Kristin D’Souza – Oakland

Kristin D’Souza (she/her) is a lawyer, prison abolitionist, and an aspiring author. She believes in every human’s fundamental right to be free, and that the criminal legal system causes more harm than it addresses. As a Contra Costa Public Defender Officer, she researches law for a spectrum of cases, from misdemeanors to capital cases and appellate work. Kristin graduated from the University of Michigan Law School in 2018, and completed a Fulbright fellowship in Turkey in 2014. Kristin was the Susan Barber Outstanding Senior in Gender Studies, and a Killam Fellow to the University of Toronto in 2012, where she studied at the intersection of reproductive justice and the prison industrial complex. Kristin now lives on the unceded land of the Ohlone people (Oakland, CA), where she balances work with her love of writing, reading, cooking, and sharing cynical memes. She grew up on the ancestral lands of the O’Odham and Akimel people (Phoenix, AZ), but moved to escape the overwhelming heat and to live in the community that fomented the revolutionary passions of Bobby Seale and Huey Newton. She is a proud first-generation American; her parents are from Pakistan and India.