Commitment to a mission as audacious as creating a fairer justice system takes an equally audacious team. We’re proud to have some of the most innovative, talented, and compassionate leaders guiding our organization.
By providing free bail assistance to those in need, we restore the presumption of innocence, reunite families, and gather evidence for change.
Taking money out of justice
By advocating for better policies, we seek to take money out of justice and to create a pretrial system that is more just, equitable, and humane.
The Bail Project strives for a more perfect justice system, one that works for all people no matter their race or wealth.
LEADING THE WAY
As the Chief Executive Officer, Mr. Gaspar leads the strategic planning, organizational management, programmatic development, external affairs, and fundraising activities for the organization. Mr. Gaspar joined The Bail Project as a Bail Disruptor shortly after the organization’s launch and quickly rose through the ranks to become an Operations Manager, Regional Director, and eventually the National Director of Operations. A formerly incarcerated individual directly affected by the cash bail system, Mr. Gaspar earned his GED and bachelor’s degree and studied law while in prison, won his appeal, and was released 11 years early. Building upon his direct lived experience in the criminal justice system and fulfilling his commitment to social justice, he dedicates his spare time to efforts that help stabilize lives by mentoring young people and facilitating re-entry for people returning from incarceration. He has earned several certifications including an Offender Workforce Development Specialist certification from the National Institute of Corrections, the highest-level certification in Lean Six Sigma, and certifications in Results Based Accountability (RBA) and Trauma-Informed Community Building. Mr. Gaspar was recently selected for the Galaxy Gives Leadership program and is a graduate of JustLeadership USA’s Leading with Conviction program. A proud Mexican-American, husband, father of five, and grandfather, Mr. Gaspar’s work with The Bail Project is an embodiment of his hope for a brighter future, where better systems of justice are possible.
As the National Director of Operations, Mr. Brown leads the development and implementation of program innovation, process optimization, and operational strategy for The Bail Project’s direct services and bail out operations. Mr. Brown initially joined The Bail Project in 2021 as the Operations Manager for several sites in Illinois, Indiana, and Michigan. Before joining The Bail Project, Mr. Brown was an Operations Manager at True Brands where he implemented a work-skills development program for justice-involved employees that included leadership training and industry-recognized certifications. Mr. Brown is a NCCER-certified vocational instructor with a continued education certificate in trauma informed care.
As the Director of Community Outreach, Ms. Canales draws from her own experiences within the criminal justice system to organize local campaigns that reduce the overuse of pretrial incarceration and develop alternatives to incarceration. In 2020, she was appointed by Los Angeles County Supervisor Hahn as a Commissioner to the Los Angeles County Probation Oversight Committee, where she still serves. Ms. Canales is the co-founder of California Families Against Solitary Confinement and currently a board member at the National Religious Campaign Against Torture and at Social Workers Against Solitary Confinement. She was also a steering committee member for the Unlock The Box national campaign. In 2014, Ms. Canales was selected as a Soros Justice Fellow at the Open Society Foundations.
As the Director of Communications and Publications, Mr. Cherson directs the organization’s communications, earned media and public relations, internal communications, and publications strategies. With more than fifteen years of experience in criminal justice reform, community-based research, government operations, and research and project management, Mr. Cherson joined The Bail Project in 2020 as the Senior Policy Advisor, where he helped develop the organization’s policy team and oversaw several state and local-level advocacy campaigns. Before The Bail Project, Mr. Cherson served in several positions within the de Blasio administration at the New York City Mayor’s Office of Criminal Justice, where his work included the development of the Mayor’s Action Plan for Neighborhood Safety, a citywide community safety intervention grounded in the principles of participatory justice and where he also led the DOJ-funded Smart Defense Initiative to improve the administration and oversight of New York City’s Assigned Counsel Plan. He received a B.S. in film and television from Boston University and an M.P.A. in public and nonprofit management and policy from New York University.
As the Chief Financial Officer, Mr. Cruz is responsible for The Bail Project’s financial operations. His responsibilities include internal and external financial reporting, stewardship of The Bail Project’s donated assets, and fiscal strategy and partnerships. Mr. Cruz joined The Bail Project in 2020 with over twenty years of experience in criminal justice. Before joining The Bail Project, Mr. Cruz was Chief Operating Officer and Program Director at the Justice Management Institute, where he worked with criminal and civil courts and other justice agencies nationally and abroad to improve the administration of justice. Mr. Cruz also served as the Chief Operating Officer and Director of Strategy and Evaluation at The Bronx Defenders, where he worked for over a decade. Mr. Cruz received an A.B. in public policy from Brown University and an M.P.P. from the University of California, Berkeley.
