Advisory Board

Emile DeWeaver (he/him)

Emile DeWeaver became a published writer, community organizer, and co-founder of prisonrenaissance.org while serving a 67 year to life sentence. Gov. Brown granted him clemency in 2017. Emile is interested in internalized systems of oppression and how they prevent us from building and maintaining effective models of justice. He guest lectures at social justice venues and in universities about his written work, what he calls liberation models, and what he calls the lying fiction of criminality. 

His written works comprise over 50 published articles, essays, short stories, poems, plays, and curricula. His community organizing includes education and communication campaigns to pass four senate bills and Proposition 57. His organization is the first nonprofit founded and run by incarcerated people. Their aim is to take prison administration out of prison programs as a step toward prison abolition.

Dr. Liam “captain” Snowdon (they/them)

Liam “captain” Snowdon is a Somatic Sex Educator, Anti-Violence Worker, and poet. Captain is the founder of SPARC (The Sex Positive Art and Recreation Centre) on the occupied territories of the Lekwungen people colonially know as Victoria, BC. Captain is a former Assistant Professor at the Institute for the Advanced Study of Human Sexuality in San Francisco and current faculty with The Institute for Sexual Education and Enlightenment. They have spent the last 10 years co-teaching both of North America’s Somatic Sex Educator Trainings (Sexological Bodywork Training). They hold a Master’s degree in Public Health in Human Sexuality and a Doctorate in Human Sexuality.

Their own journeys with learning disabilities, gender, queerness, causing harm and experiencing harm, privilege and oppression continue to deeply inform their ever changing practice. Captain is passionate about social justice, embodiment, earth magic and the ocean.

Eva Dalak (she/her)

Eva Dalak is an international consultant, facilitator and trainer with 18 years of experience in international development cooperation, with particular focus on gender mainstreaming and implementing rights-based approaches. She studied international law and political science at the Sorbonne in Paris and worked with one of the largest NGO’s in the field of conflict transformation as well as with the United Nations Peacekeeping Operations and with European Union Delegations around the world.

Eva is a Palestinian Muslim that grew up in Israel and studied in a Christian French school. Her identity was formed by the combination of these three religions and very constrained traditions, cultures and conflicts. Yet what defines her is a deep connection to the human spirit and a sense of freedom that goes beyond identity.

Eva has experience working in highly diverse, dynamic and complex multicultural contexts in various conflict zones in Africa, the Middle East and South East Asia, including field experience in Iraq. She speaks fluently French, English, Arabic, Hebrew, and Spanish.