Before joining PDA, Mira worked for the Northwest Justice Project (NJP) as a legal assistant in the Family Law Unit. She assisted attorneys with divorces, parenting plans, criminal privacy cases, and orders of protection. At NJP, she was the legal assistant for the Reentry Initiated through Services and Education (RISE) Project, which provides civil legal services to currently and formerly incarcerated survivors of gender-based violence. Prior to working at NJP, Mira was a paralegal in Chicago at Ben Crump Law where she worked on prominent civil rights and police brutality cases.
Mira graduated with honors in Rhetorical Studies from Whitman College in Walla Walla, Washington. During this time, she worked at the Walla Walla State Penitentiary as a teaching and research assistant for a class taught to incarcerated and Whitman College students about mass incarceration, grounded in the text of Michelle Alexander’s The New Jim Crow. Mira also worked at the Walla Walla County Jail as a Research and Policy Fellow where she provided legislative analysis and critique on the Prison Rape Elimination Act (PREA). During 2016-2017, Mira worked for attorney Carrie Goldberg, of C.A. Goldberg Law in New York City, where she was an Editorial and Legislative Assistant.
Mira is most excited to work for PDA due to her passion for bridging political advocacy and policy work with litigation. Mira believes that the criminal justice system prioritizes punishment over rehabilitation, jeopardizing proven public safety measures, community and victim wishes, and crime reduction. She hopes that her work at PDA will aid in providing a tangible framework for people who seek to address crime at its root cause and avoid criminalization based on poverty and/ or addiction.
In her spare time Mira enjoys Wikipedia rabbit holes, reminding everyone how cute her dog is, and rearranging her home against her partner’s wishes.