Staff and Board

Mark Wallem has served as Executive Director since 2019. Prior to his time with ALBA, he worked in international development for 21 years, including posts in Nepal, Cambodia, the Philippines, Ukraine, and Thailand. His international projects include a groundbreaking Internet Freedom program, promoting and defending online freedom of expression in Southeast Asia. He has also directed programs for the National Democratic Institute for International Affairs (NDI) and UN Women. Hailing from Minnesota, Wallem is a lawyer, with a history of political activism and rights advocacy in both the US and abroad.

Marina Mihajlova moved to NYC from Macedonia (Southeast Europe) in 2011, along with her family. She has been in the accounting and bookkeeping sector since she was young, and was brought up working with her family’s business in her home country. Coming to the US was a big challenge, and the accounting practices differ somewhat, but in the end, the numbers are still what matter. Like ALBA, she is dedicated to social activism and the defense of human rights. Marina is also a supporter of Greenpeace, environmental justice, and animal welfare.

Sebastiaan Faber was born and raised in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, where he studied Spanish; his doctorate is from the University of California, Davis. He is Professor of the Department of Hispanic Studies at Oberlin College, where he directs the Center of Languages and Cultures.  Sebastiaan is the author of Exile and Cultural Hegemony: Spanish Exiles in Mexico (Vanderbilt, 2002) and Anglo-American Hispanists and the Spanish Civil War (Palgrave, 2008), as well as some sixty articles on Spanish and Latin American literature, history, and politics. You can find his faculty webpage here. In 2000 he won the George Watt Essay Prize in the graduate category and has been on the ALBA board since 2004. He is an editor of the online edition of The Volunteer.

Joan Levenson Cohen is a retired New York City teacher who specialized in early literacy, coinciding with an ongoing extracurricular life in union, peace and health care activism. She is the daughter of a vet, Leonard Levenson.

Peter N. Carroll is the author and editor of 17 books, including The Odyssey of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade: Americans in the Spanish Civil War (Stanford, 1994), The Good Fight Continues: World War II Letters from the Abraham Lincoln Brigade(2006), and Facing Fascism: New York and the Spanish Civil War (NYU, 2007). He is co-curator of two museum exhibitions: Shouts From the Wall: Posters of the Spanish Civil War (with Cary Nelson) and They Still Draw Pictures: Children’s Art in Wartime From the Spanish Civil War to Kosovo (with Anthony L. Geist). He is an editor of The Volunteer and he serves as a trustee of the Puffin Nation Prize for creative citizenship. He teaches history at Stanford University. He is also the author of a poetry volume, Riverborne: A Mississippi Requiem (2008).

Gina Herrmann is Associate Professor of Spanish Literature and Culture at the University of Oregon and is on the editorial board of The Volunteer. She is the author of articles on Spanish political culture, particularly communist literature and history, and is an oral historian. Her first book, Written in Red: The Communist Memoir in Spain, was published by the University of Illinois Press in 2009

Jo Labanyi is Professor Emerita in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese at New York University. A founding editor of the Journal of Spanish Cultural Studies, she has published widely on 19th-21st-century Spanish culture. Her books include the co-edited Companion to Spanish Cinema (Blackwell, 2013) and co-authored Cultural History of Modern Literatures in Spain (Polity, 2021). She has a particular interest in the Spanish Civil War and its aftermath, and is currently completing a co-authored oral history of cinema-going in early Francoist Spain. Her next project is a cultural history of the Spanish Civil War for Reaktion Books.

Josephine Nelson Yurek is a founding member of the Bronx National Organization for Women and of the Cinnamon Tree Day Care Center. Member of the board of directors of Lehman College Performing Arts Center for ten years. Retired as a high school administrator from the New York City public school system. Daughter of a veteran of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade, Steve Nelson.

