Aishatu Yusuf has spent the majority of her career working within multiple social systems with the purpose of creating better outcomes for marginalized youth, young people, and their families. Throughout her career, she has focused on child safety, youth and adult legal system reform, child protection, and education policy. With the belief that change must be envisioned through an intersectional lens that captures race and gender identity, Aishatu has worked to reduce the education, health, and employment barriers for formerly incarcerated women; evaluated the strengths and needs of girls in gangs; and is currently working with the National Black Women’s Justice Institute on participatory research that address interrupting school to confinement pathways for girls of color.

Aishatu has worked with federal, state, and local governments to address issues that permeate the youth and adult legal system. She has partnered with youth legal systems and education systems across the county to develop cross system intervention and justice prevention programs. She has presented her research at numerous conferences, has trained educators and law enforcement professionals across the nation, and has authored and co-authored various articles, book chapters, and other publications. Aishatu now leads Impact Justice’s California Justice Leaders-AmeriCorps planning project focused on providing employment and training to formerly incarcerated individuals while increasing awareness and access to California’s Honorable Discharge petitions process. Prior to joining Impact Justice, Aishatu worked at the National Council on Crime and Delinquency, and she currently serves as the senior education and re-entry policy fellow for the National Black Women’s Justice Institute. Aishatu holds two bachelor degrees from the University of Utah and a master’s degree in public administration from Northeastern University.

Andrew carries many titles: non-profit organization leader, coalition member, mentor, advocate, and college graduate. But it was not that long ago when he carried the label “juvenile lifer.”
In June 2016 Andrew became the first juvenile lifer in Louisiana to be paroled following the U.S. Supreme Court’s Miller/Montgomery rulings that prohibited the mandatory sentencing of children to life without parole. The state parole committee recognized that he was not the same 15-year-old that went to prison in 1997.

While incarcerated Andrew completed numerous educational programs and college courses, served as a leader in multiple prisoner organizations, and taught rehabilitation and reentry classes.

In August 2016, he co-founded Louisiana Parole Project to help the nearly 300 men and women in Louisiana who, like him, were sentenced to life for crimes they committed when they were children. Andrew earned an Associate of Science in Criminal Justice from Baton Rouge Community College and received his Bachelor of Arts in Sociology with a concentration in criminology from LSU in May 2019. He is currently pursuing a Master’s in Criminology and Justice from Loyola University New Orleans.

“When I left prison, I left behind people who are no less deserving of the opportunity I was given,” Andrew explained. “Our mission isn’t simply to gain freedom for men and women who have turned their lives around. We want to ensure they have the skills and prospects to reach their greatest potential upon release.”

Angel Sanchez is a writer, activist, and formerly-incarcerated advocate with the Florida Rights Restoration Coalition. The Florida Rights Restoration Coalition is a grassroots organization led by formerly convicted people, known as Returning Citizens, dedicated to ending disenfranchisement and discrimination against people with criminal convictions. In 2018, the Florida Rights Restoration Coalition made national headlines when it led the successful campaign to pass Amendment 4 in Florida, which restored voting rights to over 1.4 million people with past felony convictions. Angel’s current work includes rights restoration, advocacy against the collateral consequences of arrests and convictions, and addressing the unprecedented problem of Covid-19 inside of Florida’s prisons and jails. Angel's work is grounded on principles of human rights, critical race theory, movement lawyering, and prison abolition.

Angel served over 12 years in state prison as well as many years on supervision, both before and after prison. After his release, Angel moved into a homeless shelter, attended community college, and ultimately graduated from law school. Angel’s experience with the criminal legal system, his legal training, and his tireless advocacy-work uniquely positions him to speak to the failures of the legal system and ways to transform it. Angel has given lectures and presentations at a number of conferences and universities, including Harvard Law School, Yale Law School, Florida Conference of Circuit Judges, and many others. Angel’s article, titled “In Spite of Prison”, was recently published by the Harvard Law Review. In it he lucidly details how prison (and all of its extensions and rationales) tend to produce and perpetuate crime, violence, and a failed reentry system.

Angel earned a GED in prison, his associate’s degree from Valencia Community College, his bachelor’s degree from the honors college at the University of Central Florida, and his juris doctor, magna cum laude, from the University of Miami School of Law where he also served as an editor of the University of Miami Law Review. Angel is a proud uncle to his niece and two nephews who have been children of an incarcerated family, a proud brother to his sister who just got out of prison and is on probation, and a proud son to his loving mother who is undocumented and who has battled drug addiction her whole life.

Arthur Longworth is a contributing writer with The Marshall Project, a 2018 Pushcart Prize nominee, a 6-time PEN America Prison Writing Award winner and a 2019-2020 PEN America Writing For Justice Fellow. He has written for Medium, VICE News and Yes! Magazine. His work has been presented onstage by renowned literary figures Francine Prose, Junot Diaz and rapper/poet Talib Kweli. And he is the author of Zek: An American Prison Story (Gabalfa Press, 2016). However, Arthur didn’t always write. He grew up in the foster care system. That is to say, Washington State raised him in its archipelago of infamous boys’ homes, including one the Seattle Time’s dubbed a “house of horrors.” The State turned him out onto the streets at 16 years old without an education, job training, or money. He has a Life Without Parole sentence and has been incarcerated for 35 years.

Arthur Rizer heads the R Street Institute’s programs dealing with a variety of issues related to crime, policing, and privacy. In this capacity, he produces original research, writes for the popular press and educates policymakers on criminal justice and civil liberty issues. He is also a visiting lecturer at the University of London, University College London in the Department of Security and Crime Science and an adjunct professor of law at George Mason University’s Antonin Scalia Law School.

Before joining R Street, Arthur was an associate professor of law at West Virginia University’s College of Law and a visiting professor of law at Georgetown University Law Center. He also served as a trial attorney with the U.S. Justice Department, primarily as a federal prosecutor in the Criminal Division, where he targeted command-and-control drug cartel leaders and narco-terrorists. He also served as a prosecutor in the United States Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of California and in the civil division, working on immigration-related litigation, with the Federal Programs Guantanamo Bay litigation team and at the Office of Immigration Litigation.

Early in his civilian career, Arthur worked as a patrol officer in Washington state. He also spent almost 21 years in the U.S. Army and was deployed to Fallujah, Iraq to train the Iraqi Special Forces Division. During his military career, he was awarded the Bronze Star, Purple Heart, Meritorious Service, and Iraq Campaign medals. He retired as a lieutenant colonel from the U.S. Army, WV National Guard.

Arthur earned his bachelor’s degree in political science from Pacific Lutheran University, a master of laws, with distinction, from Georgetown University’s Law Center and his juris doctor, magna cum laude, from Gonzaga University School of Law. He is also a graduate of the U.S. Marine Corps’ Command Staff College. He is in the final stages of a doctorate at Oxford University that focuses on policing.

Ashley Nellis, Ph.D. has an academic and professional background in analyzing criminal justice policies and practices, racial disparities, juvenile justice systems, and long-term imprisonment. Her documentation of the prevalence of life imprisonment has served as a national resource for academics, advocates, policymakers, reporters, and incarcerated persons. She is the coauthor with Marc Mauer of The Meaning of Life: The Case for Abolishing Life Sentences (The New Press, 2018) which has received praise from the Los Angeles Review of Books, Kirkus, and Publishers Weekly, and has been featured on National Public Radio. Dr. Nellis is also the author of A Return to Justice: Rethinking our Approach to Juveniles in the System (Rowman & Littlefield, 2015) which chronicles America’s historical treatment of youth in the justice system and the need to reorient juvenile justice practices toward the original vision. She has presented her work at a wide range of academic and policy convenings, and is frequently interviewed by a range of news media. Dr. Nellis received her Ph.D. in Justice, Law and Society from American University’s School of Public Affairs.

On August 24, 2009, Aswad was 26 years old and just three weeks from going to Europe to play professional basketball. As he left a convenience store, he was approached by two men intent on robbing him and he suffered two near-fatal gunshots to his back, ending his basketball career. Aswad’s story was featured in the New Yorker Magazine, “Black Wounds Matter”, NPR, “Black Men Who Are Crime Victims Have Few Places to Turn, Sacramento Bee, “California’s crime survivors must speak out for smart justice, “VICE/The Marshall Project, “How I Came to Terms with the Man Who Shot Me, Marshall Project, “We are Witnesses”, and the Hartford Courant, “On Hartford Streets, A Life Nearly Derailed by Bullets”, “Hartford Shooting Survivor Stands Against The Violence”. He went on to become one of Connecticut’s most outspoken supporters of additional resources for victims of gun violence and has been a leader in building coalitions across racial lines to advance justice reform and prevent gun violence. Aswad founded Hartford Action, a grassroots organization working to empower communities to change policy and improve the relationship between the Greater Hartford community and the justice system.

Aswad is Managing Director at Crime Survivors for Safety and Justice. He is helping to expand our national network of crime survivors to include those most commonly affected by violence, including young men of color, and help elevate those voices in state and federal policymaking debates. Aswad received a Master’s of Social Work, with a concentration in Community Organizing and focused area of study in Urban Issues, from the University of Connecticut, and a B.A. in Business Management from Elms College.

Betsy Pearl is an associate director for Criminal Justice Reform at American Progress. Pearl came to American Progress from the U.S. Department of Justice, where she served as a policy adviser in the Office of Justice Programs. In that role, her work focused on advancing innovative public safety interventions in the field, including evidence-based strategies for reducing unnecessary confinement, expanding diversionary options, and improving public trust in the justice system. Pearl also served as an adviser to the Federal Interagency Reentry Council, a coalition of federal agencies focused on removing barriers and expanding opportunities for justice-involved individuals. Prior to joining the Department of Justice, Pearl was a Presidential Management Fellow at the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. Pearl holds a Bachelor of Science from Northwestern University and a Master of Arts in American government from Georgetown University.

Brent J. Cohen is the executive director of Generation Progress. Generation Progress, the young-adult engagement arm of American Progress, is a national organization that works with and for young people to promote progressive solutions to key political and social challenges.

Prior to joining American Progress, Cohen founded the Public Service Consulting Group, a social justice consulting firm dedicated to advancing racial equity and reducing incarceration. Previously, Cohen served as the vice president and interim CEO of JustLeadershipUSA, a national nonprofit organization dedicated to cutting the U.S. correctional population in half by empowering the people most affected by incarceration to drive policy change. During his tenure, the organization scaled its advocacy operations nationally, led a successful grassroots campaign to close the antiquated House of Correction in Philadelphia, and grew its staff size by more than a third.

Cohen was an appointee in the Obama administration, where he was a senior policy adviser to the assistant attorney general for the Office of Justice Programs at the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ). Cohen led DOJ’s efforts under the My Brother’s Keeper initiative to advance criminal and juvenile justice reform, with a focus on eliminating racial disparities and reducing incarceration for children and young adults. In 2013, Brent was 1 of 12 people appointed by then-President Barack Obama to the White House Fellows program.

Before coming to Washington, D.C., Cohen was the director of Legislative and Government Affairs for the New York City Department of Probation, where he doggedly pursued progressive criminal justice reform and successfully passed several pieces of state legislation to implement the department’s ambitious reform agenda, including the landmark Close to Home Act, which realigned juvenile justice services from the state to the city.

Cohen began his career as a teacher in South Los Angeles. He earned a bachelor of arts from the University of California, Berkeley, and a master of public administration from New York University’s Robert F. Wagner Graduate School of Public Service.

