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Gabriella Priest

Gabriella Priest

Director of Operations, New England Innocence Project

Gabriella Priest Celestin is the Director of Operations for the nonprofit the New England Innocence Project (NEIP). She supports the NEIP team to achieve life-changing exonerations and to provide freed people with assistance as they rebuild through NEIP's Exoneree Network - a unique program for innocence programs that is exoneree-run and provides reentry and community support before and after release. For two decades, Gabriella has worked tirelessly to improve the criminal legal system to be more people-centered, partnering with impacted individuals and their families, practitioners, policymakers, and academics in research and evidence-based practices for equitable reform and services. 


Gabriella was most recently a Senior Associate at Justice System Partners (JSP), where she worked with agencies and nonprofits around the country to elevate practices to be more supportive and focused on the success of people on supervision, and to align organizational culture with the Coach(Referee) Model for Change. Her work at JSP included overseeing a Community Supervision Leadership Learning Lab for inclusive and equitable leadership. Prior to joining JSP, Gabriella was the Program Director of the Harvard Kennedy School’s Program in Criminal Justice Policy and Management (PCJ) and served on the PCJ’s Roundtable on Reducing Racial Disparities in Massachusetts Criminal Courts. Gabriella also worked at the nonprofit Community Resources for Justice (CRJ) for 11 years. As CRJ’s Director of Innovation, Implementation, and Development, she was responsible for oversight of the Massachusetts community-based reentry programs for returning citizens and its Social Justice Services (SJS) training academy. Through CRJ's Crime and Justice Institute (CJI) division, Gabriella led youth and adult legal system policy reform and implementation efforts in several states to reduce the number of people incarcerated and to provide support and funding to communities.


Gabriella is an adjunct faculty member at Suffolk University, teaching undergraduate and graduate courses on crime and justice. She obtained a Bachelor of Science in Sociology and Criminology and a Master of Science in Criminal Justice from Suffolk University. Gabriella is Vice President of the Board of Directors of the International Community Justice Association (ICJA) and leads ICJA’s Justice Emerging Leaders (JEL) Network, and receive the ICJA’s inaugural Emerging Leader Award in 2019.


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Contact

International Community Justice Association PO Box 20080

Columbus, OH, USA 43220

Phone: (740) 361-3245
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