Meet Our Team

Leadership

Lindsay
Toczylowski
Executive Director and Co-Founder
Lindsay is a social entrepreneur whose work to increase access to justice for immigrants is at the forefront of the movement for universal representation. For the past 15 years, Lindsay has provided legal representation to thousands of immigrants and refugees with various nonprofit organizations in the U.S. and abroad. Lindsay is on the Board of Directors of Asylum Access, an international nonprofit that fights for the rights of refugees in the global South. Lindsay 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. She has held various leadership roles defending vulnerable communities and worked on several high-profile cases, including the El Monte Thai garment workers case. She is on the Boards of the National Immigration Project of the National Lawyers Guild and the National Network for Immigrant and Refugee Rights.
Susan is a fierce defender of immigrant's rights and through her work, many lives have been positively impacted.

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.
.jpg)
Bhairavi Asher
Directing Attorney
.jpg)
Nicole Cortes
Director of Human Resources
_JPG.jpg)
Kimberly Harbin
Directing Attorney

Katie Siler
Directing Attorney
.jpg)
Jonathan Barrales
Program Director
.jpg)
Mickey Donovan-Kaloust
Legal Services Director
.png)
Alvaro Huerta
Litigation and Advocacy Director

Melissa Shepard
Directing Attorney

Margaret Cargioli
Directing Attorney Policy & Advocacy

Cynthia Felix
Directing Attorney

Axel Sawczuk
Finance and Operations Director
(1).jpg)
Amanda Schuft
Legal Services Director