Jessica Arons and Shira Saperstein
Jessica Arons is the Director of the Women’s Health and Rights Program at the Center for American Progress. She also is a member of the Center’s Faith and Progressive Policy Initiative.
Most
recently, Jessica served as a staff attorney fellow with the ACLU
Reproductive Freedom Project. Prior to working at the ACLU, she
practiced labor and employment law at James & Hoffman, P.C.
Following law school, she clerked for the Honorable Elizabeth B. Lacy
on the Supreme Court of Virginia. She also worked at the White House
and on the 1996 Pennsylvania Democratic Coordinated Campaign prior to
law school. Jessica is an honors graduate of Brown University and
William and Mary School of Law. At William and Mary, Jessica was an
Associate Editor of the William & Mary Law Review, Managing
Editor of the William & Mary Journal of Women and the Law, and
a Board Member of the William & Mary Public Service Fund. She
has been seen on ABC News and heard on Clear Channel radio.
Shira Saperstein is a Senior Fellow at American Progress and the
Deputy Director and Program Director for Women’s Rights and
Reproductive Health at the Moriah Fund, a private foundation based in
Washington, D.C. and operating in the United States and
internationally. Moriah gives away $8 million annually in grants to
organizations working on women’s rights and health, poverty and
economic justice in the United States, international trade and
development, human rights and social justice in Guatemala, and
pluralism and equal rights in Israel.
Before joining Moriah in 1989, Shira worked as a researcher at
several policy and advocacy organizations and as part of a consulting
team at the Management Assistance Group, which provided organizational
development assistance to a wide range of advocacy and service
nonprofits. Shira was the founding Co-Chair of the Funders’ Network for
Population, Reproductive Rights and Health (1997-99) and currently
serves on the board of the Summit Foundation and on the Steering
Committee of the Global Campaign for Microbicides. She is a graduate of
Harvard University.