Meet Our Board

Jeansil’s contributions to the HIV sector span from volunteering for the Farah Foundation in the late 2000s to capacity building with Ugandan HIV-led organizations after his first undergraduate degree. His introduction to the HIV Legal Network came in 2012 when he attended the 4th Symposium on HIV, Law & Human Rights. Jeansil formally joined the orbit of the Legal Network as a Legal Policy Intern in the Summer of 2015. In his more than 15 years of contributing to the sector, he has worked at COCQ-SIDA, AIDS Community Care Montreal, and a variety of regional, provincial, and national consultation committees. As a proud Montrealer who completed his B.C.L./LL.B. at McGill’s Faculty of Law, he also obtained degrees in Communication Studies, Religious Studies, and Globalization from Concordia University.

Jeansil brings a holistic understanding of access to justice for people living with HIV, trans populations, migrants, and the broader 2SLGBTQIA+ community. Jeansil does not shy away from his Filipino-Muslim heritage and status as a gay man of colour in Canada. As a proud Canadian immigrant, he seeks to break down institutional forms of oppression and engage with a society that does not tolerate any form of gender-based, sexual orientation-based, religion-based or ethnoculturally based discrimination. Currently, Jeansil works at the Immigration Refugee Board of Canada as a Decision-maker in the Refugee Protection Division.

Y.Y. Brandon Chen joined the Legal Network’s board of directors in 2021.

Y.Y. is a professor at University of Ottawa’s Faculty of Law, Common Law Section. Trained as a lawyer and a social worker, his expertise lies in the areas of public and constitutional law, health law, and immigration and refugee law. His research leverages socio-legal studies and action research to critically examine health inequities facing noncitizens and racialized minorities, including those living with HIV.

Before embarking on a legal career, Y.Y. worked as a research coordinator at the Committee for Accessible AIDS Treatment (CAAT), a coalition of organizations aiming to improve treatment and service access for marginalized people living with HIV. He was formerly a member of the Ontario Advisory Committee on HIV/AIDS, the co-chair of CAAT, and a board member of Canadian Centre on Statelessness. He currently also sits on the governance committee of the Ontario HIV Treatment Network Cohort Study.

Y.Y. worked at the Legal Network as a summer student while attending law school. He is thrilled to be a part of the Legal Network again.

Meenakshi Mannoe is a settler living on the unceded territories of the Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh peoples since 2006. Her parents are immigrants to Canada, and she was born and raised on the traditional territories of the Haudenosaunee and Anishinaabe peoples, on land protected by the Dish with One Spoon Wampum agreement and territory included in the Upper Canada Treaties, colonially known as small town Ontario. Meenakshi currently works at Pivot Legal Society as the Criminalization & Policing Campaigner, where her advocacy centres the realities of police violence and murder, advocacy to defund police budgets, and community-led responses to harm and inequality. Prior to her work at Pivot, Meenakshi worked in frontline HIV services, including in/outreach to prisoners living with HIV and Hep C in provincial and federal prisons. She is a member of the Vancouver Prison Justice Day Committee and Defund 604 Network. She is inspired by freedom fighters like Synthia Kavanagh, Peter Collins, and all folks who work towards a world free of prisons, police, and criminalization.

Dr. Tiffany O’Donnell, MD, CCFP, is a family physician in Halifax/Kjipuktuk, Nova Scotia. She currently practices out of the Sipekne’katik Health Centre in Sipekne’katik First Nation and Mobile Outreach Street Health (MOSH) in Halifax. She is certified in Addiction Medicine through the International Society of Addiction Medicine and is a consultant in Addiction Medicine for Nova Scotia Health. A previous board member of the East Coast Prison Justice Society, she has a special interest in prison health, and has been working on the development of a collaborative throughcare program with MOSH and community stakeholders such as the Elizabeth Fry Society of Mainland Nova Scotia, Coverdale Courtwork Society, and the John Howard Society.

Tiffany is a co-founder and co-chair of Doctors for Decriminalization, a national coalition of physicians who recognize the enormous harm caused by the criminalization of people who use substances, and advocates for evidence-informed drug policy. An assistant professor in the Department of Family Medicine at Dalhousie University, Tiffany focuses her clinical teaching around trauma informed care, clinical advocacy, and harm reduction. She provides mentorship to colleagues through the Atlantic Mentorship Network for Pain and Addictions.

Shakir Rahim is Director of the Criminal Justice program at the Canadian Civil Liberties Association. He has served on the boards of the Alliance for South Asian AIDS Prevention (ASAAP), Prisoners with HIV/AIDS Support Action Network (PASAN), AIDS Committee of Toronto (ACT), and HIV/AIDS Legal Clinic Ontario (HALCO). Shakir is also a member of the Canadian Coalition to Reform HIV Criminalization and the Canadian Bar Association Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity Executive. He has worked more broadly with under-served communities at the Community and Legal Aid Services Programme, a legal clinic in the Jane & Finch community, and Fair Change Community Services, which serves persons who are housing insecure.