As the Deputy Director of Human Resources, Ms. Cruz oversees The Bail Project’s hiring and payroll processes and provides leadership, management support and strategic recommendations to the department and the organization’s senior and executive staff. Prior to joining The Bail Project in 2019, Ms. Cruz held a number of people management roles in the non-profit and public sector including work with marginalized communities and individuals who have been impacted by the criminal justice system. Ms. Cruz received a B.A. in legal studies and a B.S. in business administration, both from University of California, Berkeley. She is also a SHRM-certified human resources professional.
As the Chief Impact Officer, Mr. Dudding oversees the nexus of program operations and evaluation and has helped the organization scale its work nationwide. Prior to joining The Bail Project, Mr. Dudding held several senior positions, including Chief Financial Officer, Chief Operating Officer, and Chief Impact Officer at the Center for Employment Opportunities, a nonprofit headquartered in New York City that provides employment services to individuals who have recently returned home from incarceration. In his over two decades at the Center for Employment Opportunities, Mr. Dudding helped the organization build capacity to expand nationally and deliver results for its participants. Mr. Dudding received a B.A. in economics from Macalester College, University of Missouri and a Master of Urban and Regional Planning degree from Rutgers University.
As the National Director of Policy, Ms. George is responsible for leading the development and execution of The Bail Project’s system change strategies and directs local, state and federal policy initiatives to eliminate cash bail and build a more equitable and just pretrial system. Throughout her career, Ms. George has worked on a broad array of issues including criminal legal system and drug policy reform, health equity, and environmental justice. Most recently, Ms. George served as National Campaigns Manager at the Clean Slate Initiative, where she coordinated diverse coalitions to advance legislation, build community power, and shift narratives related to record clearance policies. She previously served as the Civil Rights Campaigns Director at Citizen Action of New York, New York State Campaigns Manager at JustLeadership USA, and before that, as the Policy Coordinator at New York Lawyers for the Public Interest. Ms. George received her B.A. in psychology from the University of California at Santa Barbara and her M.A. in social work with a minor in public policy from Columbia University.
As the Director of Philanthropy at The Bail Project, Kristina Justiniano directs development and fundraising strategies to support The Bail Project’s initiatives. She brings over a decade of senior-level fundraising experience, having worked with nonprofit organizations at every stage of development. Most recently, she served as the Senior Director of Development for the College of Communication and Fine Arts and School of Film and Television at Loyola Marymount University. Prior to her philanthropic work, Ms. Justiniano held roles at leading talent agencies and oversaw business development for Magic Johnson Enterprises. She received a B.A. in international business from Augsburg University and a J.D. from George Washington University Law School.
As Chief Operating Officer, Ms. Koga coordinates the strategic, human capital and scaling priorities of the organization. She brings over fifteen years of experience in social justice, including providing direct service to low-income youth and incarcerated individuals, as well as managing over a dozen impact-focused consulting projects with nonprofits and government organizations in the U.S. and abroad. Previously, Ms. Koga led strategy at the prison education nonprofit Partakers College Behind Bars, served as a college counselor in Boston Public Schools, developed criminal justice reform policy at the White House under President Obama and was an associate consultant at a non-profit human capital management firm called AchieveMission. Ms. Koga received her B.A. in history and literature from Harvard College and her M.B.A. from the Yale School of Management.
As the Director of Program Innovation and Client Experience at The Bail Project, Ms. Levinson leads organizational efforts to identify and codify programmatic and data-related best practices, develop performance monitoring and quality assurance strategies, and incorporate direct client feedback into existing improvement efforts. Ms. Levinson has nearly a decade of experience using data to improve systems that negatively and disproportionately impact low-income and vulnerable communities, from working with small, community-based nonprofits to supporting multi-national organizations, such as the United Nations. Prior to joining The Bail Project, Ms. Levinson was Acting Chief Executive Officer of Allegheny HealthChoices, Inc., a Medicaid oversight organization committed to ensuring high quality, culturally competent care for individuals seeking mental health and substance use services in counties across Pennsylvania. Ms. Levinson received a B.A. in French language and a B.S. in economics from the University of Pittsburgh, where she was a Chancellor’s Scholar. She also received her M.S. in public policy and management, with a concentration in data analytics from Heinz College at Carnegie Mellon University.
