ACLU of Northern California Senior Staff

Abdi Soltani, Executive Director
Abdi Soltani has served as the Executive Director of the ACLU of Northern California since April 2009. A card-carrying member of the ACLU for many years, Abdi has served as executive director at Californians for Justice, the Campaign for College Opportunity and, most recently, at PARSA Community Foundation. He also serves on the Board of Public Advocates, a legal advocacy organization. Abdi has a long history of working with young people, and believes deeply in the importance of investing in youth and cultivating their strengths and skills. Abdi has extensive experience working on statewide policy and ballot initiatives. As a leader in the No on 54 Campaign in 2003, he helped defeat a proposition aimed at significantly weakening racial equality by barring state and local government agencies from collecting vital data on Californians’ race, ethnicity, color, or national origin. Abdi is a graduate of Stanford University. He was awarded the John Gardner Public Service Fellowship in 1995 and the Gerbode Foundation Fellowship in 2002.  
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Bonnie Anderson, Director of Finance & Administration
Bonnie Anderson, Director of Finance and Administration, has 27 years of experience in finance, administration, information technology, and human resources. Prior to joining the ACLU-NC in 2004, she was the Chief Financial Operating Officer for the San Francisco Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender Community Center, successfully opening a 40,000-square-foot facility in 2002 that became the hub for the LGBT population of San Francisco. Anderson, a certified public accountant, earned a bachelor's degree in accounting from the University of Illinois-Chicago Circle.

Cheri Bryant, Director of Development
Cheri Bryant, Director of Development since 1990, has led charitable fund-raising campaigns for more than 25 years. During her tenure, contributions to the ACLU-NC have increased four-fold and the organization has completed a successful first-ever endowment campaign. Bryant also serves on ACLU nationwide committees to plan and coordinate efforts. She was named Outstanding Fund Raising Professional of 2008 by the Association of Fund Raising Professionals/Golden Gate Chapter. Prior to her work at the ACLU, Bryant headed fund raising for the Oakland Symphony, the Horizons Foundation, the Trust for Public Land, and University of California-Berkeley's College of Letters and Science. She has also served as a consultant to social-change and animal-welfare groups, and as a speaker on board development and individual-gift fund raising. Bryant received her bachelor's in psychology and sociology from UC-Berkeley.

Kelli M. Evans, Associate Director
Kelli M. Evans is the Associate Director at the ACLU of Northern California. Evans’ career as a distinguished civil rights attorney includes serving as federal court‐appointed Monitor of the Oakland Police Department and as a senior trial attorney in the Civil Rights Division of the U.S. Department of Justice. She also previously served as a staff attorney at ACLU-NC, focused on criminal justice, race discrimination, and LGBT rights. Evans has litigated a variety of civil rights issues, including employment discrimination, fair housing, and public accommodations, and has testified before both the U.S. Congress and the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights. She received her undergraduate degree from Stanford University and her law degree from the University of California at Davis, where she was the recipient of the Martin Luther King, Jr. Award for Public Service. Evans is a Harvard Law School Wasserstein Fellow and has served as a Vice Chair of the American Bar Association Section on Individual Rights and Responsibilities.
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Shayna Gelender, Organizing & Community Affairs Director
Shayna Gelender supervises the organizing team, leads planning and implementation of programs and organizational capacity building efforts, manages public engagement and retention strategies, builds coalition relationships, and develops organizing components of policy advocacy and ballot measure campaigns. She has worked with ACLU-NC for 10 years in the areas of youth empowerment, field, and political organizing. Gelender was named Emerging Social Justice Leader in 2009 by the Progressive Jewish Alliance, where she now serves on the Board of Directors. Gelender is a founder and former Membership Director of the Good Ol' Girls as well as former Membership Director of the East Bay Young Democrats. In 2004, Gelender received a bachelor's degree in Public Policy from Mills College.

Laura Saponara, Communications Director
Laura Saponara, Communications Director, manages the core communications team, which maintains a fast-paced approach to communicating the principles and priorities of the ACLU-NC to the public, the media and our growing membership. Laura brings 10 years experience as a consultant, trainer and writer to non-profit organizations, labor unions and philanthropic foundations, including the SPIN Project, AFSCME, the Women's Foundation of California, and the Ford Foundation. She holds a masters degree in media studies from the University of Texas in Austin, and has taught at UC Davis. Her thesis about the ways that religious right leaders frame issues of power and victimization and call for political rebirth has been referenced in several books. Laura has worked on human rights projects in Mexico City, El Salvador, Puerto Rico and Peru.

Alan L. Schlosser, Legal Director
Alan L. Schlosser, Legal Director, has litigated numerous landmark cases during his tenure at the organization, including Rodriguez v. California Highway Patrol and California First Amendment Coalition v. Woodford. He joined the ACLU-NC as Staff Counsel in 1976 and served as Managing Attorney from 1994 to 2000. In 2001, Schlosser took on the role of Legal Director, overseeing the affiliate's litigation strategy.
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