Elizabeth Gaynes

Elizabeth Gaynes is Executive Director of the Osborne Association, a 75-year-old nonprofit organization based in New York City that provides a wide range of educational, employment, treatment and family services to individuals affected by incarceration. Gaynes is a nationally recognized expert on prisoner reentry and the impact of incarceration on children and families.

Under her leadership over the last 20 years, Osborne has developed and operated programs in community sites in the Bronx, Brooklyn and Queens, as well as 20+ state prisons, city jails, and courts. Osborne offers job training and placement, prison and reentry services, and prevention and treatment programs. In 1985, Ms. Gaynes spearheaded the creation of FamilyWorks, the first comprehensive parenting program in a men’s state prison, and launched some of the nation’s first and most innovative services for children with parents in prison, including children's visiting centers at upstate New York prisons.

In 2004, together with her daughter, Emani Davis, she was the first American ever nominated for the prestigious international World’s Children’s Prize for the Rights of the Child, for their work defending the rights of children with parents in prison. She is the recipient of the 2000 Jessie Ball duPont Fund Award, the foundation’s highest honor for leadership, and the 2003 Martin Luther King Drum Major for Justice Award, Center for Law and Justice (SUNY Albany) and serves as the Chair of the Board of Directors of OPEN Children, an Ethiopia-based children’s charity.

Ms. Gaynes, an attorney, began her legal career as a criminal defense attorney involved in representing prisoners at Attica following the 1971 prison uprising, and later joined Prisoners Legal Services of New York as a staff attorney in the Albany office. She later became an associate at the Pretrial Services Resource Center in Washington, D.C., which provides technical assistance to jurisdictions around the country seeking to reduce their jail populations and develop alternatives to jail and prison.