadena, CA. She is the wife and daughter of Mexican immigrants, and the proud mother of two.
As an Equal Justice Works Fellow she did groundbreaking work
with unaccompanied minors, creating the first One-Parent
SIJS Manual for attorneys
seeking predicate orders
before family courts in California.
She joined ImmDef in 2018 after almost five years in government service. Yliana is a fierce
advocate who draws from her experience in government
and removal defense to lead
and train the next generation of immigrant defenders.
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Bhairavi Asher
Directing Attorney

Devin Chatterton
Directing Attorney

Cynthia Felix
Directing Attorney
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Kimberly Harbin
Directing Attorney
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Laura Olmos
Operations Director

Melissa Shepard
Directing Attorney

Selina Vazquez
Director of Development
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Jonathan Barrales
Program Director
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Steven Torres
Director of Human Resources

Martin Gauto
Director of Capacity Building
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Alvaro Huerta
Litigation and Advocacy Director

Beanie Bains
Finance Director
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Amanda Schuft
Legal Services Director

Margaret Cargioli
Directing Attorney Policy & Advocacy
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Mickey Donovan-Kaloust
Legal Services Director

Daniel Gonzalez
Director of Information & Technology
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Carlos Olivares
Administrative Program Director

Katie Siler
Directing Attorney

Laura Urias
Program Director