Welcoming New Strength and Capacity to Our Team

Since Spring 2023, Sur Legal Collaborative has welcomed more new staff, Board members, and interns, and we continue to grow our capacity and expertise. Thanks to your generous financial support, we can pay our legal externs a living wage and provide real-world, hands-on legal experience to first-generation college students and budding legal professionals who come from the communities we serve. Please join us in welcoming Che, Iman, Jillian, Andrew, Alexandra, and Shashaank and learn more about each of these incredible individuals below.

Che Johnson-Long

Board Member

Che Johnson-Long is a Queer Community Organizer, Security Practitioner, and Somatics Teacher working to build a world without prisons or police. She is the Community Safety Education Coordinator at Vision Change Win where she develops community safety curriculum, coaches organizations, and coordinates VCW’s safety and security programmatic offerings. She also serves as a Board member of Third Wave's Accountable Futures Fund Advisory Council and Generative Somatics’ Advisory Council. Before this, Che was the Director of Decarceration Strategies at the Racial Justice Action Center, co-created the Policing Alternatives & Diversion Initiative in Atlanta, and was the Program Coordinator of the Safe OUTside the System Collective of the Audre Lorde Project. She holds a Juris Doctorate from Georgia State University, comes from a long line of Blues music lovers, and calls Atlanta, Ga home.

Since joining our Board of Directors, Che has collaborated with our team in preparing for our very first strategic planning process, including launching an internal political education program for our Board and staff! We are so grateful to have Che on board and for her expertise!

Iman Ali

Grants Coordinator/Executive Assistant

Raised in Chattanooga, Tennessee, Iman Ali (she/her) is the daughter of Pakistani Immigrants, and is passionate about advocacy, organizing, and community building. After graduating from Emory University in 2021, with a degree in Women Gender Studies and French, Iman sought to start her career in values-aligned spaces. Following graduation, she gained experience in development and administrative work while serving as the Development and Events Coordinator at an AAPI non-profit in Georgia. Iman works to center care, compassion, and curiosity throughout her personal and professional life, and is eager to learn and grow in her work at Sur Legal Collaborative as the Grants Coordinator and Executive Assistant. 

Outside of work, you can find Iman curling up with a good book, exploring the live music scene in Atlanta, or eating delicious food on Buford Highway. Iman loves hiking, swimming, watching movies, playing board games, and enjoying time with her friends and family.

Since joining Sur Legal’s team this past May, Iman has helped us apply for several grants, including our very first two federal grants! She has also helped us to build connections with partners and program officers. We are very grateful and excited to have Iman on our team!

Jillian La Serna

Legal Extern

Jillian has served as an educator at all levels of education. She has worked as an elementary classroom teacher, principal of a dual language school, and a university professor of education and public policy. Jillian holds an Ed.D. in Educational Leadership as well as a Master of School Administration from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She completed her BA in Liberal Studies and received her teaching credential with a cross-cultural language and academic development certificate from California State University-Sacramento. Early in her career, she also taught English in Ayacucho and Lima, Peru. Jillian continues to seek new ways to advocate for children, families, and communities through legal assistance and advocacy.

As a part of her externship with Sur Legal, Jillian conducted research for partner organizations Centro Legal de la Raza and Worksafe on whether or not detained immigrants could file workplace safety and health complaints with the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) against a federal prison in California. Short answer: it’s worth a shot!

Andrew Dietz

Legal Extern

Andrew is a rising 3L at UGA school of law, where he works in the Community Health Law Partnership clinic on immigration matters, particularly those involving labor issues. He spent his 1L summer working with the Georgia Legal Services Program's Farmworker Rights Division, providing legal aid and education to H-2A farmworkers in southern Georgia. Prior to law school, Andrew studied History at the University of Chicago. During this time he helped to unionize his campus library job, participating in first-contract negotiations as part of Teamsters Local 743 to establish one of the first formally recognized student employee unions in the country. In Chicago he also worked with Hyde Park Tenants United, Students Organizing United with Labor, and other campus and community organizations focused on working alongside poor and working class people to build collective power. He plans to continue this work throughout his time with Sur Legal and throughout his legal career.

As a summer intern, Andrew conducted research for the Union of Southern Service Workers and the National Council on Occupational Safety and Health (National COSH) about the rights of advocates to file Complaints Against State Plan Administration (CASPA) against OSHA State-Plans. Additionally, he has been critical in helping our legal team file an EEOC and NLRB complaint against an employer that allowed for immigrant women to be sexually harassed and terminated workers for trying to stop the pervasive abuse. Andrew will be staying on with Sur Legal through the Fall of 2023 as a Fall Legal Extern.

Alexandra Pacheco

Summer Communications Intern

Alexandra Pacheco (she/her) is the proud daughter of immigrants from Guatemala and Mexico. She resides in Georgia and prides herself in being bilingual in the languages of English and Spanish. She is only seventeen years old and studies at an Advanced International Studies Magnet high school. She is very involved with Latinx youth in Bartow County and hopes to continue to work with minority communities in her future career. Alex is very excited to spread awareness about protection and discrimination in the workplace and hopes to reach an audience of teenagers entering the workforce.

This summer, Alex has created TikTok videos for our Title VII series and our current series on Child Labor!

Shashaank Rajaraman

Legal Extern

Shashaank is a second-year student at the Emory University School of Law working as an Extern this fall at Sur Legal Collaborative. He joined this organization because he hopes to be able to assist with immigration and labor matters throughout his legal practice, no matter where he ends up after law school. Throughout this semester, he hopes to excel in the role, assisting those individuals who rely on this organization to provide some mode of relief against those who attempt to take advantage of them. Apart from his legal career, he loves playing and watching soccer, reading dystopian books, and trying out different recipes.

Shashaank is currently researching the case law on heat stress citations issued by OSHA before the Occupational Safety and Health Review Commission and various federal courts of appeals so that we can educate workers and worker advocates on how to file strong heat stress complaints with OSHA!

Learn more about Sur Legal Collaborative’s staff and Board of Directors on the Sur Legal Collaborative website here.