Staff and Board

Cole Stallone has been the Communications Associate since April 2022. He developed an interest in ALBA while working with archival material at the Tamiment Library, learning about the importance of the Brigade and its contemporary legacy. Born and raised in New York City, he received his MA and BA in history from New York University, and is excited to continue supporting important organizations like ALBA while deepening his passion for public history.

Aaron Retish is Associate Professor of History at Wayne State University in Detroit where he helps coordinate Wayne State’s Abraham Lincoln Brigade Veterans Scholarship. He is the author of Russia’s Peasants in Revolution and Civil War: Citizenship, Identity, and the Creation of the Soviet State, 1914-1922 (Cambridge University Press, 2008) as well as articles on violence and peasant identity in the Revolutionary era.  He is currently working on a book project that studies local courts and popular ideas of legality and justice in the early Soviet era.

Anthony Geist is Professor of Spanish and Comparative Literature at the University of Washington. He received his PhD from the University of California, Berkeley. Geist's research concerns the art and literature of the Spanish Civil War. He published a photo-essay on Seattle-area Lincoln Brigade veterans, coauthored with the Spanish photojournalist José Moreno, entitled Passing the Torch: The Abraham Lincoln Brigade and its Legacy of Hope / Otra cara de América: Los brigadistas y su legado de esperanza. He has also curated ALBA’s traveling exhibit, They Still Draw Pictures: Children’s Art in Wartime from the Spanish Civil War to Kosovo. The accompanying book was published in 2002. In 2006 he co-produced and co-directed a documentary film on the American volunteers who fought in the Spanish Civil War, Souls without Borders: The Untold Story of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade, 1936-2006.

Jack Mayerhofer joined ALBA’s Board in 2020. He has strong family ties with Spain and a deep interest in the Civil War period and the efforts of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade. Jack serves as the Deputy Executive Director at the Auschwitz Institute for the Prevention of Genocide and Mass Atrocities (AIPG), an organization that provides training, education, and technical assistance, primarily to governments to improve their policies for the prevention of identity-based violence. At AIPG, Jack Mayerhofer leads the activities of the organization’s Executive Office in Africa, Europe, Latin America, North America, and Southeast Asia. His research interests include the role that legislators can play in contributing to the prevention of mass atrocities. Both AIPG and ALBA work to ensure that memory and memorialization of the past are used to improve how we protect and promote human rights today. For the past and the present, it is essential that we remember that individuals from all around the world, with no support from their home governments, risked their lives to fight for democracy in a faraway place, not due to any threat to their personal livelihood, but simply because they understood the importance of fighting fascism.

Nancy Wallach is the daughter of Abraham Lincoln Brigade Veteran Hy Wallach, and active VALB board member who served in the capacities of Treasurer, Corresponding Secretary and Executive Secretary at various times.  She is a retired NYC public school teacher with a background in art education and professional development and support.  She has been a recipient of the NYC Schools and Culture Award, the Lincoln Center Institute's Creative Teaching Award, NYCATA/UFT's Art Educator of the Year and received many other grants in the area of arts education.  She considers her participation in the 75th Anniversary Tribute to the Founding of the International Brigades in Spain to be a highlight of her activities on behalf of preserving the legacy of the Veterans of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade.

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.

Kate Doyle is a senior analyst of U.S. policy in Latin America at the National Security Archive where she directs the Evidence Project, connecting the right to truth and access to information with human rights and justice struggles in Latin America. Since 1992, Doyle has worked with human rights organizations, truth commissions and prosecutors to obtain government records from secret archives that shed light on state violence. In 2012, Doyle was awarded the ALBA/ Puffin Award for Human Rights Activism, which she shared with Fredy Peccerelli of the Forensic Anthropology Foundation of Guatemala.

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).

