Fiona Dyer is the Director of the Children & Young People’s Centre for Justice (CYCJ), based at the University of Strathclyde. As Director, Fiona leads CYCJ towards its ambition of ensuring that Scotland’s approach to children and young people in conflict with the law is rights-respecting, contributing to better outcomes for children, young people and communities. This involves supporting professionals from all disciplines who work with children and young people on the cusp of or involved in offending by promoting best practice based on up-to-date evidence and research.
IJJO Interviews
Kimmo Kumlander is the CEO of the Finnish NGO Silta-Valmennusyhdistys, which works in the area of Tampere, and also a founder and a CEO of nationwide NGO Valo-Valmennusyhdistys. Both organisations work with vulnerable groups of people, including young people involved with the justice system, with a commitment to make them more visible in society and to give them opportunities to make their voices heard at every level of decision-making.
Prior to this work, Kumlander worked at Humak University of Applied Sciences, as a member of the rectorate responsible for the RDI work and international relations of the university. He has published many articles on topics related to rehabilitation, desistance, vulnerable young people and social entrepreneurship, among others.
Mary Ann Scali serves as the Executive Director of The Gault Center, where she works with youth defenders and advocates dedicated to promoting justice for all children by ensuring excellence in youth defense. After working as a summer law clerk for the then-National Juvenile Defender Center (now The Gault Center) in 1996, Mary Ann became the deputy director in 2000 and the executive director in 2017.
The Gault Center is the only US organization dedicated exclusively to supporting, educating, and uplifting youth defenders, to ensure the liberation of all children. The Gault Center advocates for societal responses that are equitable and inclusive of the rights and interests of children and seeks to ensure that the transformation of the legal system includes the protection of the rights of children, most notably, the right to counsel.
Andrea Coomber became Chief Executive at the Howard League for Penal Reform in November 2021. She was previously Director of JUSTICE and, before that, Equality Lawyer and then Legal Director at INTERIGHTS, litigating strategic cases before regional human rights courts. She is qualified as a barrister and solicitor in Australia. She has a BA/LLB (Hons) from the University of Western Australia and an LLM (Dist.) from the London School of Economics. Since 2019, she has served as a Lay Member of the House of Lords Conduct Committee. In 2022, she was appointed Queen's Counsel (Honoris Causa) for making a major contribution to the development of the law in England and Wales.
Bragi Guðbrandsson is a Member of the United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child as well as the Committee’s Coordinator of the working group on emergencies that address the situation of children in Ukraine following the Russian aggression. He was the Former Director General of the Icelandic Government Agency for Child Protection (1995-2018). In addition, he is also the former Chair (2014-2016) and a member of the Council of Europe Lanzarote Committee, the monitoring body of the Lanzarote Convention. He was a member of the expert groups that drafted the Lanzarote Convention (2009) and the Council of Europe Guidelines for child friendly justice (2010) as well as number of other instruments of the Council of Europe.