Our Board

Lord Falconer is an English qualified King’s Counsel and partner at Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher.  He was called to the Bar (Inner Temple) in 1974 and was appointed Solicitor General in May 1997. In 1997, he became Solicitor-General, moving a year later to the Cabinet Office. In June 2003, he became the Lord Chancellor and the first Secretary of State for Constitutional Affairs. In conjunction with the then Lord Chief Justice, he worked out the relationship between the judiciary and the executive, which created, for the first time, a Supreme Court for the UK, the creation of a commission to appoint judges, made a full-time independent judge the Head of the Judiciary for England and Wales, and introduced an elected Speaker for the House of Lords. In 2007, he became the first Secretary of State for Justice bringing together courts, prisons and justice policy for the first time. He was named in The Times Law 100 (2012), its annual list of the 100 most influential lawyers in the UK, and he was recognised by The Legal 500 UK 2024 for Banking Litigation: Investment and Retail, Commercial Litigation, International Arbitration and Public International Law.

Karyn is the Chair of our Trustee Board. She has worked in the police for 22 years in Sussex, Lancashire, West Mercia, Strathclyde and Police Scotland. In 2016 Karyn took up the post of Chief Executive for Community Justice Scotland.

In 2004 Karyn and John Carnochan set up the Scottish Violence Reduction Unit which addressed violence as a public health problem in Scotland. They developed injury surveillance, gang intervention and gang exit, and focused on preventing knife carrying, injury and passionate advocates of early years support and the role of trauma. She helps support Medics Against Violence charity in Scotland, set up in conjunction with the Violence Reduction Unit.

She is a board member of Simon Community Scotland tackling homelessness and is on the Board of the Scottish Professional Football League.

Adjoa Abekah-Mensah is a solicitor in England and Wales specialising in derivatives law, fintech and financial market infrastructure. She was previously a specialist tax advisor, working at one of the Big 4 advising on infrastructure projects and large corporate restructurings. Adjoa has a considered interest in criminal justice and social policy, having been a member of her local youth council for a number of years and then interning as a policy and parliamentary intern at a national children’s charity. Building on her particular interest in criminal justice, Adjoa was sworn in as a Justice of the Peace in 2015, and is currently sitting as a magistrate in the South East London Local Justice Area, after a number of years on the South West London bench.

The former Chair of our Trustee Board, Greg Berman is the Co-Editor of Vital City and the Distinguished Fellow of Practice at the Harry Frank Guggenheim Foundation in New York. He previously served as Executive Director of the Center for Court Innovation from 2002-2020. Part of the founding team responsible for creating the Center, he has accepted numerous awards on behalf of the agency, including the Peter F. Drucker Prize for Nonprofit Innovation. He previously served as the lead planner of the Red Hook Community Justice Center in Brooklyn, which has been documented by independent evaluators to reduce crime and promote public trust in justice. He is also the author of several books including, most recently, Gradual: The Case for Incremental Change in a Radical Age (with Aubrey Fox), which was named one of the books of the year by The Economist. 

Mark Blake is a councillor in the London Borough of Haringey where he is the Cabinet Member for Community Safety and Engagement, leading on the councils work with the police, the youth service and youth offending service. Mark worked for BTEG where he leads on their work on the criminal justice system and addressing ethnic disproportionality providing the secretariat and policy support for Equal (formerly the Young Review Independent Advisory group.)

Courtney Bryan is the executive director of the Center for Justice Innovation, our American sister organisation. She first worked for the Center shortly after college, as a program associate, where she learned firsthand about the importance of engaging communities in implementing lasting reforms.

Aubrey Fox is the Executive Director of the Criminal Justice Agency, New York City’s main pretrial services agency which provides pretrial release recommendations, operates innovative demonstration projects and produces widely cited research on bail, domestic violence and juvenile offending. Prior to CJA, Aubrey worked in a variety of senior leadership roles at the Center for Court Innovation, he was founding Director of the Centre for Justice Innovation, and worked as the Executive Director of the Institute for Economics and Peace-USA. He is the co-author (with Greg Berman) of Trial and Error in Criminal Justice Reform: Learning from Failure, published by the Urban Institute Press.