Angela Giral was born in Madrid less than a year before the Spanish Civil War started. The family escaped from their summer residence in San Rafael, walking all night through the Segovia Forest. In 1939, they moved to Mexico, where Angela attended the National University (UNAM). In 1956, she moved to Ann Arbor, where she obtained a Masters of Library Science. She has worked as a librarian at Princeton (Urban and Environmental Studies), Harvard (Graduate School of Design), and Columbia (Avery Architectural and Fine Arts Library). She became an American citizen in 1970. From her early childhood, listening to the songs of the Spanish Civil War, she was in awe of the young people who gave their energy, youth, and, sometimes, their lives, to defend democracy and the republican ideals of her country when it was an early victim of fascism.

John M. Brickman, a lawyer, is a partner and head of litigation in the Long Island office of McLaughlin & Stern, LLP. He serves as a Commissioner of the New York State Legislative Ethics Commission.  From 2007 until 2011, he was a Commissioner of the New York State Commission on Public Integrity, which enforced lobbying and public employee ethics laws; he was a Director of the Nassau Health Care Corporation, which operates the Nassau University Medical Center; and he is a Director and former Chairman of the Correctional Association of New York, an organization founded in 1844 that visits prisons and does research and advocacy in criminal justice.

Robert S. Coale is Professeur des Universités (Professor) in Hispanic Studies at the Université de Rouen (Normandy, France). Originally from Baltimore, Maryland, he holds a B.A. in history and Spanish from Washington College. One day some thirty years ago he went off to Madrid to improve his Spanish and never looked back, eventually earning a Doctorat from the Université de Paris IV-La Sorbonne. In 1996 he actively participated in the 60th anniversary Homage to the IB in Madrid and thus began his relationship with ALBA. He has been the moderator of the ALBA listserv since 1999. His area of specialization is 20th century Spanish history, especially the Spanish Civil War, the International Brigades and the exile of Spanish Loyalists in France. He occasionally returns to the US so as not to forget how to pronounce Bawlmer.

Peter Glazer is Associate Professor in the Department of Theater, Dance, and Performance Studies at the University of California, Berkeley.  He holds a PhD in Performance Studies from Northwestern University.  He is a professional director and playwright whose plays, adaptations, collaborations and directing projects include Woody Guthrie's American Song (Bay Area Drama Critics award winner at Berkeley Rep and San Jose Rep; Drama Desk and Outer Critics Circle nominations Off-Broadway at Melting Pot Theater Co.; Joseph Jefferson Award winner at Northlight Theater in Chicago), O'Carolan's Farewell to Music (Delaware Theater Co.), Michael, Margaret, Pat & Kate (Marin Theater Co., Victory Gardens Theater), Heart of Spain and Foe (Northwestern University), My Fair Lady (American Musical Theater of San Jose), Unidentified Human Remains and the True Nature of Love (Industrial Strength Co. at the Magic Theater).

Julia Newman worked in advertising as a producer of television commercials for many years and as a journalist whose writings have appeared in the New York Daily News, Miami Herald, Travel and Leisure, and Metropolitan Home.  Her award-winning documentary, Into the Fire: American Women in the Spanish Civil War, was broadcast on Public Television and Spanish Television and is distributed in the U. S. by First Run Features. She was the Executive Director of ALBA for 5 1/2 years.

Cynthia Young joined the ALBA board in 2020. Since 2000, she has worked at the International Center of Photography, specifically with the Robert Capa Archive. She has curated numerous exhibitions from the collection that have traveled throughout Spain and other countries in Europe and South America. Recent exhibitions include The Mexican Suitcase, the Rediscovered Negatives of the Spanish Civil War by Robert Capa, Gerda Taro and Chim; We Went Back: Photographs from Europe by Chim, 1933-1956 and Capa in Color. She recently edited the republication of Death in the Making, Capa’s 1938 photobook of images from Spain.