C.T. Mexica has a doctorate in Comparative Literature (Theory and Criticism) from the University of Washington. He recently completed a postdoctoral fellowship at Arizona State University’s School of Social Transformation. C.T.’s research is centered on the literature of crime, confessions, and confinement and on the social theory of tragedy, transformation, and transition. C.T. is currently working on a literary memoir on intergenerational incarcerations and the demimonde of bonded males in the US. He is a 2019-2020 PEN America Writing For Justice Fellow.

Caits Meissner is PEN America’s Prison and Justice Writing Program director. Before joining PEN America, Meissner was an integral team member in developing community arts and education programs for organizations such as Tribeca Film Institute, The Bronx Academy of Letters, Urban Arts Partnership, The Facing History School, and The Lower Eastside Girls Club. She has taught, consulted, and co-created extensively for over 15 years across a wide spectrum of communities with a focus on prisons, public schools, and college classrooms at The New School University, The City College of New York and John Jay College of Criminal Justice. After teaching in youth detention, prisons and jails, in 2017, Meissner reenvisioned the concept of book tour for her illustrated poetry collection Let It Die Hungry (The Operating System, 2016), pairing public speaking engagements with opportunities to work with incarcerated writers across the United States.

Carter Stewart is responsible for identifying and supporting DRK Entrepreneurs. Carter currently serves on the boards of DRK portfolio organizations Advance Peace, The Common Market, Father’s Uplift, Justice Rapid Response, Ruling Our Experiences (ROX), Power of Two, Uptrust, and Wash Cycle Laundry.

Prior to joining DRK, Carter served as the presidentially-appointed United States Attorney for the Southern District of Ohio. In this role, he was responsible for prosecuting federal crimes in a district which included Columbus, Cincinnati and Dayton. Carter emphasized deterrence, crime prevention and alternatives to incarceration in his work. He created the district’s first community outreach position and established a community leadership committee geared towards building trust and improving communication between the public and law enforcement. He created the district’s first diversion program to allow individuals a means of avoiding a felony record while still being held accountable for their wrong-doing. Carter also served on the Attorney General’s Advisory Committee and chaired the Attorney General’s Child Exploitation Working Group. He previously served as an Assistant U.S. Attorney in San Jose, CA, and he was a litigator at Vorys, Sater, Seymour and Pease LLP in Columbus, OH, and Bingham McCutchen LLP in San Francisco, CA.

Carter received a JD from Harvard Law School and holds an MA in Education Policy from Columbia University and received his undergraduate degree in Political Science from Stanford University. After law school, Carter clerked for the Honorable Robert L. Carter, U.S. District Judge in the Southern District of New York, and the Honorable Raymond L. Finch, U.S. District Court Judge for the District of the Virgin Islands.

Celia has dedicated her legal career to fight for those most disadvantaged by broken systems of criminal justice. Prior to founding RBIJ, Celia was a human rights lawyer for more than a decade, founding and directing The Powell Project, an organisation dedicated to empowering and equipping capital defence teams with the knowledge and skills to level the playing field in death penalty cases. Prior to that Celia was a Staff Attorney at the UK human rights charity Reprieve.

Celia holds bachelor’s and master’s degrees from the University of Oxford. She is licensed to practice law in New York, California and several federal jurisdictions. Celia is also a qualified UK Solicitor. Celia speaks English, French and Spanish and is a dual British and US national. She was made a Meaningful Business Ambassador in March 2020, and has advised international governments on capital punishment and human rights in systems of justice.

Cherise Fanno Burdeen has spent more than 20 years working to improve public safety policies and practices across the country. After earning a bachelor’s in public administration from Miami University (Ohio) and a master’s in criminal justice from Indiana University, she began her career with the DOJ's National Institute of Justice. After fieldwork that included time with the Safer Foundation in Chicago and post-9/11 federal service with the Department of Homeland Security, Cherise joined PJI.

Since 2006, Cherise has developed innovative strategies to raise awareness of pretrial justice issues, amassed a broad constituency of criminal justice stakeholder groups, provided technical assistance and training on policy reforms, and engaged in communications and media efforts. She has extensive experience with strategic planning, initiative management, and change efforts across the criminal justice system. She serves as an issue expert for legal and correctional professionals, national and community advocates, the media, influencers, and artists.

Chesa Boudin is the new District Attorney of San Francisco. Personally impacted by parental incarceration and the failings of the criminal justice system, Chesa was inspired to become a public defender, and now, decarceral prosecutor. He is focused on reforming the criminal justice system and making our communities safer by developing data-driven policies to expand alternatives to incarceration and treat the root causes of crime.

Christie Donner is CCJRC’s Executive Director and founder. Since 1995, she has been working in criminal justice reform advocacy, community organizing, policy research, and lobbying. Christie drafted CCJRC's Community Reinvestment bills that are now funding community-led support services for people leaving prison, under-served crime survivors, crime prevention, and harm reduction approaches to problem drug use. Christie co-authored Parenting from Prison: A Resource Guide for Incarcerated Parents in Colorado. She is also the project lead for CCJRC’s publication Getting On After Getting Out: A Re-Entry Guide for Colorado.

Clinton Lacey is Director of the District of Columbia Department of Youth Rehabilitation Services (DYRS), DC’s cabinet-level juvenile justice agency. Mayor Muriel Bowser appointed Director Lacey to lead DYRS in 2015.

Before joining DYRS, Clinton had more than 25 years of experience working with youth and families - 19 of which have been focused in the field of juvenile and criminal justice.

Clinton joined the New York City Department of Probation as the Deputy Commissioner for adult operations in 2011. In this capacity, he was responsible for the oversight of a division that supervises approximately 24,000 clients on probation and leading a series of innovative initiatives designed to reform the Probation Department’s key policies while building a host new relationships with system and community partners.

In June of 2006, Clinton held a project manager position at the W. Haywood Burns Institute, working in several jurisdictions around the nation with stakeholders engaged in the Institute’s process of addressing racial disparities in local juvenile justice systems. In this capacity, Clinton had the opportunity to train and collaborate with a cross section of stakeholders, including judges, probation officials, prosecutors, public defenders, educators, advocates, community organizers and the court involved youth and families themselves.

Read more about Director Lacey at DC Department of Youth Rehabilitation Services

Cory Everett is the Colorado Director for the Latino Coalition for Community Leadership where she oversees the day-to-day operations of multiple grants resulting from community reinvestment initiatives, working directly with community partners to provide technical assistance and capacity building. Ms. Everett has experience in the non-profit, private and public sectors. Throughout her career, Ms. Everett has specialized in helping state governments solve market and societal issues through community engagement, regulatory reform, organizational development, strategic planning and other strategies. This has included leadership on projects related to occupational licensing, marginalized workforce, the opioid crisis, prescription monitoring programs, regulatory capture, resiliency and crisis planning. Ms. Everett lives in Denver, Colorado. She holds a Master of Arts in Global Finance, Trade and Economic Integration from the University of Denver and graduated Magna Cum Laude with a double major Bachelor of Arts in International Studies and Spanish also from the University of Denver.

Crystal Carpenter joined the CFSY in April 2019 as the Community Assessment and Engagement Manager. This new position bridges the work of several departments working to understand the experiences of individuals post-release, while developing a range of supports and resources to help them thrive. Crystal brings to this role a passion for criminal justice reform that she unearthed more than twenty years ago.

In this role, Crystal works with directly impacted individuals, their families, and communities to ensure multi-directional sharing of data, information, and experiences. Her proximity to the issue provides a unique perspective as she works to educate and train diverse stakeholders on issues related to the harsh realities faced by formerly incarcerated individuals and families.

Damion joined Oklahoma Policy Institute in July 2018 as the criminal justice policy analyst. He grew up in Jackson, Mississippi and has lived in Oklahoma since the late 90s. Prior to joining OK Policy, he was an educator at Jenks Public Schools and the Oklahoma School for the Performing Arts. He’s written education and justice features as a contributing writer for the Tulsa Voice since 2016, and he was awarded best Education and General News Reporting features by the Society for Professional Journalists in 2017. Damion earned a Bachelor’s Degree from Oral Roberts University and started several voter registration and political advocacy initiatives during his time on campus. He lives in Tulsa with his wife Rachel.

Dana has built NYC Together, with a mission to interrupt the school to prison pipeline by pushing past the punishment paradigm to support the new DOE and NYPD policies. Dana has facilitated meaningful weekly collaborations between officers and local youth who are most impacted by system involvement. These meetings have become efficacious alternatives to conventional – sometimes adversarial – responses to crime and disorder, leading to increased public safety and improved academic outcomes for our youth.

Working alongside high ranking NYPD officials and numerous precinct commanders, Dana has learned that collaborative partnerships with Department executives are invaluable towards the sustained success of both NYC Together and neighborhood policing in NYC.

Daveen Trentman is a Co-Founder and Partner of The Soze Agency. Alongside her team, Daveen has led major productions including The Museum of Drug Policy which has now toured in four countries, Truth to Power, the Right of Return Fellowship; which invests in formerly incarcerated artists. Daveen served as the Executive Producer and Lead Curator of the Museum of Broken Windows. Daveen co-curated The O.G. Experience, the first ever art exhibit to feature exclusively formerly incarcerated artists, which was recently awarded a silver Clio Award for Experiential Events. Influenced by a personal connection to the issue, Daveen has invested in working deeply on campaigns centered around drug policy and criminal justice.

David Muhammad is a leader in the fields of criminal justice, violence prevention, and youth development. Mr. Muhammad is the Executive Director of the National Institute for Criminal Justice Reform (NICJR).

David Muhammad has worked to implement positive youth development into youth justice systems around the country and was the primary author of NICJR’s seminal report – A Positive Youth Justice System. For three years, David was extensively involved in developing a detailed reform plan for the Los Angeles County Probation Department, the largest probation department in the country. He also served as the technical assistance provider for the Sierra Health Foundation’s Positive Youth Justice Initiative, providing training and consulting to several California probation departments. NICJR is currently serving as a technical assistance provider to the City and County of San Francisco, working to reform its juvenile justice system and close its juvenile detention center.

Through NICJR, David provides leadership and technical assistance to the Ceasefire Gun Violence Reduction Strategy in the cities of Oakland and Stockton, California; Portland, Oregon; and Indianapolis. David helped lead a partnership of organizations and technical assistance providers that achieved a 50% reduction in shootings and homicides in Oakland. David was the main author of NICJR’s report on Oakland’s Successful Gun Violence Reduction Strategy.

Read more at National Institute for Criminal Justice Reform website.

David Safavian is the Deputy Director of the American Conservative Union Foundation’s Nolan Center for Justice, where he advocates for policy changes that improve public safety, protect families and victims, reduce recidivism, and maintain fiscal austerity. A member of the D.C. bar, Safavian is also the general counsel for the American Conservative Union.

In addition to his work at ACU and ACUF, he is a regular lecturer on the intersection of ethics and the law. He has spoken to graduate business students at Catholic University of America, George Washington University, Johns Hopkins University, Loyola University Maryland, Villanova, and Virginia Tech. Prior to joining ACUF, David served as an adjunct professor at Georgetown University, where he taught courses in real estate ethics. Safavian recently co-authored an article on the role played by credit reporting agencies in the 2008 Financial Crisis, which was published in the University of Pennsylvania Business Journal.

Safavian held two senior policy positions in the Administration of President George W. Bush: Administrator for Federal Procurement Policy and Chief of Staff of the US General Services Administration.

Before joining the Bush Administration, David was Chief of Staff to Congressman Chris Cannon (R-UT), a senior member of the House Judiciary Committee. He also served as a legislative aide to Michigan Attorney General Bill Schuette (R-MI), when Schuette was in the US House of Representatives. David clerked for US Magistrate Judge Paul Komives, and held a civilian position in the US Army Aviation and Troop Support Command.

