Voting Rights

Christopher Iyer is a Data Analyst on the Voting Rights team at Advancing Justice – ALC. Chris recently graduated from Stanford University, where he studied Symbolic Systems, Human Rights, and Music. Previously, he has worked to get people out of prisons and ICE detention centers with several organizations around the Bay Area. In addition, in the Stanford Memory Lab, he studied how racial bias shapes the various cognitive systems that contribute to human memory. Chris is motivated to envision new models of justice, organization, and healing that extend from the interpersonal to the structural, and sees his work at the ALC as addressing key electoral barriers to community flourishing.

Alongside his work at ALC, Chris researches in the Poldrack Lab at Stanford University, studying mechanisms of cognitive control and how to reconceptualize its role in mental health and illness with the tools of modern neuroscience. He also plays the trumpet, in the tradition of Black American and creative improvised music.

Deanna Kitamura is a Senior Staff Attorney with the Voting Rights Program. Her work focuses on protecting the vote and expanding access to the polls for AAPI voters. Before joining AdvancingJustice-ALC, Deanna was a Senior Staff Attorney at Partnership for Working Families where she provided legal support to grassroot organizations. For nearly a decade before that, Deanna worked at Advancing Justice-Los Angeles – first as the Statewide Redistricting Manager and later as Senior Staff Attorney and Voting Rights Project Director. She has filed lawsuits resulting in cities converting from at-large to district elections and has co-authored various reports, including Voices of Democracy: The State of Language Access in California’s November 2016 Elections. Deanna has worked on legislation involving California’s automatic voter registration process, the administration of vote centers, and language access improvements for voters. She has served on several local and state election-related committees and is a member of the California Secretary of State’s Language Accessibility Advisory Committee.

Deanna has dedicated her legal career to working on social justice issues. In addition to the nonprofits listed above, she has worked at Western Center on Law & Poverty, the National Consumer Law Center, and California Rural Legal Assistance. She began her career working on employment discrimination cases at a civil rights litigation firm. Deanna graduated from Pomona College and UCLA School of Law.

Eileen has worked for over twenty years as a community organizer, campaign director and non-profit executive, serving primarily low-income, immigrant and LGBTQ communities of color. Her professional experience includes working for many labor unions and community-based organizations, such as API Equality-LA where she served for several years as Executive Director and contributed to highly-lauded efforts to achieve equality and visibility for API LGBTQ communities. Most recently, she worked as staff attorney for Advancement Project – National Office on voting rights and immigrant rights, and Advancing Justice LA’s National Voting Rights Project. She is originally from Somers, New York, is Chinese American and speaks Mandarin and Spanish. She earned a JD from Loyola Law School (2013) and a BA from Columbia University (1993).

Elisa Chen is the Data Analyst on the National Voting Rights team at Advancing Justice – ALC. Her work focuses on building the technical infrastructure for community based organizations nationwide, and providing data analysis support for civic engagement, voting rights advocacy, and litigation. Elisa previously worked at Coase-Sander Institute for Law and Economics, University of Chicago Crime and Education Lab, and Advancing Justice-LA, using social science research methods and computational tools to support criminal justice reforms and voting rights issues. She is particularly interested in creating disaggregated data to better serve our community, critically examining the production and distribution of data, and making open data accessible to everyone.

Elisa received her M.P.P from University of Chicago, and B.A in Mathematics and History from University of Wisconsin-Madison. In her free time, she can be found doing yoga and reading comic books with her two imaginary cats at her small apartment in Hyde Park, trying to be elegant at the ice rinks, and learning languages in the public library!

Elisa is a first-generation immigrant, and she' more than proud to help her fellow immigrants of color to navigate the complex social and political landscape in America.

Kim is the Voting Rights Legal Fellow at the Asian Americans Advancing Justice Affiliation and Advancing Justice – Chicago. Prior to this role, Kim was the Managing Attorney at the Chinese American Service League, where she coordinated and provided legal services to residents of Chicago’s Chinatown and surrounding areas.

Kim draws from her breadth of experience in the private and public sector. Previously, Kim served as Assistant Attorney General at the Illinois Attorney General’s office, where she served as lead counsel in federal civil rights lawsuits.

Kim earned her J.D. at the University of Wisconsin, where she participated in the Wisconsin Innocence Project, and Wisconsin Journal of Law, Gender and Society.

Sietse Goffard is the Senior Program Coordinator on the Voting Rights team at Advancing Justice – ALC. His work focuses on fair redistricting and voter empowerment. Sietse previously worked on affordable housing and Section 8 rental assistance programs for the City of Boston. He also spent several years at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) leading projects to tackle racial discrimination in housing and lending. His research and articles have been published by the Brookings Institution, Cato Institute, US-China Perception Monitor, and National Bureau of Economic Research. In addition, Sietse is an avid public transportation enthusiast and served on the advisory council of Washington D.C.’s transit system to advocate for more equitable metro and bus coverage.

Sietse completed his graduate studies at Harvard Kennedy School and at Tsinghua University as a Schwarzman Scholar. He received his undergraduate degree from Harvard College, where he served as class president and co-led a citizenship mentoring program for elderly Asian immigrants.