Who We Are
Founded in October 2020, Sur Legal Collaborative is a women of color-led and -run immigrant and worker rights nonprofit legal organization working at the nexus of labor, immigration, and decarceration movements in the Deep South.
Staff
Shelly Anand, Co-Founder and Executive Director
Shelly has fought alongside immigrants and workers in the Deep South for over a decade as a bilingual staff attorney with Georgia Legal Services Program, a litigator with the US Department of Labor, and an immigrant rights attorney with Tahirih Justice Center. In October 2020, she co-founded Sur Legal Collaborative, an immigrant and worker rights nonprofit legal organization, in response to COVID-19 after seeing that many of her immigrant clients had been deemed essential workers and knew nothing about their labor rights, particularly in the safety and health context.
At Sur Legal, in addition to managing day-to-day operations of a start-up nonprofit, Shelly shares her legal expertise around the Occupational Safety and Health Act and other federal labor laws with grassroots groups, immigrants, and working-class communities and assists with drafting and filing effective labor complaints with labor agencies like the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) and the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB). She also assists immigrant workers with applications for immigration relief, including deferred action applications, and engages in national advocacy efforts to stop the labor abuse to deportation pipeline, whereby workers are retaliated against by their employers for exercising their whistleblower rights with calls to ICE and subsequent deportation. Shelly is also a children’s book author who writes books she wishes she had growing up as a brown girl in the Deep South. She received her B.A. from Wellesley College and her J.D. from the University of North Carolina School of Law in Chapel Hill.
Elizabeth Zambrana, Legal Director
Elizabeth is the daughter of Nicaraguan and Mexican immigrants and a passionate and dedicated advocate for immigrant rights. Prior to her current role at Sur Legal, Elizabeth served as Community Counsel at the Georgia Latino Alliance for Human Rights, a community based organization focused on developing grassroots leadership in the Latine immigrant community of Georgia. Elizabeth also served as a Staff Attorney with the Tahirih Justice Center and Attorney Advisor with the Executive Office of Immigration Review. She was the recipient of an Equal Justice Works-Emerson Collective Legal Fellowship and served her fellowship term with the Rocky Mountain Immigrant Advocacy Network. Elizabeth obtained her J.D. from Rutgers School of Law and her B.A. from Florida International University.
Outside of her legal work, Elizabeth loves to spend time with her husband and three rambunctious pups. She has a growing collection of rare houseplants and cacti and is an avid listener of nerdy legal podcasts.
Rachel Johnson, Operations Manager
Rachel Johnson comes from a background of HR Office Management. She has spent the last 7 years working for social justice organizations behind the scenes to strengthen internal controls and make the business run as a smooth, well-oiled machine.
Rachel enjoys building processes from the ground up. She is a big advocate for employee engagement and recognition along with building a culture of inclusiveness and combating burnout/mental health issues.
Rachel enjoys camping with her husband and three children and kickboxing with FightCamp. She is a graduate of Elizabeth City State University, born in NY and raised in VA/NC.
Iman Ali, Grants Coordinator/Executive Assisstant
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.
Stephanie Lopez-Burgos, Legal Advocate
Stephanie was born in Carolina, Puerto Rico and came to the mainland when she was just nine years old. Stephanie resided in Hall County, Georgia for 16 years before moving to Florida, where she is raising her two kids as a single mother. Stephanie Lopez-Burgos is a longtime activist and proponent of change in the Deep South. She served in roles vital to the Georgia political climate, such as running for the Hall County School Board of Education and leading her own campaign as the First Latina in Hall County, GA to run for that position.
Stephanie and Sur Legal Co-Founder Shelly Anand met at a legal clinic four days after the nitrogen leak at Foundation Food Group in Gainesville, Georgia. Stephanie helped attorneys with translation and interpretation as workers shared horrific details of that fateful day where six of their co-workers died. She was instrumental in helping workers file an imminent danger complaint after a second chemical leak took place at the same facility six weeks after the nitrogen leak, this time ammonia.
Since joining Sur, Stephanie has been a critical part of the team, assisting immigrants and workers to file labor complaints and applications for immigration relief. She assists with interpreting for our legal staff and provides her insight on effective strategies for advocating for immigrant and worker communities. Under Stephanie’s initiative and leadership, Sur Legal organized free mental health services for survivors of the chemical leaks at Foundation Food Group in partnership with Good News Clinic. Additionally, she played a critical role in the latest rapid response when a third chemical leak occurred in March 2022 at the same facility, under the ownership of Gold Creek Foods.
Alessandra Stevens, Justice Catalyst Legal Fellow
Alessandra Stevens is excited to be returning to Sur Legal Collaborative as a Justice Catalyst Fellow and to continue working to combat the labor abuse to deportation pipeline.
At Sur Legal, Alessandra provides information, tools and legal support to grassroots organizers and immigrant workers so they can safely assert their rights and combat unsafe working conditions without fear of deportation or criminalization.
Alessandra is a graduate of the Northeastern University School of Law, and a Dean Curran Scholar in Action at the Emory University School of Public Health. Prior to attending law school, she served as Associate Director of Policy and Governmental Affairs for Mujeres Latinas en Acción, a Chicago-based non-profit serving Latinx survivors of domestic violence and sexual assault. In that role she had the privilege of working with grassroots coalition partners on state and local policies to advance the rights of immigrant women across Illinois. During her time in law school Alessandra continued to pursue opportunities to advance immigrant, gender and racial justice including work with the Domestic Violence Clinic and Civil Rights and Restorative Justice Clinic at Northeastern Law School, research with the Center for Reproductive Health Research in the Southeast (RISE) at Emory University, and fellowship placements with the National Lawyers Guild, Community Justice Project Miami, and with Massachusetts State Representative Natalie Higgins. Alessandra is admitted to the Illinois Bar.