David Safavian has an MBA from Loyola University Maryland, a master’s of law (LL.M) in taxation from the Georgetown University Law Center, a juris doctorate (magna cum laude) from the Michigan State University (Detroit College of Law), and a bachelor’s degree in political science from St. Louis University. He is married and has two daughters.

DeVone Boggan serves as Founder and CEO of Advance Peace. Advance Peace interrupts gun violence in American urban neighborhoods by providing transformational opportunities to young men involved in lethal firearm offenses and placing them in a high-touch, personalized fellowship. By working with and supporting a targeted group of individuals at the core of gun hostilities, Advance Peace bridges the gap between anti-vio- lence programming and a hard-to-reach population at the center of violence in urban areas, thus breaking the cycle of gun hostilities and altering the trajectory of these men’s lives.

DeVone is the former Neighborhood Safety Director and founding director of the Office of Neighborhood Safety (ONS) for the City of Richmond, California. The ONS is a government, non-law enforcement agency that is charged with reducing firearm assaults and associated deaths in Richmond. Under his leadership as Neigh- borhood Safety Director, the city experienced a 71% reduction in gun violence between 2007 when the office was created and 2016. His work with ONS has been recognized in national publications and media, including the New York Times, Mother Jones, The Nation, Detroit Free Press, The Washington Post, TIME Magazine, PBS NewsHour, NPR, NBC Nightly News, ABC Nightline, CNBC, MSNBC, and CNN.

Prior to his tenure in Richmond, DeVone served as Policy Director for Safe Passages, a nonprofit public/private partnership focused on improving urban health outcomes for children, youth and families.

Dorian began as an advocate for the rights of folks with disabilities and surviving the experiences of institutional violence since their own life has been shaped and molded by such experiences. After years paving the way to advocate medical, housing, and transportation needs for himself and others, Dorian now attends school with hope of a Bachelors in Law and Policy. They hope to bring his motto "accessibility as an afterthought is the opposite of inclusion" into all gender-affirmative services and organizations. Dorian's other passion is all things Kayak.

Reginald Dwayne Betts is a Ph.D. in Law candidate at Yale and Emerson Fellow at New America. He holds a B.A. from the University of Maryland and a J.D. from Yale Law School, where he was awarded the Israel H. Perez Prize for best student note or comment appearing in the Yale Law Journal. He spent his summers with the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and the District of Columbia’s Public Defender Service. He has worked in the New Haven Public Defender’s Office as a Liman Fellow.

Prior to law school, Betts was a Radcliffe Fellow at Harvard’s Radcliffe Institute of Advanced Studies, a Soros Justice Fellow, and a Guggenheim Fellow. In addition, he served by appointment of former President Barack Obama as a practitioner member of the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention. The author of three books, Betts’ latest collection of poems, Bastards of the Reagan Era, has been named the winner of the Pen New England Poetry Prize. His first collection of poems, Shahid Reads His Own Palm, won the Beatrice Hawley Award. Betts’ memoir, A Question of Freedom: A Memoir of Learning, Survival, and Coming of Age in Prison, was the recipient of the 2010 NAACP Image Award for non-fiction.

Ed Chung’s work at American Progress focuses on reducing the footprint of thecriminal justice system while making it fairer and more equitable effective. Under the banner of Smart on Crime, Chung has developed a variety of policies and legislation around comprehensive public safety strategies, sentencing and prison reform, opportunities for the justice-involved, and ending the war on drugs. His work has been cited in The New Yorker, Slate, and The Huffington Post, among other national publications, and he often appears as a subject matter expert on media platforms such as NPR, Sirius XM, and the Progressive Voices Network. Chung is also the co- host of Thinking CAP, a weekly podcast featuring national leaders on current events.

Prior to joining CAP, Chung was a senior adviser and special counsel at the U.S. Department of Justice, where he focused on criminal justice, policing, and civil rights issues at the Office of Justice Programs and the Civil Rights Division. His experience also includes serving as senior policy adviser at the White House Domestic Policy Council; counsel to Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-VT) at the U.S. Senate Committee on the Judiciary; a federal prosecutor, and assistant district attorney at the ManhattanDistrict Attorney’s Office.

Eddie Ellis joined the CFSY team as the Incarcerated Children's Advocacy Network (ICAN) Coordinator in early 2018. In this role, he works with ICAN members across the country, connecting them to each other and with local resources. He also works with other directly impacted communities, including the family members of juvenile lifers.

Eddie, a native Washingtonian, was arrested and charged with murder at the age of 16 -- he was later found guilty of manslaughter and sentenced to 22 years in prison. He served 15 years and finished the rest of his time on parole.

Eddie came home in 2006 and since that time he has worked on a variety of issues, including reentry, solitary confinement, and on behalf of people with disabilities who are in the system and coming home. He has served on the board of directors of a national legal organization, and helped with client center training for lawyers, probation officers and social workers. He is an advocate for those in the system, a mentor, and a motivational speaker. His lived experience as a formerly incarcerated person provides invaluable insight and depth into his work that allows him to connect with and engage the community he serves."

Elizabeth Hinton is incoming professor of History, African American Studies, and Law at Yale University. She is the author of "From the War on Poverty to the War on Crime: The Making of Mass Incarceration in America."

Emma is a graduate of Northeastern University School of Law. Upon graduation, she clerked first in the U.S. District Court for the District of Maine and then at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. Emma started at The Bronx Defenders as a criminal defense attorney and is now Managing Attorney of the Family Defense Practice. Emma supervises attorneys, social workers and parent advocates who represent parents accused of child abuse and neglect and facing possible termination of parental rights. She participates in numerous court-based and independent coalitions to develop pro-family policies and practices in New York City, including the committee devoted to reducing racial disproportionality in foster care. In her career, Emma has worked as the Director of Legal Advocacy for National Advocates for Pregnant Women where she was counsel and strategist on criminal and civil child welfare cases at the intersection of the wars on women and drugs. She has also worked as a litigation associate at Lansner and Kubitschek, where she represented parents and children in civil rights actions in state and federal court, and at Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison LLP, where she worked on complex civil litigation. Emma holds a B.A. in Political Science from Trinity College.
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Estela Hernandez is proud to call Oklahoma home! As a civic and community leader, she works tirelessly to stress the importance of getting involved in the community and participating in the political process.

She is proud to serve as a Commissioner on the Oklahoma Commission of the Status of Women. Estela was appointed by Governor Kevin Stitt to serve as a Board Member at the OK State Department of Education and OK Career Tech.

Outside of her community involvement, Estela has been in the construction and Real Estate business for 16 years as a small business owner and is a licensed Realtor with Keller Williams Realty.

She holds a B.A. in Business Administration with a concentration in International Business. Estela has been married for 18 years and is the mother of 3 children

As President of Heartland Alliance, Evelyn Diaz is responsible for directing domestic and global strategy for Heartland Alliance’s five nonprofit corporate entities, with a combined budget of $120 million and 1,400 employees in 12 countries.

Previously, Ms. Diaz was appointed by Mayor Rahm Emanuel to lead the City of Chicago’s Department of Family and Support Services where she was responsible for administering an annual budget of $330 million to deliver social service programs to over 300,000 Chicagoans in the areas of children, youth, homelessness, domestic violence, aging, workforce development and human services.

Before joining Mayor Emanuel’s cabinet, Ms. Diaz was Deputy Chief of Staff to former Mayor Richard M. Daley, coordinating the City’s human capital departments and overseeing initiatives related to poverty, jobs, and economic security. She was later appointed by Mayor Daley as chief executive officer of the Chicago Workforce Investment Council, which was charged with addressing labor market shortages in key industries through a data-driven collective impact model.

Read more at heartlandalliance.org

Hassan A. Latif, founded Second Chance Center (2012), a community re-entry agency dedicated to the successful transition of people returning from incarceration. SCC has grown to become the preeminent reentry agency in Colorado, maintaining a recidivism rate of under 9 % for participants involved in SCC programs. Aside from directing the daily activities pertaining to the delivery of client services and the achievement of agency objectives, he conducts mentoring and reentry trainings for government and non-profit service providers nationally, facilitates transition planning sessions in Colorado Department of Corrections facilities statewide and authored the book “Never Going Back: 7 Steps to Staying Out of Prison” (PAPatterson Press 2012) and the curriculum based on same.

Hassan serves on Governor Polis’s Community Corrections Advisory Council, Governor’s Executive Clemency Advisory Board As well as the Colorado Criminal Justice Reform Coalition’s (CCJRC) Board of Directors as its Vice President. Likewise, he holds a seat on the Colorado Commission on Juvenile Justice (CCJJ) Reentry Reform and Mental Health Disorders in the Criminal and Juvenile Justice Systems Task Forces and is the Colorado Association of Addictions Professionals 2018 “Excellence in Leadership” award recipient. Hassan was also awarded the Bonfils Stanton Foundation Livingston Fellowship for 2020.

Heather Higginbottom is President of the JPMorgan Chase PolicyCenter, which develops and advances sustainable, evidence-based policy solutions to drive inclusive economic growth in the U.S. and around the world.

Prior to joining JPMorgan Chase, Heather served as Chief Operating Officer of CARE USA, a $650 million international nongovernmental organization that provides humanitarian and development assistance in over 90 countries reaching 80 million people per year.

Heather served as Deputy Secretary of State for Management & Resources for the United States State Department from 2013-2017. While there, she represented the Department in the National Security Council, led diplomatic engagement on key issues, and oversaw operations and management for the 70,000 person Department. In the White House, Heather served as Deputy Director of the Office of Management and Budget, functioning as chief operating officer and a principal architect of the federal budget, and as Deputy Assistant to the President and Deputy Director of the Domestic Policy Council. Heather has held senior positions on Capitol Hill and led policy development in two presidential campaigns.
Heather is an accomplished expert in a wide-range of domestic, economic, foreign and Federal budget policy development. She is a skilled public speaker who has regularly testified before Congress, in the media, and before key audiences.

Heather holds a B.A. in Political Science from the University of Rochester and a master’s degree in Public Policy from the George Washington University. Heather serves on the Boards of Directors of Girl Scouts of the USA and the U.S. Soccer Foundation.

Heather Rieman has dedicated her career to ensuring that all youth have the supports and services they need to succeed in school and life. Prior to joining Ed Trust, she served as the senior education advisor for the Corporation for National & Community Service, an agency dedicated to improving lives and strengthening communities through service and volunteering. She also served in the Obama administration as the chief of staff in the Office of Elementary and Secondary Education, and as a senior policy advisor at the U.S. Department of Education. In those roles, she focused on ensuring equitable resources and opportunities for students, particularly vulnerable youth. Before joining the Department, she was the co-director and co-founder of Critical Exposure, a civil rights nonprofit organization that teaches youth to use the power of photography and their own voices to become effective advocates for social change. Heather was also a senior policy analyst for the Education Policy Program at the New America Foundation. In 2001, she was named a Presidential Management Fellow and worked at the U.S. Department of Education as a program and policy analyst. For part of her fellowship, she worked for Senator Ted Kennedy on the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee. She holds a master’s degree in public policy from Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government and a bachelor’s degree from Tufts University.

