Ghislaine Pages is a native of New York, and grew up in Seattle, Washington. She attended Barnard College where she majored in Political Science with a minor in Africana Studies. Her studies at Barnard focused on incarceration in the United States, criminal sentencing reform, and racial equity.
While at Barnard, Ghislaine received the Carolyn E. Agger ’31 Endowment for Women Interested in Law scholarship, the Tow Foundation Special Opportunities Fund grant, and the Jolie Ermers Memorial Grant related to her study of criminal justice and racial equity in politics. Ghislaine founded the Criminal Justice Working group at Columbia in 2018 which produced a piece of legislation addressing the Department of Defense excess military property transfer program, known as the 1033 Program, and the militarization of municipal police departments which the group hopes to propose to the New York City Council in fall of 2018.
At Barnard, her senior capstone papers included: “Nikkita Oliver for Mayor: An Analysis of Racism in Politics in ‘Post-Racial’ Seattle,” “Numbers Games: Incentive Structures within the NYPD and the New York Districts Attorney Office,” and “To Seek Justice, Not Merely to Convict: Natural Law, Legal Positivism, Legal Realism, and the Evolution of the Legal and Customary Conceptions of the American Prosecutor.” Ghislaine also spent a semester at the Arabic Language Institute in Fez, Morocco during her sophomore year.
Before joining the Center, Ghislaine worked at the Columbia Center on Sustainable Investment, the Nikkita Oliver for Mayor campaign in Seattle, WA, and the Washington State Democrats. She also served as Vice-President and Media Director for the Columbia University Democrats, organizing student groups to travel to Washington, DC to lobby on behalf of criminal justice and sentencing reform bills in the House and Senate.
Ghislaine loves law and public policy. She plans to attend law school and pursue a career in public defense.