Nicole Zayas Manzano (she/her) is the Deputy Director of Policy at The Bail Project, where she devises and leads policy and systems change campaign strategies, advances national pretrial reform strategic planning, and executes the day-to-day operations of the policy department. Nicole joined The Bail Project in 2021 as the Senior Policy Counsel. Before The Bail Project, she spearheaded campaigns to end mass incarceration by advocating for more fair state and federal crime policies and practices federally and in states, most recently as Advocacy and Policy Counsel for the ACLU’s Campaign for Smart Justice, where she worked in states across the country to cut the number of people behind bars in half while challenging racism in the criminal legal system.
Prior to joining the ACLU, Nicole served as Counsel and Senior Manager at the Brennan Center for Justice at the New York University School of Law. She received a B.A. in history from the University of Massachusetts-Amherst and a J.D. from the Fordham University School of Law.