Attorney Dyan Gershman has more than three decades of legal practice experience, having worked at premier corporations like General Electric and Bristol-Myers Squibb. Dyan Gershman now leads a private practice in New York City and is a member of the New York City Bar Association (NYCBA). NYCBA has a nonprofit arm, the City Bar Fund, which supports organizations such as the Cyrus R. Vance Center for International Justice.
The Vance Center engages lawyers in the United States, Latin America, and sub-Saharan Africa to pursue social justice. In 2017, the organization launched the Women in Prison Project to improve the conditions of imprisoned women in the Americas, Africa, and Asia. It does this by sharing information on women’s conditions in prison and building capacity to monitor and improve them.
In February 2023, the Vance Center held a three-day conference in Bogota, Colombia as part of its work in the Women in Prison Project. The conference attracted over 30 advocates and activists from the region to discuss the challenges that women faced during incarceration. Some of the conference attendees were women who were formerly incarcerated themselves, and their first-hand perspectives enriched the discussions.
Working off the issues highlighted, conference attendees proceeded to develop a strategic litigation plan that they could pursue in their respective jurisdictions to improve women’s conditions in jail. They also discussed best practices for building strong cases that had a high chance of success and the advocacy opportunities they could pursue regionally.