Sebastián Muñoz, Digital Content Creator
Raised in Florida by Puerto Rican parents, Sebastián is highly invested in bridging his background in digital strategy and advocacy with his passion for worker justice, immigrants’ rights, and movement work.
He has primarily worked in the nonprofit space, with work spanning from peacebuilding and human rights policy to social media management and field organizing. Sebastián obtained his B.A. from Dartmouth College, and he is excited to play a role in democratizing legal knowledge and supporting workers across the South with Sur Legal.
Outside of work, he enjoys biking, exploring nature, and learning languages.
Board of Directors
Aliya Naim, Board Chair
Aliya Naim is the Limited Legal Services Program Manager for Innovation Law Lab, where she works to develop capacity for legal service provision for non-represented immigrants. She has been working in the immigration field in Atlanta since 2016. She also spent several years at The Carter Center working on international election observation in North and West Africa. She obtained her B.A. in International Affairs and Arabic at the University of Georgia and her M.A. in Migration and Diaspora Studies at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) in London, where she did research on the Syrian refugee crisis and countering violent extremism legislation. She spends most of her non-working time hiking, camping, or knitting.
Priyanka Bhatt, Vice Chair
Priyanka is a Senior Staff Attorney at Project South, a social justice organization in Atlanta, a steering committee member of Georgia Detention Watch, an immigrants’ rights coalition, and a member of the Georgia Chapter of the National Lawyers Guild. As a human rights attorney, Priyanka fights for immigrants’ rights through movement lawyering, legislative advocacy and litigation to defeat anti-immigrant bills at the Georgia Capitol, dismantle detention pipelines that criminalize immigrant communities, and shut down immigrant detention centers in Georgia by exposing the human rights abuses occurring. Priyanka was the lead author of several ground-breaking publications on human rights violations at ICE prisons in Georgia including those that helped end ICE contracts at the Atlanta City Detention Center and Irwin County Detention Center.
Roula AbiSamra, Secretary
Roula is the eldest daughter of Lebanese immigrants who settled in New Orleans, and she is passionate about the resilience and creativity of Southern people of color. Supporting people seeking abortion care changed her life and led her to reproductive justice organizing. Today she works with the Amplify Georgia Collaborative to build campaigns for community power and policy change in our state. She also maintains a facilitation and consulting practice, lovingly called Humane Resources, for mission-driven teams around the country. She is interested in cultivating ecosystems that embrace our full humanity and our individual stories.
She has worked at the Feminist Women's Health Center, the National Abortion Federation, Advancing New Standards In Reproductive Health (ANSIRH) at the University of California San Francisco, the Sea Change Program, and the National Asian Pacific American Women’s Forum (NAPAWF), and served on the founding board of Access Reproductive Care-Southeast. She has a Bachelor’s in political science and a Master’s in Public Health from Emory University and was a CoreAlign Generative Fellow in 2015-2016. In public life, she has at various times been a public health researcher, a community organizer, an abortion care provider, a small-dollar fundraiser, a policy advocate, a storyteller, a facilitator, a mediator. In private life, she is a delighted aunty, nature seeker, and crossword-player. She is (slowly) writing a book of childhood and family stories.
Eileen Lee, Treasurer
Eileen is co-founder of The Lola, a members club and community for professional womxn located in Old Fourth Ward across from Ponce City Market. Eileen started her career as a management consultant at Accenture. In 2011, she started Venture for America (VFA), a national nonprofit and fellowship for recent grads to launch their careers as entrepreneurs. She spent 6 years as its COO, and VFA continues its success under new leadership - recruiting over 200 Fellows each year and supporting conscious entrepreneurs building meaningful companies.
Eileen is a startup, culture and community builder with a focus on building inclusive communities. Eileen serves as an advisor and mentor at Venture for America, serves on the Changemaker Board at Hands on Atlanta and is a board member at Spring Research Foundation. She is a born and raised New Yorker and a graduate of Columbia University.
Asia Parks
Asia Parks is an Atlanta Native and Lawyer. She's organized with various organizations in Atlanta throughout the years for the progression of racial justice initiatives. She is also the Chair of the Metro Atlanta Chapter of the National Lawyers Guild and organizes Legal Observer programming. She currently works a real estate attorney.
Christina Iturralde Thomas
With Kids in Need of Defense (KIND) since November 2015, Christina Iturralde Thomas, JD, was named managing director of KIND’s Atlanta office in August 2017. As managing director, she oversees a field office and has overall responsibility for a current caseload of 464 cases, a third of which are represented by pro bono partners. Christina also serves as the senior representative of the KIND at the local level.
She began her legal career in 2006 as an associate counsel for LatinoJustice PRLDEF, where her impact litigation efforts focused on housing rights, discrimination against day laborers, and the equal protection of immigrants. In 2011, she moved to the Southern Poverty Law Center in Atlanta, where she was a staff attorney focused on advancing immigrants’ rights. In 2015, she took on the role of unaccompanied minor attorney for the Latin American Association.
Christina earned her B.A. from the University of North Florida, an M.A. in Political Science from the University of Florida, and her J.D. from UC Law San Francisco. A daughter of immigrant parents from Ecuador, she is fluent in Spanish.