Governor Rick Snyder appointed Heidi E. Washington as the director of the Michigan Department of Corrections in 2015 and she was then reappointed by Governor Gretchen Whitmer in 2019. As director, she is responsible for overseeing the administration of Michigan’s correctional system, which includes the state’s prisons, probation and parole supervision, the Parole Board, and other administrative functions, in addition to managing a $1.9 billion budget.
Director Washington has served in a number of leadership positions during her career with the Department of Corrections. Prior to her appointment as director, she was warden of the Charles E. Egeler Reception and Guidance Center and the Duane L. Waters Health Center. She also held positions as warden of Robert Scott Correctional Facility and administrative assistant to the department’s executive bureau and director, where she provided oversight for the Legislative Affairs Office and represented the MDOC before the Legislature. She has additionally served as acting assistant deputy director, overseeing the 19 prison facilities in the southern region of the state, and acting operations administrator for the Correctional Facilities Administration. She joined the MDOC in 1998 as a legislative assistant after working for the legislature for several years.
Director Washington holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in political science from Michigan State University and a law degree from Thomas M. Cooley Law School. In 2017, she was named Public Official of the Year by Habitat for Humanity of Michigan for her outstanding vision, dedication and commitment to excellence, and she was also named the Newsmaker of the Year by the Grand Rapids Business Journal for creating the Vocational Village, the nation’s first skilled trades training center for prisoners. In 2018, she was honored to receive the national Tom Clements Award for her vision and innovation in corrections. Director Washington also serves on the Executive Committee for the Correctional Leaders Association as well as serving as their Midwest Regional Representative. She also serves as a Task Force member for the IJIS Institute (Integrated Justice Information Systems), a nonprofit alliance working to promote and enable technology in the public sector.

Hernán Carvente Martinez is a social entrepreneur, community organizer, and leader in the fight to end youth incarceration. Currently, he works as the National Youth Partnership Strategist for the Youth First Initiative, a national campaign focused on closing youth prisons and reinvesting that money into community alternatives. He manages the Youth First Youth Leaders Network, which provides young emerging leaders with the training and tools to lead the fight against youth incarceration. He is also an advisor to the Credible Messenger Justice Center and serves as a board member for Community Connection for Youth. Previously, he worked as a Program Analyst at the Vera Institute of Justice, where he worked on policy analysis, program development, and elevated the voices of youth and families in statewide policy reform. He’s trained policymakers, researchers, non-profits, and professionals in probation, child welfare, juvenile justice and corrections on different approaches to centering and empowering directly impacted youth in policy advocacy, community organizing, and in creating a new vision for youth justice in America. He was awarded the “Spirit of Youth Award” by the Coalition for Juvenile Justice and the “Next Generation Champion for Change” award by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation. He has a B.S. from John Jay College. Connect with him via LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter @Carventehernan.

Homer Venters is a physician and epidemiologist focusing on the intersection of incarceration, health and human rights. Dr. Venters is currently focused exclusively on documenting and addressing the COVID-19 response in U.S. jails, prisons and immigration detention facilities. Dr. Venters is the former Chief Medical Officer of the NYC Correctional Health Services and author of Life and Death in Rikers Island. Dr. Venters has also served as the Director of Programs for the nonprofit organizations Physicians for Human Rights and President of Community Oriented Correctional Health Service. Dr. Venters has led over 50 peer-reviewed scientific publications on the topics of health, human rights and justice involvement, work that has been cited by the US Supreme Court and led to testimony before Congress. Dr. Venters is a Clinical Associate Professor at the NYU College of Global Public Health.

Pastor Isaac Scott is an Award Winning, Social Impact Multimedia Artist and Human Rights Activist. He is a Fellow at the Center for Institutional and Social Change at Columbia Law School and Founder & Lead-Artist for The Confined Arts at the Center for Justice at Columbia University, where he spearheads the promotion of justice reform through the transformative power of the arts. His research at Columbia investigates social and institutional methods of dehumanization in the carceral system to decrease punitive triggers in the US criminal justice system. Pastor Scott’s passion for equal human rights runs deep, and comes as a result of being directly affected by the criminal justice system and its disenfranchising nature. Since returning to society in 2013, he's combined fine art, graphic design, and film & media to counter the existing negative narratives of people in prison and of those formerly incarcerated and directly impacted.

Read more at: https://www.isaacsquarterly.com/pastor-isaac-scott.html

Jamiles Lartey is a reporter at The Marshall Project where focuses on reporting stories from the South. Previously he worked The Guardian US, primarily covering topics of race, criminal justice, and for the last 18 months, the US South. He was a member of the award-winning investigative team behind "The Counted" project tracking police killings in the US. Jamiles graduated from NYU with a graduate degree in Journalism and Africana Studies in 2015.

Jennifer Rodriguez, J.D., is Executive Director of the Youth Law Center (YLC), advocating to transform foster care and juvenile justice systems across the country so youth can thrive. Jennifer spent many years of her childhood in foster care and juvenile justice facilities, and has spent all of her adult life advocating to ensure justice, compassion and opportunity for system involved youth. Jennifer’s advocacy has resulted in significant national policy, practice and culture changes around the fundamental needs of youth and formally including system involved youth as part of all policy processes. Jennifer’s leadership at YLC has a special focus on ensuring youth in both child welfare and juvenile justice receive the parenting necessary to heal and thrive and live in conditions that meet their developmental and emotional needs. Before coming to the Youth Law Center in 2010, Jennifer served for eight years at the California Youth Connection, a nationally-recognized foster youth advocacy organization, leading efforts resulting in major legislative and policy accomplishments for California probation and foster youth, including stronger educational rights, higher education funding, increased funding for transition services, and promotion of normalcy and permanence for teenagers. Jennifer received her G.E.D. from San Jose Job Corps, her B.A. from UC Davis, and her J.D. from UC Davis law school and is mother to two beautiful children who teach her daily about the power of love, high expectations and opportunities.

Jesse Kelley is responsible for overseeing R Street’s criminal justice efforts across the United States at both the federal and state level. In addition, she manages R Street’s state policy portfolios for Delaware, Maryland, Virginia and the District of Columbia. She supports R Street’s criminal justice experts by working with lawmakers to implement effective public policies related to juvenile justice, post-conviction life and other related topics.

Jesse previously served as legislative counsel at the Marijuana Policy Project. At MPP, she led the development and implementation of state advocacy initiatives and saw decriminalization and legalization successes across the country. Earlier in her career, she worked as a criminal defense attorney in Alabama, where she represented mostly indigent clients. She also worked with the Mississippi Innocence Project on post-conviction issues, specifically investigating cases where convictions relied heavily on forensic evidence.

Jesse Krimes is a Philadelphia based artist whose work explores power, authority, systems, social hierarchies, norms, transgressions and conventions of beauty. Shortly after graduating from Millersville University in 2008, he was indicted by the U.S. government and sentenced to a six-year term in federal prison. Over the period of his incarceration, he produced numerous bodies of work exploring his experiences and reflecting on contemporary society. His work has been exhibited nationally and internationally. Previous solo exhibitions include Strange Roots at Burning in Water (2018; New York); Apokaluptein at Loyola University (2018; Baltimore, MD); Purgatory at the Spagnuole Art Gallery, Georgetown University (2017; Washington, DC); Marking Time in America at Burning in Water (2016; New York), Deus Ex Machina at Drexel University (2016; PA); and Apokaluptein at the Zimmerli Museum (2015; New Brunswick, NJ). Krimes’ work has been included in group exhibitions in venues including the Palais de Tokyo (Paris); the Goethe Institute (New York); Aperture Gallery (New York); the Maryland Institute College of Art (Baltimore); the Hampshire College Art Museum (Hampshire, MA)

After Krimes’ release in 2014, he co-founded Right of Return USA in partnership with the Soze agency, the first national fellowship dedicated to supporting formerly incarcerated artists. He has received public commissions from the Ford Foundation, Amnesty International, Mural Arts Philadelphia, and Eastern State Penitentiary. Krimes was awarded fellowships from the Robert Rauschenberg Foundation (2017); the Independence Foundation (2017); and the Ford Foundation’s Art For Justice initiative (2018). He is represented by Burning in Water Gallery in New York. In addition to his independent work, Krimes successfully led a class-action lawsuit against JPMorgan Chase for their predatory practice of charging ex-offenders exorbitant fees.

Jessica Jackson is a human rights attorney who began her career representing people on death row in their appeals. She served as national director for DreamCorps' #cut50 initiative to end mass incarceration and oversaw state and federal efforts including the passage of the First Step Act. Jessica also spent six years on the Mill Valley City (CA) Council and served as Mayor of Mill Valley before stepping into her current role as Chief Advocacy Officer at Reform Alliance, where she is committed to dramatically reducing the number of people who are unjustly under the control of the criminal justice system – starting with probation and parole.

John Harrington was appointed commissioner of the Minnesota Department of Public Safety by Gov. Tim Walz in January 2019.

John Harrington, DPS CommissionerPrior to his appointment, Harrington served as the Metro Transit Chief of Police for the Twin Cities area, overseeing significant growth of the agency and increasing diversity of the department from 5 to 50 percent.

In 1977, Harrington began at the St. Paul Police Department as a patrol officer, working his way up the chain of command. He was selected chief of police in 2004 and served in that role until 2010. As chief, he addressed some of St. Paul’s most difficult problems. This resulted in numerous successes, including the development of innovative programs that have greatly reduced domestic violence and gang involvement.

Harrington served as a Minnesota state senator from the east side of St. Paul from 2010 to 2012. Harrington has been on the faculty at Metropolitan State University, Saint Mary’s University, and the University of St. Thomas​, where he has taught Leadership, Demographics, Community Oriented Policing, and Gangs.

Harrington is a founding member of the Asian-American and black police officer associations. He helped launch and currently chairs the board at Ujamaa Place, a non-profit agency that works with African-American men to transition them out of prison and gangs to become productive community members.

Harrington was born and raised in Chicago, Illinois. He received his bachelor’s degree from Dartmouth University and master’s degree from the University of St. Thomas. He is the father of five adult children and has 16 grandchildren, and currently resides in the Twin Cities.

Jose Hamza Saldana is formerly incarcerated. He was released from Green Haven Correctional Facility 2018 after a total of 38 years of incarceration.
During the decades of incarceration, Jose had obtained a college degree. More importantly, he had committed himself to organizing and advocating for meaningful criminal justice reforms, including prison reform, parole reform and sentencing reform, as well as racial justice.
Jose is Director of RAPP, the Release Aging People in Prison Campaign. RAPP is a grassroots community organizing and advocacy campaign founded and led by people impacted by mass incarceration. RAPP works to end mass incarceration and promote racial justice through the release of older people in prison and those serving long-term prison sentences. Our work seeks to end life and virtual life sentences as a means of uprooting greater forces of injustice that upholds legacies of punishment, revenge, racism and the control of Black and other communities of colors.

Kanya Bennett serves as a Senior Legislative Counsel in the ACLU’s Washington Legislative Office. In this capacity, Kanya advances criminal justice reform at the federal level. Prior to joining the ACLU, Kanya spent over three years at the American Constitution Society for Law and Policy as the Director of Policy Development and Programming where she focused on civil and criminal justice issues. Kanya also served as Counsel to the House Judiciary Committee for over eight years and completed a fellowship at the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation immediately following her graduation from law school. She holds an undergraduate degree in journalism from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, and earned her law degree from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

I am just an average person, full time job, full time mom who happens to be married to someone in prison. I started an advocacy group because of the lack of family information and disinterest in legislation to change criminal justice reform in Virginia. I advocate for prisoners and families.

Over the course of her long career, John Jay College President Karol V. Mason has been a legal pioneer and an exceptional voice for equality, fairness, and criminal justice reform. She was a leader in the Obama Administration on juvenile justice issues, bail reform and re-entry for individuals leaving prison, and in her distinguished career at Alston & Bird LLP, she was the first African American woman elected as chair of the management committee at any major national firm.

As United States Assistant Attorney General and head of the Department of Justice’s Office of Justice Programs, Mason oversaw an annual budget of $4 billion to support an array of state and local criminal justice agencies, juvenile justice programs, and services for crime victims, and oversaw the National Institute of Justice and the Bureau of Justice Statistics, among a wide range of other efforts. She led the Department of Justice’s work to address the issue of community trust in the justice system through a variety of programs including the National Initiative for Building Community Trust and Justice, a partnership with John Jay College and other academic institutions across the country designed to address lack of trust in the criminal justice system.