Shauneen is a barrister in England and Wales and an attorney in the USA. She is a partner in Impact - Law for Social Justice, a consultancy that supports those considering using the law for social change. Shauneen is the co-founder and former CEO of Just for Kids Law (2005-2018) her work included Just for Kids Law’s strategic litigation team, which, successfully changed the law to benefit many children and young people and starting up the Youth Justice Legal Centre, as a centre of excellence in youth justice law. Prior to working in the UK, Shauneen worked at the Louisiana Crisis Assistance Center representing those facing the death penalty. She is an Ashoka Fellow and an Eisenhower Fellow and was a World Economic Forum Young Global Leader. She is honoured to be the vice-chair of the Barings Foundation and on the boards of Ashoka UK and the Centre for Justice Innovation.

Sal Naseem is Assistant Director of Insight, Policy & Strategy at Birmingham City Council, a Senior Associate Fellow at The Police Foundation, and an independent panel member at the National Fire Chiefs Council, supporting their work on culture and inclusion. Sal was the former Regional Director for London at the Independent Office for Police Conduct, where he spent the best part of a decade working in the police accountability framework in England and Wales. Sal has worked on some of the most high-profile misconduct cases featuring the Metropolitan Police Service in recent years. As the Strategic Lead on Discrimination, he has led both regional and national work focused on stop and search, racism, misogyny, and police culture. Sal has been honoured in the 2023/2024 Diversity Power List as one of the top 50 changemakers in the UK.

Geraldine is a Consultant Forensic Psychologist, a Chartered and Registered Psychologist and an Associate Fellow of the British Psychological Society. Geraldine worked for the Probation Board for Northern Ireland for over 25 years as the Director of Rehabilitation and Head of Psychological Services and Interventions, and led on a range of rehabilitation initiatives, including Problem Solving Justice.

On completion of her Churchill Fellowship in the USA, researching Problem Solving Courts and Early Intervention Justice and Health initiatives, Geraldine received the British Psychological Society’s President Award for Innovation in Psychological Practice. Along with the Department of Justice, Geraldine was instrumental in introducing Problem Solving Justice initiatives to Northern Ireland, including the first Substance Misuse Court, Domestic Abuse projects and other early intervention initiatives.

Kevin is a retired senior civil servant whose last role was Chief Executive of His Majesty’sCourts and Tribunals Service (HMCTS). He worked within the justice system for twenty years, leading the programmes which created both Her Majesty’s Court Service (HMCS) and the Tribunal Service and was CEO of the Tribunals Service until it merged with HMCS. Within HMCTS he worked with colleagues to lead change and reform across the justice system and was a member of both the national Family Justice Board and Criminal Justice Board. In 2018 he was awarded a CBE for services to the administration of justice. Prior to becoming Chief Executive of HMCTS he was in charge of all operational activity and of leading the HMCTS response to the Covid 19 pandemic.

Gordon Wasserman is an internationally recognised expert in policing and criminal justice. Previously, Lord Wasserman was Advisor on Policing and Criminal Justice to Prime Minister David Cameron and Home Secretary Theresa May. He is a member of the Conservative Party in the Lords where he takes a special interest in policing and criminal justice matters. Prior to this Lord Wasserman was Assistant Under Secretary of State for Police Science and Technology in the Home Office.

Jason is currently the Specialist Communications Officer at Clinks, the infrastructure organisation for the voluntary criminal justice sector in England and Wales. Jason oversees all internal and external communications at Clinks, working closely with Clinks' policy team.

He joined Clinks after working at the Centre for Justice Innovation as an intern; his first role in the sector, where he primarily wrote case studies on innovative practice projects in the United Kingdom as part of the Centre's Mapping Innovation project. 

Jason's passion for effective change within the criminal justice system (CJS) stems from his having first-hand, multi-layered experience of it. Jason understands the pressing urgency for innovation and evolution within the CJS and relishes the opportunity to serve as a trustee in the pursuit of his, and the Centre's, aligned goals. Jason is an adviser to the Board.

Robert Zara is a retired District Judge (Magistrates’ Courts). He was the judge in charge of the Community Justice Court in Birmingham between 2006-2009 and later was one of two judges who set up and ran the Family Drug and Alcohol Court in Coventry. In the course of his judicial career Robert was a tutor for the Judicial College and served on a working group set up by HMCS into problem-solving in courts. With Howard Riddle, he is the co-author of Essential Magistrates’ Courts Law. As a young solicitor, he helped set up the organisation that is now Coventry Law Centre, and subsequently founded his own high street legal aid practice.