Eric Tennen--Chairman

Eric Tennen is a partner at Swomley and Tennen, LLP. His work focuses on trial and appellate practice, with a focus on criminal defense and civil liberties. Eric also teaches Legal Research and Writing for first year law students at Boston University School of Law.

In his career as an attorney, Eric has successfully defended persons charged with serious felonies, in both State and Federal court. He has won the release of several persons facing civil commitment pursuant to G.L. chapter 123A as a sexually dangerous person and has successfully represented clients before the Sex Offender Registry Board. Eric has been on several Continuing Legal Education panels.

Prior to becoming an attorney, Eric received an LLM in Criminal Law from the University of Buffalo School of Law in 2004. He graduated magna cum laude from Boston University School of Law in 2001. He has a B.A., with distinction, from the University of Michigan from 1998. Eric has also published articles concerning a wide array of criminal law issues.

Eric joined the CJPC Board of Directors in 2009.

Walter Stone--Vice Chairman

Walter Stone is the longest serving member of the CJPC Board of Directors. Walter served four years with the United States Air Force. He then pursued his studies in college, ultimately graduating from seminary. He worked for the Christian Ministry for 25 years as a pastor, counseling, and teacher. He taught at colleges about the use of academic material to practical life. He developed a sister-city program, was a camp counselor and served on various boards. Walter is an ex-prisoner who spent his incarceration assisting men with their legal issues, helping other prisoner with personal issues. He also served on a Legal Advisory group. Walter brings tremendous life experience, and a long institutional memory of CJPC history and accomplishments.

Joel Pentlarge--Treasurer

Joel Pentlarge was born in Boston, grew up in Worcester, graduated from Reed College in Portland Oregon, and New England School of Law in Boston. He established a civil legal aid program in Ware, MA as a VISTA Volunteer and worked as a legal aid lawyer for five years. After that, he went into private practice in Ware for twenty years. He was chairman of the Ware Conservation Commission for ten years and President of the Palmer Airport Association. He experienced the other side of criminal justice system as prisoner for 3 ½ years at the Massachusetts Correctional Institution at Norfolk and two years at the Massachusetts Treatment Center. He corresponded with CJPC while in prison and attended his first CJPC meeting shortly after getting out of prison in the spring of 2006. In the spring of 2007 he was invited to join the CJPC board of directors. For the last several years, Joel has served the board in various capacities including Secretary, Interim Executive Director and, now, Treasurer.

Arthur Bembury

Arthur is the co-founder of several residential treatment facilities for disadvantage youths in Southern California. He is also a former Boston University student and database specialist with an extensive history in commercial and residential real estate. Currently, Arthur serves as the Volunteer & Community Liaison with Partakers, Inc., a Boston area non-profit organization. As an ex-prisoner, Arthur brings unique experience to the organization, helping address issues of recidivism and the need for rehabilitative and educational programming in Massachusetts prisons. Arthur joined the CJPC Board of Directors in 2009.

Fred Smith

Fred is the Director of Program Development, Research and Evaluation for St. Francis House, Inc., New England’s largest Day Shelter located in downtown Boston, MA. Fred helped develop and, for 11+ years, directed the highly regarded St. Francis House Moving Ahead Program (MAP), an intensive life skills, career development and addictions treatment program that has been recognized by city and federal officials for its quality and innovative programming. Fred has directed the program’s development since its first class of students in the fall of 1995. He brings 20+ years of experience in policy development, program design, implementation and training in the field of vocational rehabilitation. He had the unique opportunity to help design, and then direct, a first of its kind supported work program for people with psychiatric disabilities in Boston, as well as a high intensity residential/vocational program for people being discharged from state psychiatric facilities with a dual diagnosis of mental illness and substance abuse.