Previously, Mason served as Deputy Associate Attorney General from 2009 to 2012. She led the Office of Justice Programs from June 2013 to January 2017 after being nominated by President Obama and confirmed by the U.S. Senate. Mason spent almost three decades at Alston & Bird, LLP, where she chaired the Public Finance Group. She was also a member of the Board of Trustees of the University of North Carolina from 2001 to 2009 and Vice Chair of that Board from 2007 to 2009. Mason received an A.B. in Mathematics from the University of North Carolina, and a J.D. from the University of Michigan Law School.

Katharine serves as the Executive Director of the Square One Project. She is a Founding Principal at The Raben Group, a national advocacy, strategy, and communications firm based in Washington DC. For over 14 years, her work at Raben has focused primarily on criminal justice reform, civil and human rights advocacy, and evidence-based policymaking. Katharine’s portfolio comprises multi-faceted projects that draw on political strategy, legal analysis, strategic communications, and creative outreach to a variety of people, communities, and stakeholders.

Prior to joining Raben, Katharine was the Director of State Affairs at the Drug Policy Alliance, where she also opened the organization’s first state-based office in New Mexico. She began practicing law at the Southern Center for Human Rights as a Soros Justice Fellow where she represented incarcerated people in southeastern prisons.

Katharine received her BA from Emory University, where she was a Robert W. Woodruff Scholar, and her JD from Yale Law School. She serves on the Boards of the Southern Center for Human Rights and the Justice Policy Institute and the D.C. Corrections Information Council; and is the 2017 recipient of the D.C. Human Rights Commission’s Cornelius “Neil” Alexander Humanitarian Award for contributions to advancing civil rights and commitment to criminal justice reform.

Keith Ellison was sworn in as Minnesota’s 30th attorney general on January 7, 2019. As the People’s Lawyer, Attorney General Ellison’s job is to help Minnesotans afford their lives and live with dignity, safety, and respect. His guiding values are generosity and inclusion.
From 2007 to 2019, Keith Ellison represented Minnesota’s 5th Congressional District in the U.S. House of Representatives, where he championed consumer, worker, environmental, and civil- and human-rights protections for Minnesotans. He served for 12 years on the House Financial Services Committee, where he helped oversee the financial services industry, the housing industry, and Wall Street, among others. Among his legislative accomplishments are passing provisions to protect credit-card holders from abusive practices and protect the rights of renters and tenants. While in Congress, he founded the Congressional Antitrust Caucus and the Congressional Consumer Justice Caucus. He also served as co-chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, which he helped build to more than 100 members.
Before being elected to Congress, Attorney General Ellison served four years in the Minnesota House of Representatives. Prior to entering elective office, he spent 16 years as an attorney specializing in civil-rights and defense law, including five years as executive director of the Legal Rights Center. As the leader of this public-interest law firm, he oversaw a team of attorneys focused on delivering justice for Minnesotans who had nowhere else to turn. He was also a noted community activist.
Attorney General Ellison received his law degree from the University of Minnesota Law School in 1990. He is the proud father of four adult children: Isaiah, Jeremiah, Elijah, and Amirah. He is the first African American and the first Muslim American to be elected to statewide office in Minnesota.

Khalil A. Cumberbatch currently serves Chief Strategist at New Yorkers United for Justice. He previously served as Associate Vice President of Policy at the Fortune Society, a reentry organization whose goal is to build people and not prisons; as well as Manager of Trainings at JustLeadershipUSA, a national non-profit dedicated to cutting the US correctional population in half by year 2030. He is also a lecturer at Columbia University School of Social Work. In December 2014, after being held for five months in immigration detention, Khalil was one of two recipients to receive an Executive Pardon from NYS Governor Andrew Cuomo to prevent his deportation from the United States.

Kristie is the Statewide Campaign for Smart Justice Manager for the ACLU of North Carolina and is a working scholar in Mass Incarceration with a focus on the treatment of women including pregnant women in carceral facilities. Kristie holds an M.A. in Human Services Counseling: Addiction and Recovery Counseling. Having survived domestic violence, drug addiction, and long term incarceration via community corrections, she is now an advocate and activist, fighting for the rights of all marginalized and disenfranchised people.

Recently, Kristie was appointed by NC’s Governor to serve as the Chair of the Women in Incarceration Workgroup for the State Reentry Council Collaborative. Also, Kristie is currently traveling across the state of North Carolina with the Attorney General and his staff to conduct roundtables to talk about pretrial detention practices in the state. Kristie serves on the Domestic Violence Advocacy Council, the Domestic Violence Speakers Bureau, and the Domestic Violence Fatality Review team in Mecklenburg County.

Her goal is to use her educational and life experiences to convey a message of strength and hope in the community as well as a message of recovery, restoration, and redemption.

After spending 32 years in prison for a crime committed as a child...I started a support group for other former juvenile lifers about 60 days after I came home. I was actively involved working with organizations to pass positive policy change to affect others in the justice system in the state of Arkansas. Arkansas Regional Connector for Incarcerated Children's Advocacy Network (ICAN); and employee and Co-Chair of the End Solitary Campaign with DecARcerate.org. Love spending time with my mom, friends, and nature.

Lauren-Brooke Eisen is Director of the Brennan Center’s Justice Program where she focuses on improving the criminal justice process through legal reforms. Eisen specifically focuses on financial and behavioral incentives that affect the justice system and how prosecutors can play a greater role in creating a more fair and just legal system.

Previously Ms. Eisen was a Senior Program Associate at the Vera Institute of Justice in the Center on Sentencing and Corrections where she worked on policies that aimed to improve public safety while reducing prison populations. Ms. Eisen also served as an assistant district attorney in New York City where she served in the Appeals Bureau, the Criminal Court Bureau, and the Sex Crimes Special Victims Bureau where she prosecuted a wide range of misdemeanor and felony cases. Before entering law school, Ms. Eisen worked as a beat reporter for a daily newspaper in Laredo, Texas where she covered criminal justice issues. Ms. Eisen has taught an undergraduate seminar on mass incarceration at Yale, currently serves as an adjunct instructor at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice, and supervises NYU Law students who participate in the Brennan Center Public Policy Advocacy Clinic.

She holds an AB from Princeton University and a JD from the Georgetown University Law Center.

Dr. Hoffer is a cultural / medical anthropologist who does research on illegal drug use and substance use disorder. His work has informed a range of topics, including; HIV risk behaviors of drug injectors, understanding the misuse of medications, the diagnosis of substance use disorders, drug policy and community-based intervention studies. His research currently focuses on understanding, monitoring, and predicting trends in drug use, as well as studying how illicit drug markets, and drug acquisition, influences the lives of people who use drugs. In addition to his research endeavors, Dr. Hoffer has on-going collaborations with and provides technical support services to local community health care providers seeking to reduce the harms associated with drug use.

Lex Steppling has organized most of his life around issues pertaining to state violence from a criminal justice and public health lens. A native of Los Angeles, Lex is happy to be coming home after 7 years of organizing nationally to help push towards to future free from punitive punishment systems and towards a vision of healing and justice.

Lisa Foster is a retired judge and the former Director of the Office for Access to Justice at the United States Department of Justice. As a California Superior Court Judge in San Diego, where she served for ten years, Lisa presided over criminal, family and civil cases and served as the Presiding Judge of the Court’s appellate division. Her on-the-ground experience gives Lisa a unique perspective and keen understanding of the judiciary and court administration. Lisa retired from the bench and joined the Justice Department in 2015 where she led the Department’s efforts to address fines and fees. Her collaborative work across multiple Department components resulted in two DOJ convenings, millions of dollars in funding, and the development of critical advocacy tools. With Vanita Gupta, then head of the Civil Rights Division, Lisa wrote a ten-page “Dear Colleague” to every Chief Justice and state court administrator, addressing the legal framework that governs the enforcement of fines and fees and warning that many collection practices may violate the federal Constitution and/or statutes. She and former Assistant Attorney General Karol Mason co-authored an Advisory to juvenile courts throughout the country on the civil rights implications of imposing fines and fees in juvenile justice proceedings. Since leaving DOJ in January 2017, Lisa has traveled extensively in the United States and Canada speaking about fines and fees and other issues related to poverty and justice and working with state and local courts to address these issues.

Lisa began her legal career as a staff attorney at the Center for Law in the Public Interest in Los Angeles, after serving as a law clerk to United States District Court Judge Marianna Pfaelzer in the Southern District of California. She later became a staff attorney at the Legal Aid Foundation of Los Angeles, the Executive Director of California Common Cause, and was Of Counsel to the law firm of Phillips & Cohen, representing whistleblowers under the federal and California False Claims Acts. Lisa also taught courses in sex discrimination, federal courts and election law as an adjunct professor at the University of San Diego School of Law.

Lisa received a B.A. in American Studies from Stanford University and a J.D., magna cum laude, from Harvard Law School.

Louise Vincent is Director of the NC Survivors Union in North Carolina, USA and on the Leadership Team of the National Drug User Union, an organization of former and active drug users who have come together to provide services for a community that is under-represented and underserved. She has first-hand knowledge of the communities that sell and use drugs and works to educate this community regarding harm reduction. Louise is passionate about the need for drug user networks and unions to engage with policymakers at state and national levels to correct misconceptions about people who use drugs (PWUD). She provides valuable insight on policies that both help and hinder engagement and retention of PWUD in harm reduction services and the impact that inequity of services between states has on this community. In particular, Louise provides advice and insights on effective models of care and the role community organizations and community services have in achieving HCV elimination while maintaining the rights, dignity, and lives of PWUD.

Lucy Lang is Executive Director of the Institute for Innovation in Prosecution, a think tank for prosecutors and communities across the country. Lucy writes and speaks widely on prosecution and criminal legal reform, and teaches those issues in New York State prisons. She previously served as an Assistant District Attorney in Manhattan for 12 years, where she investigated and prosecuted violent street crime and homicides, and most recently served as Special Counsel for Policy and Projects and Executive Director of the Manhattan D.A. Academy, a resource for professionals working at the intersection of law and public policy. Lucy is a graduate of Swarthmore College, where she serves on the Board of Managers, and Columbia Law School, where she serves as a Lecturer-in-Law. Lucy was named a 2015 Rising Star by the New York Law Journal, was a 2017 Presidential Leadership Scholar, and is a 2019 Aspen Society Fellow.

Mary Enoch Elizabeth Baxter, also known by her hip-hop name “Isis Tha Saviour,” is a Philadelphia artist who creates socially conscious music through an autobiographical lens. Ms. Baxter is an art and design graduate of the Community College of Philadelphia who recently received her second degree in behavioral health. She is a single mother, entrepreneur, and, prison reform advocate.

Although it's been a decade since her release from a Pennsylvania prison, Mary's time spent on the inside continues to shape the direction of her music and film work. Her entertaining but poignant works offer a critical perspective on the particular challenges women of color face when they become immersed in the criminal justice system.

In 2017, Mary’s lyrically raw and unflinching examination of giving birth while shackled in prison earned her a “Right of Return” fellowship for formerly incarcerated artists. She has since partnered with Van Jones’s Cut50 and Senator Cory Booker, Elizabeth Warren, Kamala Harris, and Dick Durbin to support the national “Dignity for Incarcerated Women Act,” seeking to end the shackling of pregnant women while incarcerated. Mary has also spoken at numerous universities across the country, most recently at Harvard University’s Center for Bioethics.

