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Meet Our Team

Reporters Shield Program Team

  • Snezana Green

    DIRECTOR, REPORTERS SHIELD PROGRAM
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    Snezana Green
    DIRECTOR, REPORTERS SHIELD PROGRAM sgreen@nycbar.org

    Snezana Green joined the Vance Center in June as Director of the Reporters Shield Program. Snezana supervises and directs the Reporters Shield Program Coordinators based in Europe, Latin America, and other locations, supports the development and maintenance of a network of media lawyers in those jurisdictions, and directs and provides the program’s overall response to requests for legal representation and other RS member benefits, including training and pre-publication review.   

    Snezana brings to the Vance Center over twenty years of international experience in freedom of expression. She has worked and lived in many regions that are highly challenging to journalists, including Central America and the Balkans. She previously worked for more than ten years at the Media Development Investment Fund, most recently as Senior Counsel, Legal & Policy Affairs. While with MDIF, she authored several articles that were re-published by GIJN and others advocating against media capture, SLAPPs and other forms of legal harassment of journalists.  

    She previously consulted for various UN agencies as well as WAN-IFRA, where she directed a global project researching the intersection between technology, media, and development assistance. Snezana started her career in the Balkans in the late 1990s, on a team of lawyers at Zivkovic & Samardzic Law Office that provided legal representation to independent media, and where she coordinated ANEM Pro-Bono Legal Aid Network. She also worked for the OSCE Media Department in Serbia and Montenegro as a freedom of expression expert and provided research advice to the UN Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions.   

    Snezana is a Chevening and University of Oxford scholar with a master’s degree with distinction in International Human Rights Law from the University of Oxford and a bachelor of laws degree from the University of Belgrade, Serbia.

    She is a native Serbo-Croatian speaker, fluent in English, and proficient in Spanish.   

  • Alexander Papachristou

    EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, VANCE CENTER
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    Alexander Papachristou
    EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, VANCE CENTER apapachristou@nycbar.org

    Alexander Papachristou joined the Vance Center as Executive Director in January 2012. He directs the organization’s overall operations and focuses on its programmatic and institutional initiatives, as well as fundraising. He co-founded Reporters Shield and leads the legal work of that global program to defend public interest journalism.

    Alex serves as the board secretary of the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, board member of Bard College Berlin, and member of the advisory boards of the Prison Journalism Project and the Environmental Reporting Collective. He recently served on the European Commission Anti-SLAPP Working Group.

    Alex was previously president of the Near East Foundation, a participatory, community-based economic and social development organization working in Arab and African countries. For the preceding 18 years, he engaged in cross-border corporate finance in advisory and proprietary roles: he served as managing director and general counsel at NCH Capital, which invests in the former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe; he lived in Russia from 1989 to 1993, where he opened and ran the Moscow office of White & Case. Alex also worked in the law firm of Clifford & Warnke in Washington, DC and was policy assistant to New York Governor Mario Cuomo. He served as law clerk to US District Judge Myron H. Thompson in the Middle District of Alabama.

    In 2011, The New Press published Blind Goddess: A Race and Justice Reader, which he edited.

    Alex received an LLM and JD from Harvard Law School and an AB from Princeton University, as well as Arabic language training at the American University in Cairo.

Regional Coordinators

Through our network of regional coordinators and other lawyers, we provide services including pre-publication legal review to Reporters Shield members, and identify and engage lawyers to represent members in legal proceedings.

Network Members

  • Jonathan Bock

    Executive Director, Fundación para la Libertad de Prensa
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    Jonathan Bock
    Executive Director, Fundación para la Libertad de Prensa

    Jonathan Bock is Executive Director of the Fundación para la Libertad de Prensa (Foundation for Press Freedom – FLIP) in Colombia. He is a journalist with a master’s degree in International Relations and Journalism from the Complutense University of Madrid. With extensive experience in the field, he is dedicated to defending and supporting fellow journalists.

    Since 2019, he has served as the Executive Director of FLIP, leading initiatives to foster inter-institutional alliances and ensure journalists’ freedom to practice their profession.

  • Angela Caro

    Legal Manager, Fundación para la Libertad de Prensa
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    Angela Caro
    Legal Manager, Fundación para la Libertad de Prensa

    Angela Caro is a lawyer specialized in criminal law from the Universidad Nacional de Colombia, currently holding the position of Legal Manager at the Fundación para la Libertad de Prensa (FLIP). She has significant experience in strategic litigation of cases involving serious human rights violations and has worked on cases of freedom of expression infringements at FLIP, before national bodies and the Inter-American Human Rights System.

  • Donald Omondi Deya

    CEO, Pan African Lawyers Union
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    Donald Omondi Deya
    CEO, Pan African Lawyers Union

    Donald Deya is CEO of the Pan African Lawyers Union (PALU) and an Advocate of the High Court of Kenya.