An advocate of strength based counseling, Fred has received short and long-term training from both Columbia University’s Teachers College and the Division on Addictions at Harvard Medical School in addition to his undergraduate and graduate work in public administration. He has conducted workshops throughout the Boston, area, as well as in New York and New Hampshire in the areas of program marketing, job development strategies and program design, including an 8-city tour across the country delivering two-day symposia to HUD vendors and officials on the Moving Ahead Program model. As a result, the model has been replicated in part and in total in virtually every city visited. Currently, MAP has contracts with HUD, the Mass. Parole Board, the U.S. Dept. of Justice and the Federal Probation Dept.

As Director of Program Development, Research and Evaluation, Mr. Smith is dedicated to continually improving all the programs and services of St. Francis House. Among the program initiatives currently being developed is an integration of Mind/Body Health Curricula for both MAP and the Next Step Residential Program; developing a comprehensive assessment and evaluation instrument for all guests and a community based mentoring program. Fred joined the CJPC Board of Directors in 2008.

Nancy W. Ahmadifar

Nancy is a human rights activist who believes in the worth and dignity of every individual. She works shoulder to shoulder with incarcerated people to improve conditions of confinement so that prisoners can lead meaningful, productive lives whether they remain behind the wall or return to the community. Along with other activists Nancy founded End the Odds Coalition, a local group of Boston community activists and formerly incarcerated people who strive to improve conditions in the cell block in order to ensure safety on the city block.

Nancy has lived for 37 years in the Mission Hill neighborhood of Boston, where she raised her family and tends her garden. For the past 14 years she has worked for the Mayor’s Office of Jobs and Community Services, where she manages job training contracts for low income Boston residents. Outside of work Nancy uses her professional knowledge of workforce development and community resources to help individuals in the re-entry process find their way to becoming law-abiding citizens. She provides emotional support to those who seek it through correspondence, phone calls, and visits to prisoners.

Nancy earned a doctorate degree in sociology from Northeastern University in 1984. However, she feels that her real education has come from working with those on both sides of the wall in the struggle for human rights and justice.

Pippin Ross

Pippin has been a print and broadcast journalist for twenty-five years. The majority of her reporting has been with National Public Radio as a decade long news director of a Massachusetts affiliate WFCR. Her work has encompassed most of New England; she was a Massachusetts-correspondent for NPR/Washington D.C.; and a regular host of three nationally-aired programs. While a reporter for NPR and numerous publications such as Boston, Denver, Yankee, and All Woman Magazines, as well the Boston Globe, Phoenix, and Herald, she regularly wrote about aspects of criminal justice; sometimes positive stories on equity and fairness; all too often, stories about our national epidemic of crime and punishment.

Her only break from the newsroom came while incarcerated for a series of non-injurious OUIs. She achieved sobriety while in prison, and became acutely aware of the devastating effects of criminalizing addiction. Her interior examinations as an ‘embedded’ reporter on the frontlines of court and corrections resulted in a memoir: Crash Course, A Reporter’s Journey Into Prison.

David Levine

David is a career entrepreneur and small businessman who, among other accomplishments, built a snack food delivery business from the ground up and operated it for over 18 years. Through his experience with hiring and training employees, David became interested in expanding opportunities for work for the unemployed. He recently drafted a job creation proposal that would consolidate efforts of government economic stimulus, initiatives led by nonprofit organizations, and the innovative potential of the private sector to counteract the contemporary trend of high unemployment that the recession has precipitated. The need for job creation is especially salient for individuals who have recently been laid off and for those who have been incarcerated, both of which groups represent a significant proportion of the population in Massachusetts.

Thomas Neumeier--Intern

Thomas is a first year law student at Boston College Law School and a 2009 graduate of Boston College’s School of Arts & Sciences. As an undergraduate, Thomas studied Political Science and Theology and spent a year abroad at Oxford University where his academic focus was on International Relations and Philosophy of Religion. In the summers before law school, Thomas worked for the Moving Ahead Program at the St. Francis House, developing research and analytical tools for the shelter’s guest population. Thomas’ policy interests are in poverty relief and the just sentencing/treatment of drug offenders. He is in his first year of working for the CJPC as an intern.