Hanna Liebman Dershowitz, Esq.

Hanna Liebman Dershowitz serves as the Director of Policy and Legal Affairs for the Center for Justice and Human Dignity.

Most recently, Hanna served as Director of Policy and Advocacy for New Yorkers United for Justice. In this role, she led NYUJ’s legislative advocacy and served as a fulcrum for NYUJ’s member organizations, maximizing the coalition’s impact on state-level criminal legal reform. Previously, she was Director of Special Projects for the Alternative Sentencing Division of the Aleph Institute, where she spearheaded national advocacy on alternatives to incarceration. Hanna has also served as Director of Legal Affairs and Policy Development at the Jewish Council for Public Affairs in New York, where she crafted new JCPA policy on criminal justice and drug policy reform.

Earlier, Hanna was the Criminal Justice and Drug Policy Reform Advocate at the ACLU of Southern California, where she was a local leader on California’s Public Safety Realignment law and reentry policies and conducted legislative advocacy for the reduction of drug possession penalties. She notably served as General Counsel and Senior Policy Advisor to Texas State Senator Rodney Ellis, spearheading a landmark package of major reforms to the criminal system in Texas. She has written and spoken widely on criminal legal reform and drug policy, and taught Legislation and Statutory Interpretation at the University of Houston Law Center.

Hanna received her J.D. with honors from Brooklyn Law School and her bachelor’s degree from Oberlin College. She was a journalist in New York City, her hometown and current residence, in the 1990s.

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