Staff

Executive Director:  Charles Thomas has 18 years of professional experience in the drug policy reform movement. He co-founded the Marijuana Policy Project in 1995, served as director of communications, and left in 2001 to organize the religious community. As a Unitarian, he persuaded his denomination to adopt an official statement calling for drug decriminalization. Charles has testified before several federal and state legislative and regulatory bodies and has been quoted in most major news publications, including on the front pages of the New York Times and Washington Post, and he has appeared on most television news networks.

Associate Director:  Kristen Millnick earned her B.A. in art and criminology at Simon Fraser University in British Columbia, Canada, where she had the opportunity to study Vancouver’s innovative harm reduction policies.  She was also a legislative affairs intern at Drug Policy Alliance.  In February of 2008, she joined IDPI and has organized clergy and religious support for a variety of drug policy reform issues across the country.

Leadership Council

Eric E. Sterling, J.D. is a member of the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers), encouraged the Philadelphia Yearly Meeting of Friends to adopt a minute supporting decriminalization of marijuana in the late 1970s when he was a young lawyer.  He is the author of “Friendly Fire: Rethinking the War on Drugs from a Quaker perspective,” published by the Haverford College Alumni Magazine in 2000.  He served for six years on the board of directors of William Penn House in Washington, DC, a Quaker lodging and program center on Capitol Hill.  He served as Assistant Counsel to the Committee on the Judiciary, Subcommittee on Crime of the U.S. House of Representatives from 1979 to 1989 working on drug policy.  He recently completed three years on the executive committee of the Rock Creek Forest Elementary School PTA, including a year as co-president.  Currently, he is President of The Criminal Justice Policy Foundation, President of the Voluntary Committee of Lawyers, Inc., serves as a liaison to the Standing Committee on Substance Abuse of the American Bar Association, Secretary of Families Against Mandatory Minimums, on the national board of directors of Students for Sensible Drug Policy, and on the Montgomery County (MD) Alcohol and Other Drug Abuse Advisory Council.

Rev. Dr. Andrew Gunn founded and ran Clergy for Enlightened Drug Policy, another IDPI predecessor. Earlier in his career Rev. Gunn, a United Methodist minister, was the executive director of the Alliance for the Separation of Church and State.

Rev. Eddie Lopez, Jr. is the former senior pastor of a large congregation in the South Bronx, and former director for Human Rights and Racial Justice for the General Board of Global Ministries for the United Methodist Church. As the former director of an Americorps program for the National Council of Churches, he recruited 1600 Latino people to volunteer in 800 non-profit organizations that address social needs. His ministry began at the NYC Department of Corrections where he served as the chaplain for adolescents. This is where he saw that the War on Drugs was causing more problems than it was solving.  He is currently the Director of Spiritual Care at Greenwich Hospital in Greenwich, CT.

William Martin, M. Div., Ph.D. is a sociology professor and a senior fellow for Religion and Public Policy at the James A. Baker III Institute for Public Policy at Rice University, where he has taught since 1968. He graduated from Harvard Divinity School and received a Ph.D. from Harvard University. His articles, mostly dealing with the intersection of religion and popular culture, have appeared in such publications as The Atlantic, Harper’s, Esquire, and Texas Monthly, as well as in professional journals. His book, A Prophet with Honor: The Billy Graham Story, is regarded as the authoritative biography of Billy Graham. He is also the author of With God On Our Side: The Rise of the Religious Right in America, the companion volume to a six-hour documentary PBS mini-series of the same name. He is a frequent guest on national and local news and discussion programs. In addition to his work in religion, he taught criminology for thirty-five years and is currently exploring ways to reduce the harms associated with drug abuse and U.S. drug policy. Dr. Martin participated in a panel run by IDPI at the 2007 Drug Policy Alliance conference where he talked about why conservative evangelicals should not be written off as potential supporters of drug policy reform.

Mary Jo Iozzio, Ph.D. is a professor of moral theology at Barry University.  She is also the co-editor of the Journal of the Society of Christian Ethics.  She holds a B.A. from Penn State University,  an M.A. from Providence College, and an M.A. and Ph.D. from Fordham University.  As a theological ethicist and a Catholic, she is interested in articulating the ways and means of reasoning about human choices and moral agency.  Her interest in drug policy focuses on the moral imperative for needle exchange programs and other harm reduction practices.  In addition to writing about the efficacy of needle exchange programs from a faith-based perspective, she also participated in an event IDPI held on Capitol Hill with religious leaders urging Congress to lift the ban on federal funding for needle exchange programs.

Mark Berkson, Ph.D. is a professor of religion at Hamline University. He also teaches a seminar on U.S. drug policy. Mark holds a B.A. from Princeton University, and an M.A. and Ph.D. from Stanford University. Dr. Berkson’s scholarly work has addressed topics such as death and dying, the use of entheogens (psychoactive sacraments) in religious ritual, and interfaith dialogue. Mark’s work in drug policy began with advocating for the historic 1996 ballot initiative in California to allow medical marijuana. He is currently chair of the Drug Policy Reform Group of Minnesota and recently gathered signatures from prominent faith leaders in the state to support a legislative effort for medical marijuana.