Merisa Heu-Weller serves as the Chief of Staff in the Technology and Corporate Responsibility (TCR) group at Microsoft and leads the company's Criminal Justice Reform Initiative. Tech and Corporate Responsibility plays a vital role in helping Microsoft realize their mission by applying advanced technology to address critical societal issues such as accessibility, environmental sustainability, rural broadband connectivity, and responsible AI. Prior to her current role, Merisa worked as an Attorney in the Employment Law Group. Before Microsoft, Merisa clerked at the Washington State Supreme Court for the Honorable Mary Fairhurst followed by an employment litigation practice at Davis Wright Tremaine. Outside of work, she serves as a Trustee for Bellevue College. She holds a JD from the University of Washington and BA from Stanford University.

Actor and activist Michael K. Williams has partnered with NYC Together to support young people and promote policing reform and community-led public safety initiatives in Brooklyn. The Emmy-nominated actor is perhaps best known for his role as Omar on HBO's The Wire. Don't miss recent partnership with HBO and Vice News on "Raised in the System" where he explores the roots of mass incarceration, the juvenile justice system, and the school to prison pipeline.

Michael Skolnik was recently profiled in the NY Times and identified as "the man you go to if you want to leverage the power of celebrity and the reach of digital media to soften the ground for social change." But, besides all of that, he is most proud to be the father of Mateo Ali, a rambunctious five year old.

In his day job, he is the co-founder and partner of The Soze Agency, a social impact agency that partners with companies, non-profits, foundations and movements to create campaigns that uplift compassion, authenticity and equity. The Soze Agency is a worker’s owned cooperative.

As a Senior Planner in Vera’s California Office, Michelle works with community and government to support Los Angeles County’s efforts to expand alternatives to incarceration, diversion, and community-based systems of care. Michelle started her legal career as a public defender at The Bronx Defenders, focused on holistic representation for clients with serious mental health conditions through an Equal Justice Works Fellowship. In 2013, Michelle joined Immigrant Defense Project in New York City where she advocated on behalf of people caught at the intersection of the criminal legal and immigration systems. There, she ran a legal hotline, supported campaigns, and developed trainings and resources for community members, advocates and lawyers. Michelle joined Vera in 2018 as a senior program associate in the National Qualified Representative Program (NQRP), providing support and technical assistance to government-funded counsel appointed to represent individuals deemed mentally incompetent to represent themselves in immigration proceedings. Michelle is a graduate of Princeton University and Stanford Law School.

Mitchell Jackson (New York, New York) is a writer whose work brilliantly interrogates the connection race and class have to criminal justice. Incarcerated for 16 months as a young person, Mitchell now holds an MFA from NYU in Creative Writing and an MA in Writing from Portland State. He has taught college courses since 2002 and is the recipient of dozens of awards, honors and distinctions throughout his career. Inspired to challenge the myth of black men as dangerous by the Black Lives Matter Movement, Mitchell’s project is a historical novel — currently titled John of Watts — about the Ecclesia Sports Association, in which he’ll continue to investigate the intersectional themes of race, class, masculinity, and criminal justice. Mitchell plans to finish and publish his book within the year, and will be organizing accompanying readings and programming surrounding the launch of his book. We are planning to coordinate with him on potential partnering organizations across the country.

Senior Vice President for MomsRising.org, Monifa Bandele has more than a decade of experience in policy analysis, communications, civic engagement organizing, and project management working with groups like the Brennan Center for Justice, Peoples Hurricane Relief Fund, and the National Coalition on Black Civic Participation.

At MomsRising.org she manages the health kids and maternal justice campaigns, helping to successfully increase children's access to healthy food, stem junk food marketing, and end the school-to-prison pipeline. Through maternal justice, she is working to end the rising tide of maternal mortality in the United States. During her tenure at the Brennan Center as national field director for the Right to Vote Campaign, the coalition successfully change laws in five state expanding the franchise to more that 250,000 formerly incarcerated people.

Finally, Monifa sits on the steering committee for Communities United for Police Reform and is an activist with the Black Lives Matter Movement. She helped launch two successful legal cases against police misconduct (Daniels v NYC and Floyd v NYC); conducted Know Your Right workshops for thousands of community members; and worked to pass landmark police reform legislation in New York City (Community Safety Act 2013).

Nicole McAfee joined the ACLU of Oklahoma in August of 2017 as the Smart Justice Campaign Manager. Nicole has a variety of organizing experience, including working on coordinated races in Colorado, running field programs in the Cherokee Nation, and working the 2016 presidential cycle in Oklahoma, Michigan, Ohio, and New York. Her campaign passions include engaging the electorate in advocacy and the electoral process, and recruiting a diverse field of candidates who are reflective of their constituencies.

Born in Austin, and raised in South Central Texas, Nicole graduated cum laude from Texas A&M University in 2011 with degrees in International Studies and French. Though her focus had long been foreign policy, Nicole felt compelled to do the work closest to home where folks’ basic civil liberties as stake. Nicole continues to be motivated by her passion for voter access and engagement, meaningful criminal legal reform, and working to elect officials who serve the interests of their constituents. Nicole hopes one day Oklahoma will lead the nation not in incarceration rate, but in solution-oriented work towards building a justice system that is truly restorative and equitable for all.

Nicole D. Porter manages The Sentencing Project’s state and local advocacy efforts on sentencing reform, voting rights, and eliminating racial disparities in the criminal justice system. Her advocacy has supported criminal justice reforms in several states including Kentucky, Missouri, and California. Porter was named a "New Civil Rights Leader" by Essence Magazine for her work to eliminate mass incarceration.

Since joining The Sentencing Project in 2009, Porter's work has been cited in several major media outlets including the New York Times, Washington Post, and National Public Radio. She has given a number of talks on state sentencing policy, collateral consequences, and racial disparity to various audiences including the League of Women Voters, NAACP, and the United Methodist Women's Assembly.

Porter is the former director of the Texas ACLU’s Prison & Jail Accountability Project (PJAP). PJAP’s mission was to monitor the conditions of confinement in state jails and prisons. Porter advocated in the Texas legislature to promote felony enfranchisement reforms, to eliminate prison rape, and improve prison medical care. Porter received her undergraduate degree from Johns Hopkins University and a Master of Public Affairs from the University of Texas at Austin. Her master’s thesis addressed exploring self employment among formerly incarcerated African Americans. She also studied African Politics at the University of Ghana, West Africa.

Professor Butler researches and teaches in the areas of criminal law, race relations law, and critical theory. His scholarship has been published in many leading scholarly journals, including the Yale Law Journal, the Harvard Law Review (two articles), the Stanford Law Review and the UCLA Law Review (three articles). He is the author of the widely reviewed “Let’s Get Free: A Hip-Hop Theory of Justice,” which received the Harry Chapin Media award.

Professor Butler is one of the nation’s most frequently consulted scholars on issues of race and criminal justice. His scholarship has been the subject of much attention in the academic and popular media. His work has been profiled on 60 Minutes, Nightline, and The ABC, CBS and NBC Evening News, among other places. Professor Butler has written a column for The Legal Times and has published numerous op-ed articles and book reviews, including in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times, and The Daily Beast. He lectures regularly for the American Bar Association and the NAACP, and at universities and community organizations. Professor Butler has been awarded the Soros Justice Fellowship. He was elected to the American Law Institute in 2003.

Read more at: https://www.law.georgetown.edu/faculty/paul-butler/

Radley Balko blogs and reports on criminal justice, the drug war and civil liberties for The Washington Post. He was previously a senior writer and investigative reporter at the Huffington Post, and a reporter and senior editor for Reason magazine. He is author of the books "Rise of the Warrior Cop: The Militarization of America's Police Forces" and "The Cadaver King and the Country Dentist: A True Story of Injustice in the American South" (co-authored with Tucker Carrington). His work has been cited by the U.S. Supreme Court, the Mississippi Supreme Court and two federal appeals courts. He also occasionally writes about the music and culture of Nashville, where he lives.

"Rashad Robinson is the President of Color Of Change, a leading racial justice organization driven by more than 1.7 million members who are building power for Black communities. Color Of Change uses innovative strategies to bring about system change in the industries that affect Black people’s lives: Silicon Valley, Wall Street, Hollywood, Washington, corporate board rooms, local prosecutor offices, state capitol buildings and city halls around the country. Under Rashad’s leadership, Color Of Change designs and implements winning strategies for racial justice, among them: forcing corporations to stop supporting Trump initiatives and white nationalists; winning net neutrality as a civil rights issue; holding local prosecutors accountable to end mass incarceration, police violence and financial exploitation across the justice system; forcing over 100 corporations to abandon ALEC, the right-wing policy shop; changing representations of race and racism in Hollywood; moving Airbnb, Google and Facebook to implement anti-racist initiatives; and forcing Bill O’Reilly off the air.

Rashad is widely consulted on strategies for corporate accountability, transforming the criminal justice system, media and tech reform, culture change and narrative infrastructure, and building Black political power. He is a sought-after keynote speaker at events across the country, and appears regularly as a quoted source, interview guest and opinion writer in major media. In addition to media appearances, Rashad has been profiled by The New York Times, Wired, The Root, The Washington Post, The Chronicle of Philanthropy, Fast Company, The Huffington Post, PBS, BET and several other outlets. Color Of Change has been named three times in Fast Company’s Most Innovative Companies list—in 2015, 2018 and 2020—and was profiled by the Stanford Social Innovation Review. Rashad is the proud recipient of awards from organizations as varied as ADCOLOR, the United Church of Christ, and the Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial Foundation and Demos. Rashad was a member of the inaugural cohort of Atlantic Fellows for Racial Equity, and serves on the board of the Hazen Foundation. Previously, Rashad served as Senior Director of Media Programs at GLAAD."

Rebecca Vallas is a senior fellow at American Progress, where she has spent the past five years helping to build and lead CAP’s Poverty to Prosperity Program in a range of roles including as the program’s managing director and vice president—and along the way, helping to launch the organization’s criminal justice reform and disability justice work. In partnership with legal aid leaders, Vallas co-developed the clean slate model of automated criminal record-clearing that became law in Pennsylvania in 2018 and is now spreading to states across the United States, enabling millions of justice-involved individuals to move on with their lives and have a fair shot at jobs and housing. Forever a legal aid lawyer at heart, prior to joining American Progress, Vallas spent several years representing low-income individuals and families at Community Legal Services in Philadelphia, where she began her work as a Skadden Fellow.

A noted speaker and frequent commentator on poverty issues, Vallas has appeared on MSNBC, CNN, CNBC, C-SPAN, Fox News, PBS, Al-Jazeera America, and NPR, as well as several local television and radio outlets, and she is frequently quoted in national and local media. She also hosts “Off-Kilter,” a nationally distributed radio show and podcast about poverty and inequality. Vallas has authored a wide range of briefs and articles on poverty, income security, disability, and criminal justice/reentry policy, and she regularly testifies before Congress. She serves on the board of the National Academy of Social Insurance and was the inaugural recipient of the National Legal Aid and Defender Association’s New Leaders in Advocacy Award. She was twice named to Forbes Magazine’s “30 Under 30” for Law and Policy as well as Emory University’s “40 Under 40.”

Vallas received her law degree from the University of Virginia, where she was elected to the Order of the Coif and named the recipient of the Margaret G. Hyde Award and the Mortimer Caplin Public Service Award. She graduated summa cum laude from Emory University, where she received a bachelor’s degree in psychology and was elected to the Phi Beta Kappa Society. In a past life, she was an operatically trained mezzo soprano.

