Kira Shepherd, Common Justice’s Vice President of Organizing and Policy, has been a racial and social justice advocate for nearly twenty years. Before coming to Common Justice, she worked at the New Jersey Institute for Social Justice, where she led a campaign that called for New Jersey’s three youth prisons to be closed and led the organization’s police reform work. Prior to that, she served as the Racial Justice Director at Columbia Law School's Law, Rights, and Religion Project, where she headed up initiatives designed to conceptualize and operationalize new frames for understanding the multiple ways that religious liberty laws limit reproductive and LGBTQI rights and harm people of color. She also served as the Executive Director and Director of Campaigns at The Black Institute (TBI), an action think tank, where she led advocacy work in the areas of criminal justice reform, immigrant rights, and economic justice. Prior to TBI, Kira worked at ColorOfChange, where she worked on criminal justice and corporate accountability campaigns. She has also worked at the University of Pennsylvania’s Annenberg Pubic Policy Center and Make the Road New York. Kira graduated from Rutgers Law School, Newark with a Juris Doctorate degree.