Lisa Deal, RN, MPH, ScD

Executive Director

As a community health nurse caring for AIDS patients in Boston during the late 1980s, Lisa discovered her passion for being with the dying. Following that profound experience, Lisa’s life took her down a variety of paths as a clinician, research associate, policy analyst/editor, and grants officer. She earned master’s degrees in public health and nursing from the University of Washington and a doctorate in public health from Harvard University. She spent several years working on child and family policy issues with the David and Lucile Packard Foundation in Silicon Valley before stepping away to raise her three children and engage in community volunteer work. After the tragic deaths of her younger brother, her dear friend and pastor, and her father — all within a three-year span — Lisa felt called to return to caring for the dying.

In 2010, Lisa joined Mission Hospice & Home Care as a hospice and palliative care nurse, and worked in clinical and leadership roles for the next nine years, directing the Palliative Care Program and the Community Outreach Program, and serving as Chief Clinical Officer and finally Chief Executive Officer until 2019. It was during this time that Lisa became involved with Humane Prison Hospice Project. Under her leadership, Mission Hospice became the clinical sponsor for Humane’s work to train the Brothers’ Keepers prisoners at San Quentin State Prison to be compassionate end-of-life caregivers. Visiting with the men at San Quentin was another life-changing experience for Lisa, and today she feels honored to be able to combine her passions for working with the dying and serving those behind bars through the Humane Prison Hospice Project. In her role as executive director, Lisa focuses on strategic planning, fundraising, program development and administration, and supporting the incredible Humane team as they seek to ensure that those dying in prison receive compassionate end-of-life care.

In addition to her work with Humane, Lisa serves on the Board of Directors for GAIA Global Health and Peninsula Volunteers, Inc., and she is a lay chaplain for the Santa Clara County jails. In her personal life, Lisa treasures time with her husband and three adult children and long walks on the beach.

Susan Barber

Program Director, Palliative Care Initiative

Susan’s work in end-of-life care happened by accident during the AIDS epidemic when dozens of her friends became ill and many died. The support she found in the Center for Attitudinal Healing, a group of Buddhist monks and nuns, and Stephen and Ondrea Levine’s work on death and dying allowed her to enter into these deaths with compassion and less fear. After spending 10 years caring for friends and family who were dying, Susan became a hospice volunteer coordinator. She spent 25 years, first at Sutter Care at Home and then at Mission Hospice & Home Care, training more than 600 people in San Mateo County, California, to provide bedside hospice care to thousands of people.

At Mission Hospice & Home Care, she founded, grew, and managed the Community Education Program. The work that resonated with her most deeply during her tenure there was the partnership with Humane Prison Hospice Project’s pilot program to train 16 prisoners in Compassionate End-of-Life Care at San Quentin. A second cohort completed training just one week prior to California’s shutdown due to COVID-19.

For Susan, working with incarcerated people and training them in compassionate end-of-life care and grief companionship is the realization of a dream she has had for almost 20 years. She is grateful to support Humane Prison Hospice Project, and looks forward to the day when all those dying in prison will receive great palliative and hospice care with volunteer support from their compassionately trained incarcerated peers.

Laura Musselman

Outreach & Events Manager

Following the deaths of both of her parents, Laura Musselman felt compelled to begin work in end-of-life care and left her career in higher education as a college philosophy instructor. Upon her departure from academia, she trained with the International End-of-Life Doula Association (INELDA) as an end-of-life doula and became a hospice volunteer for Hinds Hospice in Fresno, California, in 2018. At Hinds, she took on roles as a patient care volunteer, a home hospice volunteer, and a vigil volunteer; soon, she began training other volunteers to sit vigil for patients, which led to working with the Comfort Care volunteers at the Central California Women’s Facility located in Chowchilla, California.

As a former teacher of ethics, and as a human being, Laura believes deeply in the accessibility of compassionate end-of-life care, and that the right to die with dignity is an essential human right. As such, she is proud and grateful to serve the Humane Prison Hospice Project in this role.

Marvin Mutch

Co-Founder / Advisor / Advocate

Marvin is Humane Prison Hospice Project’s spokesperson, advisor, and general hero advocate. Marvin’s biography is an extraordinary one. Through the combined efforts of USC’s Post Conviction Justice Project and The Golden Gate University Innocence Project, he was released from prison February 17, 2016, after serving 41 years on a wrongful conviction suffered in 1975.

In 2008, Marvin was injured and sent to a state prison hospital, California Medical Facility, for treatment. While there, he witnessed its full-service prison hospice program — the only one in the state — shepherd no fewer than 10 of his dying brothers, and he became a fervent supporter.

Marvin created a plethora of advocacy and reform programs while incarcerated. Learn more of his story in the KQED documentary, The Trials of Marvin Mutch.

Edgar Barens

Documentarian / Spokesperson

As a documentary filmmaker, Edgar has a notable record of successful production in very stressful prison environments. His Academy Award-nominated (2014) documentary, Prison Terminal, has screened in more than 60 prisons and at more than 80 colleges, universities, and community centers. Edgar takes great satisfaction in his ability to tackle large-scale problems within the American criminal justice system and present them on a very personal level so that the destructive impact of a dysfunctional correctional system can be made more palpable to the viewer. He took on the mission to document one of the few positive programs behind bars that exists today in the hope that other facilities will emulate Iowa State Penitentiary’s prisoner-run hospice program and instill much-needed dignity to dying in prison for all concerned.

Sandra Fish

Co-Founder / Advisor / Death Row Advocate

Sandra co-founded Humane Prison Hospice Project in 2016, however her work in support of the organization’s mission dates back to 2007. At that time, Sandra was working in the office of criminal defense attorney Michael Satris and asked him: “How are they dying in San Quentin?” His response was: “Badly.”

Sandra is an actor, writer, and advocate. She has decades of passion for prison reform, stemming from a role in the play, Getting Out, which required a great depth of research into prisons. Over the years, she taught in Riker’s Island Prison, worked as an employment specialist for newly released incarcerated people in Manhattan, attended support groups for those formerly incarcerated, sat in on parole hearings, and visited Sing Sing to observe classrooms there.

While Sandra worked with older newly released prisoners, they told her time and again, “I’ll never go back. If I go back, I’ll die in prison. I don’t want to die in prison. I don’t want to die in prison.” Sandra heard the tones of absolute fear and dread in their voices, and they instilled in her an urgency to make sure there is end-of-life care — with prisoners trained in giving the volunteer care — in every prison.

Sandra is co-chair of the San Francisco End-of-Life Network and has trained and worked as a hospice volunteer with added training in pediatric hospice and vigil. She volunteered inside San Quentin, assisting with the initial Brothers Keepers’ end-of-life training sessions. Currently, her focus is advocating for end-of-life care and training on Death Row in San Quentin.

Sage Jeffries

Intern

Sage is currently an undergraduate student at the University of California, Santa Cruz, majoring in Community Studies, and an intern with Humane Prison Hospice Project. She became interested in working with the dying at age 18, when she traveled to Kolkata, India, to volunteer at Mother Teresa’s Home for the Dying. This experience, along with supporting her grandfather through hospice, shaped Sage’s belief in the importance of dying well — and the desire to help this happen. The opportunity to work with Humane aligns with Sage’s interests in becoming a social worker, a prison reform advocate, being with those at the end of life, and engaging in important social change work.