Nila is honored to be a part of the Core Collective. She hopes to bring her experience as a legal intern with SRLP, as well as her prior and current work with LGBTQ homeless youth, incarcerated folks, and work with families impacted by criminal and child welfare systems to the Collective.
Team Members Archive
Lorenzo Van Ness
Lorenzo Van Ness is a native New Yorker who has been working within QTPOC communities in NYC since 2006. While they currently work for the NYC Commission on Human Rights, they have worked to educate New Yorkers of their rights and increase access to the city’s resources as a tenant advocate and paralegal. Lorenzo is passionate about language access, LGBTQ rights and racial justice. In thier spare time, Lorenzo enjoys learning, writing, bike riding and karaoke.
Sei Young Pyo
Director of Immigrant Justice Project
Sei Young Pyo is a Staff Attorney and the Director of the Immigrant Justice Project. She believes in being together with clients where they are and in más acción, menos protagonismo. Prior to coming to SRLP, Sei learned and grew from working at Immigration Equality, GLBTQ Legal Advocates & Defenders, and Lambda Legal. At Harvard Law School, Sei musical directed the yearly full-length musical comedy production the Harvard Law School Parody and co-founded the Queer Theory Reading Group. In another life, Sei would have become an exuberant philosophy professor writing on the relationship between emotions and art. Her biggest supporter is her lovable senior dog, Rowa.
Elinor Lee
Director of Finance and Operations
Elinor has worked for several nonprofits and has a cat companion named Deleuze.
Maxwell Scales
Director of Development and Finance
Maxwell Scales is a longtime SRLP supporter and volunteer who currently serves as the Director of Development, overseeing our institutional funding and daily financial operations. Born and raised in the South, Max has been living/learning/working in NYC for over 15 years. Max has a decade of experience as a professional fundraiser; prior to joining the SRLP staff, he did development work at Lambda Legal, the Brennan Center for Justice, and the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD), focusing on events, planned giving, direct mail, and major gifts. He is a Certified Non-Profit Accounting Professional. Max is into intersectional lenses, wealth redistribution, and spreadsheet shortcuts.
Ethan Lin
Director of Grassroots Fundraising & Communications
Ethan Lin is a longtime donor and supporter of SRLP who dreams of building a world in which all of us have access to resources that enable us to become the best version of ourselves. In his spare time, he enjoys running and dabbling in epistemology.
Miasha Forbes
Miasha Forbes is a Human Rights Activist, Community Leader, Motivationalist, and Writer. She is the founder and Executive Director of Just For Us: Gender Diversity Project, a not-for-profit advocacy and aid organization for people who are transgender, intersex, and gender nonconforming. Miasha is a core collective member and board member at the Sylvia Rivera Law Project (SRLP), a legal aid organization based in New York City that provides social, health, and legal services for low-income people and people of color who are transgender, intersex, or gender nonconforming. She also lends her time to other various LGBT community based organizations throughout the city of New York, and is a tireless advocate of HIV/AIDS awareness and prevention. Preferred Gender Pronouns: she/her/Miasha (Me-Sha)
Lucas Cuellar
Lucas is a transgender queer bi-racial latino man, originally from Maine, who now goes to CUNY School of Law in Long Island City, Queens. Lucas got involved in the work of SRLP as a legal intern during the summer of 2012, a personal dream of his since 2001. He is excited to now be on the SRLP board and continue his involvement with SRLP. When not doing law school work, Lucas plays guitar, ukelele and piano (if he can find one), spends as much time as possible outside, and reads mystery stories.
Helen Stillman
Helen Stillman is based in Brooklyn, with part of her heart residing in her hometown of Seattle. Before moving to New York, Helen worked with LGBTQ youth in Washington State and central Appalachia. Helen is the Donor Program Director at North Star Fund, a community fund supporting grassroots organizing in New York City. She has been a member of SRLP’s Fundraising and Finance Team since 2011.
Gabriel Arkles
Gabriel Arkles lives in Boston, where he teaches in the Legal Skills in Social Context program at Northeastern University School of Law. He has been an SRLP collective member since 2004, and worked on SRLP’s staff as an attorney from 2004 to 2010. He is deeply honored to be a part of SRLP’s work, and wants to keep working with people at SRLP and everywhere for trans liberation, prison abolition, racial justice, economic justice, disability justice, and reproductive justice until we win! Gabriel’s articles, which are mostly about gender, race, and the prison industrial complex, have appeared in a number of law reviews and anthologies. Gabriel was on the board of the Lorena Borjas Community Fund, an organization that provides bail and bond support to criminalized LGBT immigrants in New York, and is just starting to get involved with other organizations like Black and Pink and Queer Muslims of Boston. In his free time, Gabriel cuddles his cats, reads science fiction, and plays role-playing games.