    Donald was previously CEO of the East Africa Law Society (EALS), and, before that, Deputy CEO of the Law Society of Kenya. He has also worked with the Kenyan Section of the International Commission of Jurists. While at the EALS, he founded the East African Civil Society Organizations’ Forum. Among others, he chairs the Executive Committees of the Pan African Citizens’ Network (PACIN), formerly known as the Centre for Citizens’ Participation in the African Union (CCP AU), and the International Coalition for the Responsibility to Protect. He is a former Chair of the African Court Coalition; Councilor and former Secretary of the African Forum of the International Bar Association; and a former member of the Executive Committee of the International Institute of Law Association Chief Executives.

    Donald litigates extensively at the African Court on Human and Peoples’ Rights, and the East African Court of Justice. He has engaged in advocacy with several organs and institutions of the African Union, African Development Bank, African Legal Support Facility, Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa, International Conference on the Great Lakes Region, Intergovernmental Authority on Development, and the East African Community, amongst others, as well as the United Nations system and the International Criminal Court.

  • Flutura Kusari

    Senior Legal Advisor, European Centre for Press and Media Freedom
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    Flutura Kusari
    Senior Legal Advisor, European Centre for Press and Media Freedom

    Flutura Kusari is ECPMF’s senior legal advisor and leads its legal support program, which has supported hundreds of media workers across Europe. She also advocates with international organizations to improve legislation to defend freedom of expression. During the last decade, she has been engaged in building the capacity of judges, prosecutors, police officers, and lawyers on freedom of expression and media freedom. Flutura co-leads the Anti-SLAPP work at the European level as part of the Coalition Against SLAPPs in Europe (CASE) and as an expert for the European Union and Council of Europe.

  • Sean McTernan

    Media Law Specialist, Reviewed & Cleared
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    Sean McTernan
    Media Law Specialist, Reviewed & Cleared

    Sean has advised investigative journalists for several decades. His clients have included the BBC, Sunday Times and Guardian/Faber Books among others. He also advises a range of television production companies, podcasters and publishers on general UK pre-publication matters. He trained as a mediator with the Centre for Effective Dispute Resolution and mediated on issues ranging from television program format disputes to local neighbor problems. He lectures on media law within the industry and for educational establishments.

  • Kay Murray

    MANAGING ATTORNEY, LAWYERS FOR REPORTERS
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    Kay Murray
    MANAGING ATTORNEY, LAWYERS FOR REPORTERS kmurray@nycbar.org

    Kay Murray joined the Vance Center in April 2023 as Managing Attorney of Lawyers for Reporters, expanding the program’s work to provide pro bono legal representation to local and social mission-driven journalism organizations throughout the United States.  

    Kay has counseled and represented news organizations, writers, documentary filmmakers and nonprofit organizations for more than 30 years. She has served as in-house counsel at First Look Institute, Tribune Publishing and the Open Society Foundations, and as General Counsel at the Authors Guild, where she was also Executive Editor of the Authors Guild Bulletin and Executive Director of the Authors Guild Foundation. She also co-authored The Writers Legal Guide (3d ed.). Most recently, Kay was counsel at the media law firm of Baron Harris Healey, where she advised documentary filmmakers and nonprofit organizations.  

    Kay holds degrees from Northwestern University Law School, where she was Articles Editor of the Journal of Crime and Criminology, and from Xavier University, where she was the Outstanding University Humanities Scholar. 

  • Sarah Peeters

    Program Officer, Pan African Lawyers Union
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    Sarah Peeters
    Program Officer, Pan African Lawyers Union

    Sarah Peeters is a Program Officer – Development of the Legal Profession at the Pan African Lawyers Union (PALU).

    Sarah is PALU’s freedom of expression focal point and manages diverse projects related to the legal profession, including the establishment of an African Media Lawyers Network. She is involved in multiple strategic litigation cases before the African Court on Human and Peoples’ Rights and the East African Court of Justice.

    Before joining PALU, she volunteered at the Legal and Human Rights Centre (LHRC) in Arusha, Tanzania. In 2012, she was admitted to the Bar Association of Antwerp, in Belgium, and worked as a practicing lawyer for more than nine years. She founded her own law firm in 2016, specializing in legal aid and family law.

    She holds an LLM in private law and criminal law and a LLB in private and public law from the Free University Brussels (Vrije Universiteit Brussel).

  • Felicity Price

    Solicitor, Reviewed & Cleared
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    Felicity Price
    Solicitor, Reviewed & Cleared

    Felicity Price is an experienced media content lawyer who works across television, film, print and audio. She worked for over a decade at major news outlets, including The Times and Sunday Times, The Mail on Sunday, MailOnline, The Telegraph and The Independent. She provided pre-publication advice on all content including investigations and worked with in-house teams on legal complaints and litigation. She now works across television, film, print and audio advising a range of production companies, publishers and podcast makers. She has a background in media litigation and is admitted as a solicitor in England & Wales and Australia (non-practicing).

    She regularly undertakes legal training, and continues to work in a newsroom, advising journalists and editors at the BBC.