As the Deputy Director of Policy, Ms. Zayas Manzano devises and leads policy and systems change campaign strategies, advances national pretrial reform strategic planning, and executes the day-to-day operations of the policy department. Ms. Zayas Manzano joined The Bail Project in 2021 as the Senior Policy Counsel. Before The Bail Project, Ms. Zayas Manazano spearheaded campaigns to end mass incarceration by advocating for more fair state and federal crime policies and practices federally and in states, most recently as Advocacy and Policy Counsel for the ACLU’s Campaign for Smart Justice, where she worked in states across the country to cut the number of people behind bars in half while challenging racism in the criminal legal system. Prior to joining the ACLU, Ms. Zayas Manzano served as Counsel and Senior Manager at the Brennan Center for Justice at the New York University School of Law. She received a B.A. in history from the University of Massachusetts-Amherst and a J.D. from the Fordham University School of Law.
Tawana Merriewether (she/her/hers) is a Regional Director at The Bail Project. As a Regional Director, Ms. Merriewether oversees the implementation of The Bail Project’s direct services, working to optimize site bailouts and improve access to the critical voluntary supportive services that benefit our clients, while supervising site staff, and building program capacity for sites in Atlanta, Flathead Reservation in Montana, and the National Operations team. She first joined The Bail Project in 2021 as a Client Support Specialist and has since served as a Bail Disruptor, Midwest Operations Manager, and the National Operations Manager. Ms. Merriewether earned an Associate of Applied Science Degree from Wayne County Community College District and Oakland Community College majoring in criminal justice and paralegal studies.
Cameron Pipe (he/him/his) is the Deputy Director of Operations at The Bail Project. As Deputy Director of Operations, Mr. Pipe oversees the implementation of The Bail Project’s direct service model. His work focuses on optimizing site bailouts, expanding access to voluntary supportive services for clients, and overseeing training and retention programs for managers and site staff. Mr. Pipe first joined The Bail Project in 2019 as a Bail Disruptor and has since served as Operations Manager and Regional Director. He earned his B.A. in criminal and civil law studies from the University of Oklahoma as a Gates Millennium Scholar and is a frequent panelist on criminal justice issues in his home state of Oklahoma.
As General Counsel, Ms. Poor oversees all of The Bail Project’s legal affairs and directs its Office of General Counsel. Ms. Poor initially joined The Bail Project in 2021 as a Senior Staff Attorney. Before working at The Bail Project, Ms. Poor was a staff attorney in the Office of Capital Defense Counsel at the Mississippi Office of State Public Defender where she represented indigent clients facing the death penalty across the state of Mississippi. Before moving to the South, Ms. Poor spent four years as a staff attorney within the Criminal Defense Practice at The Legal Aid Society in Brooklyn, New York, and clerked for the late Honorable Robert P. Patterson, Jr., of the Southern District of New York. Ms. Poor was also a founding member of the Mississippi Bail Fund Collective, a coalition of social workers, attorneys, and activists working to address the injustices perpetrated by Mississippi’s money bail system. Ms. Poor received her B.A. from Wesleyan University in social studies and french studies and her J.D. from New York University School of Law. She is admitted to practice in New York and Mississippi, and admitted as in-house counsel in Illinois.
As a Regional Director, Mr. Rudder oversees the implementation of the The Bail Project’s direct services, working to optimize site bailouts and improve access to the critical voluntary supportive services that benefit our clients, while supervising site staff, and building program capacity. Before joining The Bail Project, Mr. Rudder was the Director of Training at the Mississippi Office of State Public Defender where he trained and provided technical assistance to people supporting indigent defendants in Mississippi, and prior to that, Mr. Rudder was a public defender in Pascagoula, Mississippi for nine years. Throughout his career, Mr. Rudder worked to create a community of client-centered public defenders who support each other while confronting Mississippi’s culture of inhumanity and injustice. Mr. Rudder is a founding member of the Mississippi Bail Fund Collective, a past-president of the Mississippi Public Defenders Association, and the recipient of Gideon’s Promise 2013 Stephen B. Bright Public Defender Award in recognition of his efforts to improve the quality of indigent defense in the South. Mr. Rudder received his B.A. in political science from the University of Mississippi, and his J.D. from the University of Toledo College of Law.
