Our Board
Natalie Rea, President, has been a staff attorney in the Criminal Appeals Bureau of The Legal Aid Society for 30 years, where she has argued hundreds of cases in New York’s state and federal courts. For the past 25 years, she has also worked on rule of law development in post-conflict countries, focusing on access to quality criminal defense services for the poor. Born in New York and raised in France, Natalie graduated from the Université d’Aix-Marseille and Fordham University School of Law. She founded Legal Aid Rwanda in 1996, and its successor organization, The International Legal Foundation, in 2001. She was the executive director of The ILF until 2012 and later served on its board. Natalie was a member of the World Economic Forum, Global Agenda Council on Rule of Law between 2011 and 2013. Before joining The Legal Aid Society, she clerked for the Honorable Thomas C. Platt in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of New York and worked at the law firm of Sherman & Sterling in New York, Paris, and Los Angeles.
Joy is the founder of Infinyte.Club, a cutting-edge wealth-tech product tailored for the next generation of savvy investors in India.
Prior to Infinyte, Joy spent seven transformative years at Sequoia Capital India & Southeast Asia, where she collaborated with exceptional founders to build world-class companies. Her role focused on studying the strategies of the world’s leading founders while spearheading software initiatives, building communities, and launching an early-stage fund (Surge) to empower emerging entrepreneurs in the region.
Before her venture capital journey, Joy crafted chat products for Fortune 500 contact centers at 247.ai, launched civic engagement platforms like I Paid a Bribe and I Change My City at Janaagraha to improve urban governance in India, and developed top-grossing casino games for iOS and Android.
In 2014, Joy earned global recognition as the only Indian woman among 15 individuals selected worldwide for the prestigious Google Personal Democracy Fellowship, celebrating her efforts to strengthen democracy through an open and accessible internet.
Joy graduated from the University of Southern California with a graduate degree in Industrial & System Engineering and an undergraduate degree in Electrical and Electronics Engineering from Manipal University, India.
Benoit Turcotte, Treasurer, is a lawyer in Montreal, focusing on criminal and statutory law. Over the past 12 years, he has served as an International Fellow for The International Legal Foundation in Afghanistan, Tunisia, and Myanmar. He helped The ILF design a database to better monitor, record, analyse, and report activities, trends and the results of the work of The ILF national lawyers. Benoit graduated from the Université de Moncton in New Brunswick and has a Master’s degree in International Law from the Université d’Aix-Marseille. He is an active member of the Barreau du Québec and was named Governor of the Foundation Barreau Du Quebec in January 2018.
Rachel Landis Pecker, Secretary, is a staff attorney in the Criminal Appeals Bureau of The Legal Aid Society where she represents clients in post-conviction proceedings. Before joining the Legal Aid Society, Rachel was an immigration lawyer at the Masliah Firm, served as a clerk to the Honorable Sarah Netburn in the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York, and worked as a program associate at the Democracy and Power Fund of the Open Society Foundations and as a legal assistant at The Center for Reproductive Rights. She has volunteered with Building Community Voices in Phnom Penh, Cambodia and, in 2020, traveled to Khartoum, Sudan with the Court-Access Project. Rachel is a graduate of Wesleyan University in Connecticut and the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law in New York City.
Siddharth Peter de Souza is a doctoral candidate in law at the Humboldt University of Berlin, focusing on the development of legal indicators and their application to countries experiencing different forms of legal pluralism. A graduate of St. Stephens College in Delhi and the Campus Law Centre at the University of Delhi, he worked as a Judicial Clerk at the High Court of Delhi. He has an LL.M. from the University of Cambridge and was a German Chancellor Fellow at the Max Planck Foundation for International Peace and Rule of Law, in Heidelberg, focusing on Rule of Law and Development. Siddharth is the founder of Justice Adda, a legal design social venture, using communication, design, and technology to address the problems of barriers to justice in India. He is a member of the Berlin Hub of the Global Shapers Community, born out of the World Economic Forum, which encourages young people around the world to create meaningful change in their communities.
Lawrence T. (Ted) Hausman is a supervising attorney at the Criminal Appeals Bureau of The Legal Aid Society (CAB) in New York City. Ted began working as a staff attorney at CAB in 1994 and became a supervising attorney in 1998. At CAB, he represents indigent individuals convicted of crimes in New York’s appellate courts and in federal courts; engages in post-conviction practice before New York trial courts, including handling resentencing cases under the newly-enacted Domestic Violence Justice Survivors’ Act; supervises pro bono and staff attorneys; conducts trainings; and advises staff on ethics issues.
Since 2011, Ted has been a member of the New York State Bar Association’s Committee on Professional Ethics, where he helps draft ethics opinions that provide guidance to attorneys practicing in New York. He also was a member of the Appellate Standards and Best Practices Working Group of the New York State Office of Indigent Legal Services (OILS) and participated in the drafting of statewide appellate practice standards. Prior to working at The Legal Aid Society, Ted was an associate at the law firm of White & Case and then clerked for Justice Alan B. Handler, Associate Justice of The New Jersey Supreme Court. Ted is a graduate of Brown University and Yale Law School.