PETER MILLER is an Emmy and Peabody-award winning filmmaker whose documentaries have screened in cinemas and on television throughout the world. His films include A.K.A. DOC POMUS, JEWS AND BASEBALL: AN AMERICAN LOVE STORY, SACCO AND VANZETTI, and A CLASS APART for PBS’s American Experience, now being adapted as a feature film executive produced by Eva Longoria. His short film THE INTERNATIONALE was short-listed for an Academy Award nomination. Peter co-directed ROBERT SHAW: MAN OF MANY VOICES, winner of three Emmy Awards, for PBS American Masters, as well as the public television documentaries SOSÚA: MAKE A BETTER WORLD and REFUGEE KIDS: ONE SMALL SCHOOL TAKES ON THE WORLD. With his daughter Nora Claire Miller, he recently completed EGG CREAM, a short film about the beloved chocolate soda drink. Most recently, he co-wrote and produced BEDLAM, about the crisis in care for the severely mentally ill, which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival and aired on PBS Independent Lens. Peter is currently working on DO NO HARM, a 3-part PBS series about Palliative Care, as well as MARCELLA, a biography of the legendary food writer Marcella Hazan. He has also been a producer on numerous documentaries by Ken Burns and Lynn Novick, including the PBS series THE WAR and JAZZ, and FRANK LLOYD WRIGHT.

Paco de Onís grew up in several Latin American countries during a time of dictatorships. He is the Executive Director and Executive Producer of Skylight, a human rights media organization dedicated to advancing social justice through storytelling. Paco's grandfather, Federico de Onís, founded the Spanish and Portuguese Studies Department at Columbia University after the first world war. He never returned to Spain after the end of the Spanish Civil War.  Paco’s film producing credits include 500 YEARS, Granito: How to Nail a Dictator, Rebel Citizen, Disruption, State of Fear, and The Reckoning.

Prior to attending law school, Ellyn Polshek worked in publishing as Managing Editor at Grossman Publishers, a Division of the Viking Press, then as a Senior Editor at Holt, Rinehart and Winston and later at William Morrow. She received her JD in 1985 at the Columbia Law School.  Following graduation, she practiced law as an Assistant District Attorney in the Appeals Bureau at the Manhattan District Attorney's Office.  She argued her cases before the Appellate Division in New York County and when necessary at the Court of Appeals in Albany.

Shannon O'Neill is the Curator for the Tamiment-Wagner Collections at NYU Special Collections, a department within NYU Libraries, and the repository responsible for the ongoing care, preservation, and access to the Abraham Lincoln Archives Collection and collections of numerous Spanish Civil War veterans. She joined NYU in August of 2019. Prior to NYU, she worked at the Barnard College Archives and Special Collections as its Director, and the Los Angeles Public Library and Atlantic City Free Public Library. She is currently a graduate student in NYU’s Archives and Public History program, working towards a master’s in public history.

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.

Vikas Saini, MD is president of the Lown Institute. He is a clinical cardiologist trained by Dr. Bernard Lown at Harvard, where he has taught and done research. Dr. Saini leads the Institute’s signature project, the Lown Institute Hospitals Index, the first ranking to measure hospital social responsibility. In his role at the Lown Institute since 2012, Dr. Saini led the development of the Right Care series of papers published by The Lancet in 2017; convened six national conferences attracting more than 200 attendees annually and featuring world-renowned leaders in health care; and guided other Lown Institute projects such as the “Shkreli Awards.” He is also a founder and Co-Chair of the Right Care Alliance, a grassroots network of clinicians, patient activists, and community leaders organizing to put patients, not profits, at the heart of health care. Dr. Saini is a board-certified doctor of Cardiovascular Disease, Internal Medicine, and Nuclear Cardiology, and has served on the faculty of Harvard Medical School and the Harvard School of Public Health.

Emilio Silva Barrera has a degree in Political Sociology from the Complutense University of Madrid and has the title of University Expert in Qualitative Sociology. He has practiced journalism for years. He was director of content for the television program Caiga que Caiga (Tele 5, 2004-2008). He has collaborated with numerous media outlets: Diario 16, El País, El Semanal, Público, ElDiario.es. He has worked in the communication offices of the municipalities of Rivas Vaciamadrid and Alcala de Henares. In 2000, he promoted the exhumation of the mass grave in which the remains of his grandfather and thirteen other Republican civilians murdered by Falangist gunmen on October 16, 1936 were found. His grandfather, Emilio Silva Faba, who lived between 1920 and 1925 in Bridgeport (Connecticut) and New York, is the first disappeared by the repression of the Franco dictatorship identified by a DNA test. He is the author of "Franco's graves: chronicle of a reparation" (Temas de hoy, 2005); The three little pigs, from the perspective of an eviction (Editorial Alkibla, 2015) and Holes in silence: lines of memory against the impunity of Francoism (Postmetróplolis, 2020). In addition, he is co-editor of "The memory of the forgotten: a debate on the silence of Franco's repression" (Ámbito, 2004) and of "Memory policies and citizenship construction" (Postmetropolis, 2015).

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.