Rai Reece is an assistant professor and interdisciplinary scholar-activist, whose work broadly examines how carceral processes in Canada are connected to colonialism and white supremacy. Her work specifically examines the intersection of punishment/criminalization and misogynoir (racism that targets Black women/women-identified folx), and white settler capitalism. Much of her work emphasizes and focuses on community-based collaboration, experience, and self-reflection. Since 2005 she has been involved with anti-prison work with prisoners and ex-prisoners. She has conducted frontline (one-on-one and group) work with prisoners, street active youth, trans folx, and in the domestic violence sector. She has facilitated numerous workshops on anti-Black racism, prison health, and equity. Her work also incorporates the importance of examining the connection between abolition and harm reduction through a racial lens. She works from a place of healing, reflection, and decolonization as a way to deeply reflect on personal, inter-personal, and collective care for ourselves and our communities.

Julie is a strategy consultant for non-profit organizations that are law reform and social justice mandated. With nearly two decades of experience in Canada’s non-profit and charitable sector, she provides facilitation services in conflict management, governance, and strategic planning. She has provided services to a number of Canada’s leading legal organizations, including legal clinics, professional associations, and law faculties.

Julie is passionate about the critical work civil society organizations do to advance basic human rights and systemic change. Her experience in the sector also includes assisting those who fund this work, both public and private, to incorporate more equality-affirming, transparent approaches into their operations.

A lawyer by training, Julie has practiced in the areas of human rights law, labour and employment law, and Charter litigation. In addition to her consulting practice, Julie is a part-time professor of law at the University of Ottawa, Faculty of Common Law, where she teaches Dispute Resolution.

Julie credits much of her trajectory and understanding of human rights to the sex workers and people who use drugs in the Downtown Eastside from whom she had the privilege of learning when she lived in Vancouver and volunteered with Pivot Legal Society’s Sex Work Law Reform Committee in the early 2000’s. She is a proud ex-Legal Network intern and feels extraordinarily lucky to now sit on their Board. Julie is also a Past-President of Auberge Shalom pour femmes, a Montreal-based women’s shelter, and a former Executive Director of the National Association of Women and the Law (NAWL), where she was deeply involved in the work to see national women’s advocacy organizations refunded by the federal government.

Emily van der Meulen joined the Legal Network’s board of directors in 2020. She is a professor in the Department of Criminology at Toronto Metropolitan University, where she conducts participatory research on drug policy, harm reduction, prison health, sex work, and surveillance. She has published extensively in these areas, and has twice won TMU Faculty of Arts research awards.

Among her current projects is a study on the ways in which anti-trafficking policy is made and shaped through narratives of white saviourhood and fantasises of ‘rescue’, and another that traces how biometric technologies can reinforce existing embodied inequities, especially with regard to race, gender, and disability.

Emily is a long-time supporter of the Legal Network, and has worked with the organization on research related to prison-based needle and syringe programs and the Good Samaritan Drug Overdose Act.

She also has over 20 years of experience on various boards of directors, steering committees, and activist groups in the areas of sex work, HIV, prisoner justice, reproductive justice, and more.

thom vernon is a multi-media artist, teacher, and scholar. His experience of living with HIV for over 35 years informs his advocacy, which is expressed through his creative and critical writing, his performance, directing, and art practice, and his teaching and facilitating, both academic and community-based. A U.S. migrant to Canada, he is personally familiar with the immigration obstacles faced by people living with HIV. thom holds a B.A. in Philosophy from California State University, Los Angeles; and an M.F.A. in Creative Writing and a terminal Masters in Gender Studies both from the University of Southern California. His Ph.D. is in English—Creative Writing from the University of New Brunswick, which theorizes failure as a creative and critical tool. thom is a Vanier Doctoral Scholar, a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) award recipient, a Dr. William S. Lewis Doctoral Fellow, and a Magee Doctoral Fellow. He is currently a SSHRC postdoctoral researcher at York University theorizing stigma as a creative, critical, and social justice tool. An actor, writer, and advocate for under-served youth, thom’s work focuses on challenging audiences to consider stories that rise in the space between them and the subjects — the place where stigma begins and grows.

Barhet Woldemariam currently serves as the Director of Programs for HIV Edmonton. Her previous work includes working with the Canadian Red Cross with the Safety and Wellbeing team supporting the recovery operation after the wildfires in Fort McMurray and B.C. She brings experience from both the business world, working with TD Canada Trust and community organizations. Her roles have allowed her to work closely with community partners to help address the needs of individuals, families, and the community. Her academic background in sociocultural anthropology along with her personal experience and community work provide her with the acumen to deeply understand the importance of equity and advocacy.