The PLS Board of Directors meet six times a year (every other month).

Legal Professionals

Jason Gratl was elected onto the board on September 12, 2007. Information about him will be coming soon...

Catalin Mitelut

Catalin is the managing partner for Mitelut & Company and he practices exclusively immigration and refugee law. He is a member of the Law Society of British Columbia and the Canadian Bar Association.

Catalin graduated from University of British Columbia's Law School program in 2004 and since that time he has been actively involved in the immigration and refugee communities.

He currently provides pro bono legal services through the Western Canada Society to Access Justice. He has also provided seminars to immigration community and settlement workers on a wide range of immigration and refugee related matters.

Ondine Snowdon

Ondine is a criminal defence lawyer. While at UBC, Ondine coordinated Pro Bono Students Canada, which placed law students with non-profit organizations.

Ondine became involved with Pivot in 2001, was an affidavit taker during the policing issues affidavit campaign, and helped to prepare and organize the formal complaint currently being investigated by the Office of the Police Complaints Commissioner. In 2003, Ondine participated in organizing and implementing Pivot’s sex-work project and was a co-author of Voices for Dignity.

Community Representatives

Sophia Freigang

Sophia was born in Vancouver and moved to Vancouver's DTES in 2002 having located affordable housing for herself and her two daughters. A certified Lifeskills Coach and Wellness Counselor specializing in women's issues, Sophia is also a professionally trained performance artist and involves herself regularly in the Downtown Eastside community's flourishing arts-activist productions.

She became acquainted with Pivot Legal Society when she entered the inaugral Downtown Eastside Photography Contest in 2003. She has won awards in this contest for three consecutive years, with a winning image in the Hope in Shadows calendar for the past two years (2006 and 2007 calendars).

Julie Rogers

Julie has volunteered with Carnegie Centre, the Housing Action Committee, the First Nations Caucus Working Group and VANDU. Julie is also a board member with Save Our Living Environment and is employed as United We Can. She has photographs in the top 40 of the first four Downtown Eastside Hope in Shadows Photography Contests.

Julie became involved with Pivot because of her concerns about access to justice, housing, and the protection of social services, particularly welfare and services for women.

Hendrik Beune

Hendrik came from the Netherlands in 1970. After obtaining a degree at UBC, he pursued careers as an Aquatic Biologist, Shellfish Farmer and in Integrated Pest Management. He is now a Consultant, Researcher, Writer, Community Activist and Outreach Worker in the DTES. He has been involved with Pivot and other local organizations since 1999 and has made community presentations on an international level; e.g. recently at HARM2006 and WUF3. Hendrik is currently obtaining a Counseling Certificate and also serves on the editorial board of UPWORDS and FEARLESS magazines.

Don Baker

Don has a long history of activism in the DTES. He was one of the founding members of Vancouver Area Network of Drug Users (VANDU) and has been working in addiction services for over 15 years. Don has volunteered at numerous Pivot events and has been taken part in the Hope in Shadows photography contest in which he received honourable mention.

Members at Large

Barney Hickey

Barney Hickey is a Registered Nurse with a 25-year nursing career advocating for the care, treatment and support of marginalized people including those with mental illness, addiction issues, HIV and Hep C co-infection, sex trade workers, federal prisoners, the homeless and First Nations.

He teaches psychiatric and mental health nursing at Langara College in the Bachelor of Science in Nursing program. He is a founding board member of the Canadian Association of Nurses in AIDS Care (CANAC) and previously sat on the boards of the Canadian HIV/AIDS Legal Network representing BC, as well as the boards of CATIE and the federal Ministerial Council on HIV/AIDS appointed by former federal health minister Anne McLellan.

John Werring

John Werring is a fisheries biologist with the David Suzuki Foundation. Before working for the Suzuki Foundation, he worked for Sierra Legal Defence Fund for more than 10 years, first as a biologist, and then as a major gifts officer. He lives in Surrey with his wife and three boys.

Ann Livingston

Ann has lived in Vancouver since 1970 and in the DTES of Vancouver since 1993. For six years, she has been employed as the Project Coordinator of Vancouver Area Network of Drug Users (VANDU). She is currently a Board member of EMBERS.

Ann was a founding member of Pivot Legal Society and has been on the Pivot Legal Society Board for four years.

Honorary member

John Conroy

John is a criminal defense lawyer, and also works on administrative law issues involving post sentencing matters to do with prisons and parole, mostly in the federal prisons. John was the director and lawyer for Abbotsford Community Legal Services from 1975 to 1980, the first ‘Community Law Office’ in B.C. and then created, with others, the B.C. Prisoners Legal Services, acting as that organization’s staff lawyer from 1980 to 1990.

He is a member of the International Society for the Reform of the Criminal Law, a multi-disciplinary society with a secretariat in Vancouver.