Sammy Pourciau serves on the Board and the New Orleans Advisory Council at Avodah.
Samantha (Sammy) Pourciau is a Senior Staff Attorney at Avodah placement Promise of Justice Initiative (PJI). Sammy was an Avodah Corps member at PJI in 2014-2015 coordinating PJI’s Client and Family Assistance Program. She is originally from Rockland County, New York, and moved to New Orleans in 2010 to attend Tulane University, where she studied Sociology and Social Policy & Practice. After her Avodah year, she was hired at PJI as a paralegal and outreach coordinator until she moved back to New York to attend NYU School of Law in 2018. After graduating law school, Sammy returned to PJI in 2021 as an attorney on the civil litigation team where she fights for the dignity, freedom, and autonomy of incarcerated and formerly incarcerated people across Louisiana. Sammy also supervises PJI’s Client and Family Assistance Coordinators, an Avodah Corps Member, and a Jesuit Volunteer Corps Member. Sammy has been on the New Orleans Avodah Advisory Council since 2023. When Louisiana’s Governor Jeff Landry pushed the legislature to add gassing suffocation as a method of execution in 2024, she organized with the Jewish Community in a Jew Against Gassing campaign.