Richard Paul Morales, serves as the Deputy Executive Director of the Latino Coalition for Community Leadership (LCCL). The LCCL is a non-profit organization that provides funding, technical assistance and capacity building to leverage the strengths of small, local non-profit organizations serving communities of color. This is accomplished by providing robust organizational fiscal and data infrastructure, individualized organizational development, collaboration, and effective advocacy. The LCCL has been the subject of various evaluations and case studies highlighting its model and approach that leads to strong performance and outcomes. In addition to performance, strong fiscal accounting practices ensure good stewardship and return on investment. To date, the LCCL has received over $39 million in federal and state funding to serve organizations with a focus on reentry strategies. Mr. Morales has a strong belief in the ability of communities to create solutions to local issues when resources, expertise, collaboration and accountability are present. Mr. Morales holds a Masters Degree in Management and a B.A. in Social and Behavioral Sciences with minors in philosophy and history.

Robert Rooks is one of the premier criminal justice campaign operatives in the country. His work in the political and legislative arena over the past two decades has achieved landmark wins in criminal justice reform. Robert is co-founder and Vice President of Alliance for Safety and Justice (ASJ), where he leads state-based advocacy strategies and campaigns across the nation.In 2019, Robert established the Campaign Academy for Safety and Justice as a place for justice reformers, especially people of color and those directly impacted by crime and/or incarceration, to develop campaigning skills at the highest level. Grounded in his personal experience of growing up in a community impacted by violence, his work to create trauma recovery centers for victims of violent crime has led to the opening of these centers across the country. Through his work with Crime Survivors for Safety and Justice (CSSJ), Robert has helped to build a powerful constituency of crime survivors nationwide who are creating healing communities to advocate for policies that prevent crime and better support survivors. Previously, Robert was the Organizing Director for Californians for Safety and Justice. Robert previously served as the Criminal Justice Director for the NAACP. Robert also served as an adjunct professor at the University of Connecticut School of Social Work and St. Joseph’s College, and at Central Connecticut State University. Robert and his wife reside in California and are raising three young boys

Ronald L. Davis is currently a Visiting Senior Fellow at the Harvard Law School Criminal Justice Policy Program and a Principal Consultant at 21st Century Policing Solutions, LLC. Mr. Davis previously served as the Director of the United States Department of Justice (DOJ), Office of Community Oriented Policing Services (COPS Office) from 2013 to 2017. As Director, Mr. Davis was appointed by President Obama as the Executive Director of the President’s Task Force on 21^st Century Policing which produced a final report on concrete recommendations to improve community trust in the police while enhancing public safety.

Prior to serving as COPS Director, Davis had a distinguished career in law enforcement serving over 8 years as Chief of Police of East Palo Alto (CA) and 20 years with the Oakland (CA) Police Department. Davis was recognized for his innovative community policing efforts and for working collaboratively with the community to dramatically reduce crime and violence in a city once named as the murder capital of the United States.

Davis is the co-author of the publications, Race and Policing: An Agenda for Action”, Exploring the Role of the Police in Prisoner Reentry, and the DOJ publication, How to Correctly Collect and Analyze Racial Profiling Data: Your Reputation Depends on It. Davis’ areas of focus and interest are 21st-century policing strategies with an emphasis on policing and technology.

Russell Craig is an accomplished painter and Philadelphia native whose work combines portraiture with deeply social and political themes. A self-taught artist who survived nearly a decade of incarceration after growing up in the foster care system, Craig creates art as a means to explore the experience of overcriminalized communities and reassert agency after a lifetime
of institutional control. His work has been shown at Rutgers University, the Truth to Power exhibition during the Democratic National Convention, and State Goods: Art in the Era of Mass Incarceration at Columbia University, among other venues. His work has garnered coverage in outlets including the Philadelphia Inquirer, The Washington Post, Artsy, The Guardian, and The
New York Times. Craig is a lead artist with the Mural Arts Philadelphia’s Restorative Justice Guild program, a 2017 Right of Return fellow, and a 2018 Ford Foundation: Art for Justice fellow.

Sakira Cook is director of the justice reform program of The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights and The Leadership Conference Education Fund. The Leadership Conference is a coalition charged by its diverse membership of more than 200 national organizations to promote and protect the civil and human rights of all persons in the United States. At The Leadership Conference and The Education Fund, Cook leads the development of the justice reform programs policy agenda and coordinates the programs communications, organizing, and policy advocacy strategies for a broad coalition of civil and human rights groups. The justice reform program works to advance transformative policy solutions that eliminate structural inequity, racism, and injustice at every stage of the criminal legal system – from policing and pretrial justice, to sentencing and incarceration, to reentry.

Cook is also engaged in human rights advocacy at the United Nations and with the federal government, including promoting the U.S. ratification of important human rights treaties, monitoring domestic implementation of U.S. human rights commitments under the Universal Periodic Review, Convention on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination and International Covenant on Civil Politial Rights, and advancing the established goals and outcomes of the International Decade for People of African Descent.

Prior to joining The Leadership Conference and The Education Fund, Cook served as a legal and research fellow at the Open Society Policy Center, focusing on criminal, civil, and racial justice reform. Cook attended Howard University where she earned a B.A. in International Business and Management, and Wayne State University Law School where she earned her J.D.

Committed mentor for violence-prone youth in what was once one of the top ten most dangerous cities in the country, Sam Vaughn serves as a Neighborhood Change Agent for Richmond, California’s Office of Neighborhood Safety (ONS). His experiences being mentored by elders while incarcerated for a decade inspired him to become a community leader and help other young men avoid his fate. Believing that violent youth will make better choices for themselves and their communities when able to visualize a healthier path and given life skills, the ONS fellowship program serves as surrogate family for these young men. Over 80% of the ONS fellows have stayed away from gun violence and now live with much more hope and promise. Meanwhile, Richmond’s homicide rate has plummeted. Sam recently collaborated with the ONS to publish their first children's book, Be A Change Agent For Your Community, a gun violence prevention book.

Samantha Buckingham is the Director of the Juvenile Justice Clinic at the Center for Juvenile Law and Policy. She teaches courses associated with the year-long clinic and supervises students who represent juvenile clients in delinquency courts in Los Angeles. In addition to her work in the clinic, Professor Buckingham teaches classes available to all students at Loyola Law School.

Prior to joining the faculty at Loyola Law School in 2008, Buckingham advocated on behalf of indigent clients for five years as a trial attorney at the Public Defender Service for the District of Columbia. At PDS, she represented adults and children charged as adults in criminal court with serious felonies, including homicides. She also represented children facing delinquency adjudications in family court. As a law student, Buckingham clerked for Legal Services for Children and the Federal Public Defender, both located in San Francisco. Prior to that, she taught high school at the Maya Angelou School, a Washington D.C. charter high school for adjudicated and at-risk youth.

Buckingham serves as teaching faculty for the Trial Advocacy Workshop at Harvard Law School. Buckingham has also trained public defenders nationally through her work with the Gideon's Promise and the National Juvenile Defender Center. Additionally, Professor Buckingham is a member of the Training Committee of the Pacific Juvenile Defender Center.

Read more at Loyola's website.

Samuel Sinyangwe (@samswey), 29, is a policy analyst and data scientist who works with communities of color to fight systemic racism through cutting-edge policies and strategies. Samuel co-founded Mapping Police Violence to support activists across the country to collect and use data to fight police violence and co-founded Campaign Zero to advocate for local, state, and federal policy solutions to end police violence. Samuel has been featured on MSNBC, CNN, BBC, LA Times, the Forbes 30 under 30 and The Root 100. Previously, Samuel worked at PolicyLink to support a national network of 61 Promise Neighborhoods communities to build cradle-to-career systems of support for low-income families. He grew up in Orlando, FL and graduated from Stanford University in 2012, where he studied how race and racism impact the U.S. political system. sam@thisisthemovement.org

Sandra is a program associate with Vera’s Greater Justice New York initiative, which seeks to end mass incarceration in New York State and create a fairer and more just system. Her research includes landscape analyses of pretrial justice across New York State counties, the institution of court-imposed fines and fees, and the development of sentencing laws. Sandra’s focus on socioeconomic justice has informed her work with Vera’s Bail Assessment Pilot and research regarding revenue intake within New York State’s town and village courts. Beyond research and program development, Sandra provides strategic assistance to counties who have committed to reducing their incarcerated population.

While in social work school, Sandra interned with Vera, at the Legal Aid Society as a forensic social worker, and with the New York City Department of Corrections as a social services counselor. Her graduate studies focused on contemporary social issues and policy practice.

Sandra’s commitment to social justice arose from her experience living on a transitional farm-home, where she was a house manager for people recently released from prison. Before social work school, Sandra was a clinical supervisor for a recovery program within Massachusetts state prisons. She is a licensed social worker with a Master’s of social work from Columbia University and a Bachelor of Arts in psychology from College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, Massachusetts.

Sanho Tree is a Fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies and has been Director of its Drug Policy Project since 1998. A former military and diplomatic historian, his current work encompasses the reform of both international and domestic drug policies by promoting alternatives to the failed prohibitionist model. In recent years the project has focused on ending the damage caused by the drug wars in Colombia, Bolivia, Mexico, Afghanistan, and the Philippines. Establishing humane and sustainable alternatives to the drug war fits into the IPS mandate as one of the major contemporary social justice issues at home and abroad.

He has been featured in more than a dozen documentaries and frequently lectures at universities and conferences around the world. He previously collaborated with Dr. Gar Alperovitz on The Decision to Use the Atomic Bomb and the Architecture of an American Myth (Knopf, 1995). He was also associate editor of CovertAction Quarterly, an award-winning magazine of investigative journalism, and worked at the International Human Rights Law Group in the late 1980s. Currently, he serves on the board of the Andean Information Network.

Sarah George is the Chittenden County State’s Attorney, located in Burlington Vermont. She is a generational Vermonter with a Bachelors Degree in Criminal Justice and Psychology from the University of Connecticut, a Masters Degree in Forensic Psychology from Castleton State College, and a Criminal Law Degree from Vermont Law School. For over six years, Sarah was a Deputy State's Attorney in the Chittenden County State's Attorney's Office, and in January 2017, Sarah was appointed by Governor Phil Scott to be the Chittenden County State's Attorney, eventually formally elected by her constituents in November 2018.

Chittenden County houses nearly one third of Vermont’s population, is the most diverse county in the State, and prides themselves on their progressive approach to public safety efforts.

Sarah is the second woman in Vermont history to serve in this role, and since being State’s Attorney, Sarah has focused on ways to reform the criminal justice system by finding innovative ways to serve our community. Sarah is dedicated to providing opportunity, intervention and holistic support to victims, families and defendants; holding individuals accountable, and implementing smart strategies and innovations that promote safe, healthy, and strong communities.

Since 2000, Shari Silberstein has dedicated her career to transforming the justice system from one that harms to one that heals. Under her leadership, and using campaign strategies she helped develop, Equal Justice USA has helped end the death penalty in nine states, built first-of-its-kind conservative and evangelical coalitions for justice reform, secured millions in state funding for healing services to families of murder victims, launched an innovative model for training and dialogue between police and communities on trauma and race equity, and strengthened dozens of local organizations across the nation working for justice, violence reduction, and healing. Shari has been a national voice in helping to break down the silos between criminal justice reformers and crime survivor advocates. Her expertise has been a source in the New York Times, the Washington Post, the New Yorker, and Harper’s Magazine, and she has written op-eds for an array of media outlets, including Fox News, the Marshall Project, and U.S. News and World Report. Shari has a bachelor's degree in film from New York University and a master's degree in Middle Eastern studies from the University of Texas at Austin.

Sheena Meade transforms pain to purpose to policy to power. Prior to joining the Clean Slate Initiative as its first Managing Director, Sheena served in a variety of leadership roles focused on building long-term, sustainable change for communities.

