Bio
Ana Zamora is the Criminal Justice Policy Director at the ACLU of Northern California, where she leads an inter-disciplinary strategy to reduce incarceration.
Ana has over a decade of experience working on criminal justice reform in California. A large part of her advocacy has been focused on ending the death penalty, pushing reforms to reduce and remedy wrongful convictions, and prosecutorial accountability. Ana believes that transformational change of the criminal justice system requires both policy reform at the state and local levels, as well as greater accountability and transparency of our locally elected law enforcement leaders: district attorneys and sheriffs. At the ACLU-NC, she is launching the first-ever statewide accountability campaign targeting California’s elected district attorneys.
In 2012, Ana served as the assistant campaign manager for Prop. 34, a statewide ballot measure to end the death penalty. While Prop 34 narrowly failed, earning 48% of the vote, the campaign shifted the conversation in California and nationally about the true costs of a system that is broken beyond repair. Four years later, Ana served as campaign manager to defeat a ballot measure, Prop. 66, funded by prison guards and prosecutors that falsely promised to “fix” California’s broken death penalty. Prop. 66 ultimately passed by less than 1% of the vote.
Ana first focused on prosecutorial accountability in her anti-death penalty work in California. Prior to the ACLU-NC, Ana was the resources administrator at the California Appellate Project (CAP), one of three post-conviction agencies focused on death penalty cases in California.
In 2014, Ana took a leave of absence from the ACLU-NC to serve as policy director of a newly formed team to devise and implement a national strategy to end the death penalty at the U.S. Supreme Court. In this capacity, she provided strategic guidance to state legislative campaigns in multiple states and advised funders on new funding opportunities to advance the national strategy.
Ana received her B.A. in political, legal and economic analysis from Mills College in Oakland.
Featured Work
Who's the Most Powerful Elected Official Most Voters Have Never Heard Of?
