Vera Institute of Justice

LeShae worked with the research director and vice present to help maximize the impact of Vera’s research and support Vera research staff in various capacities. She also coordinated Vera’s Neil A. Weiner Research Speaker Series, an opportunity for distinguished scholars and researchers to share their work on justice issues. Prior to joining Vera, LeShae was a Mellon Mays Undergraduate Fellow and conducted preliminary research on Native Hawaiian mass incarceration. She also worked with Bruce Western on the Boston Reentry Study as a research assistant and as a part of the Behavioral Laboratory in the Social Sciences (BLISS) and the Radcliffe Research Partnership. During her senior year she completed a thesis on the women in the Boston Reentry Study, taking a life course perspective to highlight the deeply gendered nature of reentry and the impacts of childhood experiences on the reentry process. She earned an honors BA in sociology and a secondary in ethnicity, migration, and rights from Harvard College in 2016.