Most recently, Sheena served as a Criminal Justice Program Officer at Galaxy Gives, a philanthropic investment organization, where she advised grantees and helped develop and lead a Criminal Justice Fellowship program to help grantees hone professional skills to build stronger, more impactful organizations.

As Director of Strategic Partnerships at Florida Rights Restoration Coalition (FRRC) and as Senior Advisor to the Second Chances Florida Campaign, Sheena developed the basic blueprints for fundraising, events and grassroots organizing that helped win a landmark referendum to restore for voting rights to 1.4 million disenfranchised people. Over the past two years, Sheena has also managed and led the implementation of large-scale voter outreach programs, spearheaded FRRC’s advocacy program and events, and trained hundreds of new activists to educate their communities and engage their neighbors on criminal justice reform issues.

Read more at CleanSlateInitiative.org

On February 10, 2015, Stephanie Morales was the first woman to be elected Commonwealth’s Attorney in Portsmouth, VA after which, she immediately created sustainable programming aimed at transforming the criminal legal system. She was re-elected in November of 2017 and has now served for five years. She has committed her office to correcting the wrongs to members of the community by the system and on ensuring the community is safe and procedurally just.

Three months into CA Morales’ first term an officer in her city killed an unarmed teen. CA Morales secured an indictment and led the prosecution at jury trial herself, leading to a voluntary manslaughter conviction of the officer, and resulting in police accountability in her city.

One month after taking office in 2015, CA Morales formed her “Ctrl+Alt+Del Program” under which she has held dialogue and taught effective re-entry strategies in seminars held in the community and inside state prisons to restore voting rights and help with employment and improved quality of life.

Commonwealth’s Attorney Morales has mentored over 200 students under her program called the “Future Leaders Initiative” which was established in March of 2015. Under this program young people from elementary school all the way through law school are afforded the opportunity to shadow, intern or fellow in the office after which they earn the title of “Junior Commonwealth’s Attorney.” This program was formed not only to connect to the youth of the community and embrace them but to develop the future leaders of the criminal legal system who will fight to ensure the members of their communities are treated fairly and with dignity in the future. To further extend youth engagement and to keep students poised for academic success and success in life, Commonwealth’s Attorney Morales and her team formed the “Social Media by the Statutes” program where her team enters the public schools and engages students with scenarios that teach them how their behaviors online and through technology can affect them legally and permanently.

Commonwealth’s Attorney Morales strives to advocate daily for those who can’t fight for themselves including working to address our mental health crisis in the criminal legal system, to disrupt implicit bias in prosecution and policing and in the areas of marijuana prosecution reform and other legislative reform. She works daily to ensure the community is engaged with her office and constantly informed on what is happening in the justice system.

Commonwealth’s Attorney Stephanie Morales is a member of Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, Inc., the Links, Inc., an appointee to the Virginia State Child Fatality Review Team and is a national board member of the Local Progress Organization. Most importantly she is a fierce advocate for justice and a wife and mother of four children. She is proud to work for the community where she was born and raised as a true public servant.

Steven “Flow” Pacheco is a self-proclaimed Renaissance Man. He is an entrepreneur, community organizer, philanthropist, creative, writer, and advocate. Flow is a man of “the culture” and focuswas on empowering the Black community through edutainment, politics, and cooperative economics. You can find his appearances and/or contributions on platforms such as Philanthropy NY, Affinity Magazine, HuffPost, BK Live (BRIC TV), the TODAY Show, and Grapevine TV.

Susan Chira is editor-in-chief of The Marshall Project. Chira worked for The New York Times from 1981 to 2019 as a reporter and editor, including posts as foreign editor and deputy executive editor, overseeing daily news coverage across The Times. As senior correspondent on gender issues, she was a member of the team that won the 2018 Pulitzer Prize for Public Service for coverage of sexual harassment.

Terry Schuster is an attorney and manager for the Public Safety Performance Project at the Pew Charitable Trusts. He oversees a team that provides data analysis and technical assistance to state policymakers on safely reducing jail populations. His team is currently working with state leaders in Michigan on a package of 50 bills to reduce arrests, expand pretrial release, and adopt misdemeanor and felony sentencing reforms. He has also staffed and led Justice Reinvestment Initiatives in Utah, Alaska, and Louisiana.

Theshia Naidoo is Managing Director of Criminal Justice Law and Policy with the Drug Policy Alliance and an expert and strategist in the area of criminal justice reform as it relates to drug policy. In her role as an attorney and as a member of the San Francisco Sentencing Commission, Naidoo has pushed for the creation and adoption of innovative criminal justice reforms, including playing a pivotal role in the advancement and implementation of Law Enforcement Assisted Diversion (LEAD) in a number of jurisdictions across the country.

Naidoo drafts criminal justice reform legislation across the country related to areas such as reducing criminal penalties for drug offenses, protecting immigrants from deportation based on drug offenses, asset forfeiture reform, and minimizing the collateral consequences of criminal convictions. Naidoo’s work also focuses on ballot initiatives, including playing a key role in the drafting of California’s Proposition 5 (the Non-Violent Offenders Rehabilitation Act of 2008), Colorado’s Amendment 64, which legalized marijuana in 2012, and California’s Proposition 47 (the Safe Neighborhoods and Schools Act of 2014), which reduced numerous felony offenses to misdemeanors.

Naidoo presents regularly on drug policy reform issues across the country and internationally, including presenting at a White House convening on LEAD. She has testified before state legislatures and other government bodies on criminal justice reform and drug policy and often serves as a guest speaker at law schools, universities and other institutions.

Naidoo received her B.A. in political science from the University of California Berkeley and she received her J.D. from the UCLA School of Law. Prior to joining DPA, she worked in private legal practice for four years representing clients in employment law and commercial litigation matters. She left private practice to join the struggle to make drug laws and policies more just, more compassionate, and more effective.

Vanita Gupta is an experienced leader and litigator who has devoted her entire career to civil rights work. Most recently, from October 15, 2014, to January 20, 2017, she served as Acting Assistant Attorney General and Head of the U.S. Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division. Appointed by President Barack Obama as the chief civil rights prosecutor for the United States, Gupta oversaw a wide range of criminal and civil enforcement efforts to ensure equal justice and protect equal opportunity for all during one of the most consequential periods for the division.

Under Gupta’s leadership, the division did critical work in a number of areas, including advancing constitutional policing and criminal justice reform; prosecuting hate crimes and human trafficking; promoting disability rights; protecting the rights of LGBTQ individuals; ensuring voting rights for all; and combating discrimination in education, housing, employment, lending, and religious exercise. She regularly engaged with a broad range of stakeholders in the course of this work.

Selected high profile matters during her tenure included the investigations of the Ferguson, Baltimore, and Chicago police departments; the appeals of the Texas and North Carolina voter ID cases; the challenge to North Carolina’s HB2 law and other transgender rights litigation; enforcement of education, land use, hate crimes, and other statutes to combat Islamophobia and other forms of religious discrimination; the issuance of statements of interest on bail and indigent defense reform, and letters to state and local court judges and administrators on the unlawful imposition of fines and fees in criminal justice system; and the Administration’s report on solitary confinement.

Prior to joining the Justice Department, Gupta served as Deputy Legal Director and the Director of the Center for Justice at the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). She joined the ACLU in 2006 as a staff attorney, where she subsequently secured a landmark settlement on behalf of immigrant children from around the world detained in a privately-run prison in Texas that ultimately led to the end of “family detention” at the facility. In addition to managing a robust litigation docket at the ACLU, Gupta created and led the organization’s Smart Justice Campaign aimed at ending mass incarceration while keeping communities safe. She worked with law enforcement agencies, corrections officials, advocates, stakeholders, and elected officials across the political spectrum to build collaborative support for pretrial, drug, and sentencing policies that make our federal, state, and local criminal justice systems more effective and more just.

Gupta began her legal career as an attorney at the NAACP Legal Defense & Educational Fund, where she successfully led the effort to overturn the wrongful drug convictions of 38 individuals in Tulia, Texas, who were ultimately pardoned by Governor Rick Perry. She then helped negotiate a $6 million settlement on behalf of her clients. She also consulted with European civil society organizations working to advance the rights of the Roma.

Gupta graduated magna cum laude from Yale University and received her law degree from New York University School of Law, where later she taught a civil rights litigation clinic for several years.

She is married to Chinh Q. Le, legal director of the Legal Aid Society of the District of Columbia, and has two young sons.

Vincent Schiraldi is a Senior Research Scientist at the Columbia School of Social Work and co-Director of the Columbia Justice Lab. He has extensive experience in public life, founding the policy think tank, the Justice Policy Institute, then moving to government as director of the juvenile corrections in Washington DC, as Commissioner of the New York City Department of Probation, and Senior Policy Adviser to the NYC Mayor's Office of Criminal Justice. Schiraldi gained a national reputation as a fearless reformer who emphasized the humane and decent treatment of the men, women, and children under his correctional supervision. He pioneered efforts at community-based alternatives to incarceration in NYC and Washington DC. Schiraldi received a MSW from New York University, and a Bachelor of Arts from Binghamton University.

The Reverend Vivian Nixon is executive director of College and Community Fellowship (CCF), a New York–based organization committed to removing barriers to higher education for women with criminal-record histories and their families, and the co-editor (with Daryl Atkinson) of What We Know: Solutions from Our Experiences in the Justice System (The New Press).

On January 24, 2017, Xavier Becerra was sworn in as the 33rd Attorney General of the State of California, and is the first Latino to hold the office in the history of the state.

The State’s chief law enforcement officer, Attorney General Becerra has decades of experience serving the people of California through appointed and elected office, where he has fought for working families, the vitality of the Social Security and Medicare programs and issues to combat poverty among the hardworking families. He has also championed the state’s economy by promoting and addressing issues impacting job generating industries such as health care, clean energy, technology, and entertainment.

Attorney General Becerra previously served 12 terms in Congress as a member of the U.S. House of Representatives. While in Congress, Attorney General Becerra was the first Latino to serve as a member of the powerful Committee on Ways And Means, served as Chairman of the House Democratic Caucus, and was Ranking Member of the Ways and Means Subcommittee on Social Security.

Prior to serving in Congress, Attorney General Becerra served one term in the California Legislature as the representative of the 59th Assembly District in Los Angeles County. He is a former Deputy Attorney General with the California Department of Justice. The Attorney General began his legal career in 1984 working in a legal services office representing the mentally ill.

Born in Sacramento, California, Attorney General Becerra is the son of working-class parents and was the first in his family to receive a four-year degree, earning his Bachelor of Arts in Economics from Stanford University. He earned his Juris Doctorate from Stanford Law School. His mother was born in Jalisco, Mexico and immigrated to the United States after marrying his father. He is married to Dr. Carolina Reyes, and they are the proud parents of three daughters: Clarisa, Olivia and Natalia.

Zoë Towns is the Senior Director for Criminal Justice Reform at FWD.us, a bipartisan political advocacy organization committed to safely and significantly driving down America's incarceration rate. Zoë and her team work in coalition with policymakers and constituencies across the political spectrum to advance sentencing, parole, and pretrial reforms that deliver more freedom, opportunity, and fairness.
Before joining FWD.us, Zoë was the Criminal Justice Project Director at the Pew Charitable Trusts where she collaborated with state leaders, administrators, practitioners and advocates on legislative reforms in Mississippi, Oregon, Utah, Louisiana, and elsewhere. Earlier in her career, Zoë helped launch and run The Bronx Freedom Fund, a nonprofit bail fund in the South Bronx. Zoë has a B.A. in ethnic studies and creative writing from Columbia University and a Master’s in criminal justice policy from Kings College London where she was a Fulbright Scholar.