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• James Cooper
  Managing Attorney
• David Nolen
  Attorney at Law
• Marye Dean Moore  Attorney at Law
• Shailey Gupta-Brietzke Katrina Outreach Project Attorney
• Sandra Perez           Attorney at Law
• Barbara Stalder
  Attorney at Law
  
• Ericka Barboza
  Legal Assistant
• Sherri Gongara
  Paralegal
• Elsa Ramirez
  Legal Assistant
• Nancy Smith
  Paralegal
• Jessica Sorto
  Paralegal

• Becky Blasingame
  Director of Victim Services
• Ana Monola
  Client Advocate
• Ruth Ramirez
  Case Manager

• Sherri Kendall,
  BIPP Director
  

• Carolyn Burks
  Program Registrar

• Richard Eden
  Group Facilitator
• Vicki Rendall
  Group Facilitator
• Illiana Salas               Group Facilitator
• Jose Sanchez
  Group Facilitator
• Angela Sessums          Group Facilitator
• Alan Houlton
  Group Facilitator 
• Latronda Thurmond         Group Facilitator               

• Jacqueline Pontello Executive Director
• Lisa Mikosh
  Director of Finances
• Cathy Prieto-Smith
  Director of Special Projects
• Denise Pena
  Office Manager
• Windy Padilla
  Receptionist

Jaqueline Pontello
Executive Director

Attorney and veteran non-profit administrator Jacqueline Pontello joined Aid to Victims of Domestic Abuse (AVDA) as Executive Director in August 2004. While in college, Ms. Pontello volunteered at the San Antonio Food Bank—and her life was forever colored by an encounter with a teenage mother desperate for food for her two children. That episode inspired two decades of advocacy on behalf of low-income families, for which Ms. Pontello had been honored with the Houston Food Bank’s Albrecht Award for Volunteer Service and the Salvation Army Harbor Light Center’s inaugural "Volunteer of the Year" award.

Passion became a profession when, in 1996, she joined the staff of the Houston Food Bank (HFB). Four months later, Ms. Pontello was asked to serve as Acting Executive Director and steered HFB through a cash-flow crisis and the early days of welfare reform. During her tenure, HFB launched Texas Second Chance, a groundbreaking partnership with the Texas Department of Criminal Justice that has been recognized with the Congressional Hunger Center’s 1997 "Victory Against Hunger Award" and with the Brice Award for Innovation from America’s Second Harvest. Ms. Pontello then served as the first Director of Development & Community Relations—and later as Acting Director—of the End Hunger Network.

The experience of leading the state’s largest hunger-relief agency in the wake of welfare reform inspired Ms. Pontello to enroll in the University of Houston Law Center, which boasts the nation’s top-ranked Health Law & Policy Institute. Her advocacy for families in crisis continued during law school, when she temporarily relocated to Washington, D.C., to lobby Congress for reauthorization of the Bill Russell School Lunch Act and the Community Food Nutrition Program (CFNP). Working in concert with Senators Arlen Spector and Jim Jeffords, Ms. Pontello helped build a bipartisan coalition of Senators that successfully blocked the Bush Administration’s planned elimination of CFNP and pressured the House into reauthorizing CFNP for seven more years. The UHLC faculty awarded Ms. Pontello the 2004 Distinguished Service Award. Immediately after taking the Texas Bar, Ms. Pontello joined AVDA as only the third Executive Director in the organization’s 25-year history.

Jim Cooper
Managing Attorney

Attorney, James Cooper, joined Aid to Victim of Domestic Abuse in April 2005. Mr. Cooper directly supervises all of the legal counsel and legal support staff at AVDA, which includes five in-house attorneys that litigate up to 250 concurrent family law cases in the Harris County courts, while maintaining a full case-load of cases. Mr. Cooper has over ten years of litigation experience with an emphasis on civil and family litigation, mediation and arbitration. Following his graduation from South Texas College of Law in 1995, Mr. Cooper opened a successful private practice as a trial lawyer in civil and family law cases.

Sherri Kendall, MEd., LPC
Battering Intervention & Prevention Program Director

Becky Blasingame
Director of Victim Services