Sara Totonchi is a transformational leader whose career has focused on human rights and social justice for people in the Deep South, especially those impacted by the criminal legal system. For more than twenty years, Sara’s advocacy home was the Southern Center for Human Rights (SCHR), a public interest law firm that works for equality, dignity, and justice for people impacted by the criminal legal system in the Deep South. Sara joined SCHR in 2001 as the Public Policy Director and became the organization’s Executive Director in 2010. For 11 years as Executive Director, Sara led the SCHR team in carrying out its mission to end the death penalty, mass incarceration, the criminalization of poverty, and racial injustice.

In 2022, Sara served as Senior Advisor for Research and Policy for Stacey Abrams’s gubernatorial campaign. Sara is the Chair of the Board of Directors of the Promise of Justice Initiative (Louisiana); a Board Member of Motherhood Beyond Bars (Georgia); and the past vice-chair of the Board of Directors of Re:Power.

Sara began her career at the Georgia Commission on Family Violence, an organization that employs a coordinated community response to end intimate partner violence. Sara and her family immigrated to the United States when she was a child, settling in Chicago. She is a graduate of Berry College in Rome, Georgia.