In Memoriam: Judith Montell started her directing career in theater, producing and directing professional summer theaters in Buffalo, New York and Bismarck, North Dakota. From theater she moved into the world of film as a production manager for Amram Nowak Associates, a New York producer of documentary and educational films. After taking a 15-year break to raise two daughters, she began producing her own documentaries. Forever Activists: Stories from the Veterans of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade, which received an Academy Award Nomination for Best Achievement in Documentary Feature, was her first feature-length documentary. You are History, You Are Legend is a 25-minute sequel to Forever Activists, commemorating the 60th anniversary of the Spanish Civil War. Professional Revolutionary: The Life of Saul Wellman is the story of another veteran of the Spanish Civil War and provides an in-depth look at one man and the ways he was impelled to make a difference in the world around him throughout his long life.

Judge Baltasar Garzón has specialized in challenging government corruption, organized crime, terrorists, state antiterrorism units, and drug lords. In 1973, Augusto Pinochet led a bloody military coup against democratically elected socialist President Salvador Allende of Chile. Pinochet’s seventeen-year reign of terror was characterized by human rights violations on a truly massive scale, including widespread disappearances and extrajudicial killings. In October 1998, Garzón made history when he seized the opportunity to indict Pinochet in Europe, when Pinochet visited London. Garzón’s campaign for justice has set a precedent that heads of state may now be tried for crimes such as torture and genocide, that no person is above the law, and that sovereign immunity does not extend to crimes against humanity. Judge Garzón has continued his work, despite being targeted for criminal prosecution himself, due to his work in investigating crimes related to the Franco regime. Garzón is the recipient of the first ALBA/Puffin Award for Human Rights Activism.

For over 40 years Joyce Horman has pressed the United States and Chilean governments, and legal authorities in both countries, to investigate and resolve the wrongful death of her husband Charles in the violent aftermath of Pinochet’s 1973 military coup.  With the CCR she sued Kissinger for cover up and collusion in Charles' wrongful death.  The movie Missing told of her husband's disappearance in the midst of Pinochet's dictatorship with the cooperation and possible direction of American military intelligence. Her Foundation produced the "Tribute to Justice" in 1973 honoring those who fought to bring Pinochet to justice for human rights crimes.

Howard Lurie is the Associate Director for Educational Productions at WGBH Boston. For more than 20 years he has led professional development efforts for K-16 teachers featuring the use of digital media, technology and inquiry based learning. He holds degrees from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst and Teachers College, Columbia University.

John Sayles is the writer and director of acclaimed independent films including Return of the Secaucus 7, Matewan, Lianna, Baby It’s You, The Brother From Another Planet, Eight Men Out, City of Hope, Passion Fish, The Secret of Roan Inish, Lone Star, Men with Guns, Limbo, Sunshine State, Casa de los Babys, Silver City and Honeydripper. Sayles has also written novels and short stories. Among his awards: John D. MacArthur Award, Eugene V. Debs Award, John Steinbeck Award, John Cassavettes Award, Ian McLellan Hunter Award. He has been nominated twice for an Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay.

Bryan Stevenson is the founder and Executive Director of the Equal Justice Initiative (EJI), a human rights organization in Montgomery, Alabama. Under his leadership, EJI has won major legal challenges eliminating excessive and unfair sentencing, exonerating innocent death row prisoners, confronting abuse of the incarcerated and the mentally ill, and aiding children prosecuted as adults. Mr. Stevenson has argued and won multiple cases at the United States Supreme Court, including a 2019 ruling protecting condemned prisoners who suffer from dementia and a landmark 2012 ruling that banned mandatory life-imprisonment-without-parole sentences for all children 17 or younger. Mr. Stevenson and his staff have won reversals, relief, or release from prison for over 135 wrongly condemned prisoners on death row and won relief for hundreds of others wrongly convicted or unfairly sentenced. Mr. Stevenson is the author of the acclaimed best-seller, Just Mercy, on which the 2019 feature film of the same name is based. He is also a Professor of Law at the New York University School of Law. In 2014, Mr Stevenson was the recipient of the ALBA/Puffin Award for Human Rights Activism.