WHO WE ARE
Sur Legal Collaborative is a women of color-founded immigrant and worker rights nonprofit legal resource nonprofit created at the center of labor, immigration, and decarceration movements in the Georgia.
STAFF
Legal Director
Elizabeth Zambrana
Bilingual Legal Advocate
Stephanie Lopez-Burgos
Operations Manager
Rachel Johnson
Staff Attorney
Aimee Pacheco
Bilingual Workers’ Rights Organizer
Lucia Gambino
Development & Growth Strategist
Iman Ali
Staff Attorney
Alessandra Stevens
Bilingual Digital Communications Coordinator
Sebastián Muñoz
Executive Director
Christopher Williams
BOARD OF DIRECTORS
Aliya Naim,
Limited Legal Services Program Manager, Innovation Law Lab
Asia Parks,
Chair, National Lawyers Guild, Metro Atlanta Chapter
Christina Iturralde Thomas,
Managing Director, Kids in Need of Defense (KIND)
FOUNDERS
Shelly Anand
Since 2011, Shelly has fought alongside immigrants and workers in the Deep South as a bilingual staff attorney with Georgia Legal Services Program, a litigator with the US Department of Labor, and an immigrant rights attorney with Tahirih Justice Center. In October 2020, she co-founded Sur Legal Collaborative, an immigrant and worker rights nonprofit legal organization, in response to COVID-19 after seeing that many of her immigrant clients had been deemed essential workers and knew nothing about their labor rights, particularly in the safety and health context.
Shelly served as Executive Director of Sur Legal from 2020-2025 in addition to managing day-to-day operations of a start-up nonprofit, Shelly shared her legal expertise around the Occupational Safety and Health Act and other federal labor laws with grassroots groups, immigrants, and working-class communities and assisted with drafting and filing effective labor complaints with labor agencies like the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) and the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB). She also assisted immigrant workers with applications for immigration relief and engaged in national advocacy efforts that led to OSHA becoming a U and T Visa certifying agency. Shelly received her B.A. from Wellesley College and her J.D. from the University of North Carolina School of Law in Chapel Hill.
Lynn Damiano Pearson
In October 2020, Lynn Damiano Pearson co-founded Sur Legal Collaborative and developed our Immigrant Rights and Mass Decarceration Programs, which included assisting with the release of the last three women detained at the notorious Irwin County Detention Center, as well as representing victims of labor abuse and human trafficking in gaining legal status. Lynn and Shelly collaborated on a rapid response and ongoing legal advocacy for workers impacted by a deadly nitrogen leak at a poultry facility that killed six workers, one of the worst workplace tragedies in Georgia history.
Prior to co-founding Sur Legal, Lynn served as a Senior Staff Attorney at Tahirih Justice Center where she led an appellate project defending survivors of gender-based violence. Earlier in her career, Lynn defended prisoners sentenced to death in Georgia in state and federal court, including in a victory in the Supreme Court in Tharpe v. Sellers. Lynn is now a Senior Attorney at the National Immigration Law Center (NILC), where she advances NILC’s worker rights and enforcement work, including its Deferred Action for Workers Campaign. She provides technical assistance and training, creates resources for advocates and impacted communities, and supports federal litigation against unjust enforcement policies.
At Sur Legal, we believe the right to happy and healthy workplaces should apply to all, including our own staff. Nonprofit culture has a reputation for over-working and underpaying their employees who are working against oppressive systems and who routinely bear witness to harms to their clients and the communities they serve. These workplaces lead to burnout, secondary trauma, and high turnover, earning the term the "Non-Profit Industrial Complex." Sur Legal seeks to disrupt these traditional non-profit models with fair pay, flexible work schedules, self-managed PTO, and a four day work week while providing comprehensive benefits, including wellness and mental health stipends.