As the Senior Consultant for Research and Resources, Wendy manage PJI’s situational awareness of the rapidly-changing state of pretrial across the country, curates our institutional library, and shares PJI’s vision for an equitable and just pretrial system. She is driven by her passion for justice and the power of clear, thoughtful communication to evoke compassion, insight, and urgency.
Over the past seven years, Wendy has watched PJI shift to be heavily steeped in and committed to racial justice. This ongoing transformation is the result of deep work—looking at the racialized history of the criminal legal system, learning to recognize how white supremacy culture works between and within us, and looking at her own journey as a Chinese American woman—and it has changed her as a human being.
Wendy splits her time between PJI and her career as a children’s book author; while some people see these careers as incongruous, both endeavors are concerned with our shared humanness and creating justice. She is on the Megaphone Board of Shout Mouse Press, a nonprofit dedicated to encouraging and raising up the voices of marginalized youth. She earned her undergraduate and law degrees from the University of Virginia, and previously worked for the ABA Juvenile Justice Center on access to counsel issues.
What would your colleagues say is your superpower?
My knack for finding pretrial stats and studies. The deeper I get into a research rabbit hole, the happier I am!