As the Director of Human Resources, Rudloff helps staff perform the important work of advancing pretrial reform and supporting clients by leading the Human Resources department which works to ensure that everyone has the organizational resources they need, including benefits, paychecks, materials, staffing and other support. Rudloff joined The Bail Project in 2018 as the Office Manager, where she performed a significant number of human resources functions. Rudloff received her B.S. in communications from Boston University. She is a SHRM-certified human resources professional.
As the Director of Creative and Marketing, Soper oversees all aspects of The Bail Project’s marketing strategy and content development and is responsible for accelerating systems change through brand recognition and public education nationwide. Since joining the organization in 2018, she has driven web, video, and social media innovation, cultivating an in-house creative team and establishing the Creative and Marketing Department. Soper has over a decade of leadership in nonprofit strategic communications, having served as Communications Director at Dignity and Power Now and as College Campaigns Strategist for the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA). A champion for expanding access to digital assets for activists and movements, Soper founded her own company in 2016 to provide subsidized web development and creative multimedia to disadvantaged organizations. She began her advocacy career leading teams on the ground, furthering public awareness on large scale concert tours and creating institutional change at over 100 colleges and universities nationwide. Her public speaking, writing, photography, video, and web features have been featured by a wide range of outlets, including USA Today, The Los Angeles Times, and NPR.
As the Chief Data and Program Innovation Officer, Dr. Watford ensures that The Bail Project provides transparent data and innovative programs to inform and disrupt current data gaps in the criminal legal field. In this role, Dr. Watford oversees research and evaluation, data analytics and insights, data infrastructure, and program development and innovation. Before joining The Bail Project, Dr. Watford was the Senior Director of Research and Evaluation at the Youth Policy Institute, where she measured the collective impact of programs designed to empower students and families in high-poverty communities throughout Los Angeles. She teaches courses in research methodologies and program evaluation at California State University - Northridge. She received her M.A. in education and her Ph.D. in social sciences and comparative education, both from the University of California Los Angeles.
As a Regional Director, Mr. Zambrano oversees the implementation of The Bail Project’s direct services, working to optimize site bailouts and improve access to critical voluntary supportive services that benefit our clients, while supervising site staff, and building program capacity. Mr. Zambrano first joined The Bail Project in 2021 as a Program Supervisor before being promoted to Operations Manager, and then to Regional Director. Mr. Zambrano has primarily worked in the public sector throughout his career, most recently as a Community Transition Planner for Maricopa County Correctional Health Services, where he connected vulnerable and high-need citizens in custody to reentry services. Mr. Zambrano received his B.A. in psychology and criminal justice and his M.A. in criminal justice from Arizona State University. He was recently certified as a Trauma Support Specialist through the Arizona Trauma Institute.
MEET THE BOARD
We are so grateful to have a board made up of passionate experts with a variety of experiences that provide organizational oversight and governance with intentionality around values and longterm vision.
Robin Steinberg is the founder of the Bail Project and three other high-impact organizations: the Bronx Defenders, the Bronx Freedom Fund, and Still She Rises. In 2017, Steinberg launched the Bail Project, modeled on the success of the Bronx Freedom Fund, a community bail fund started by Steinberg and David Feige in 2007 to support clients of the Bronx Defenders. Prior to her tenure at the Bail Project, Steinberg founded and served as the executive director of the Bronx Defenders, a nationally-recognized public defender office known for its pioneering work on holistic defense, which refers to a client-centered and community-based model of legal representation that seeks to address both the underlying causes and collateral impacts of criminal justice involvement. In 2016, Steinberg launched Still She Rises in Oklahoma, which is the first public defender office in the nation dedicated to the representation of mothers in the criminal justice system. Steinberg received her B.A. from UC Berkeley and J.D. from New York University School of Law. She has taught trial advocacy and other courses at Harvard, Columbia, Seton Hall and elsewhere. She has been recognized with the Impact Award by the New York Law Journal, the Service of Justice Award by New York State Defenders Association, and Alumna of the Year by New York University School of Law among other notable achievements. Her publications have appeared in law reviews, policy journals and books, including the Hamishpat Law Review, Cardozo Law Review, NYU Review of Law & Social Change, Yale Law & Policy Review, and Harvard Journal of African-American Public Policy. Steinberg is a frequent commentator on criminal justice issues and has contributed opinion pieces to The New York Times, The Marshall Project, and USA Today. She is the author of the forthcoming book “Courage of Compassion: A Journey from Judgment to Connection” to be published by Optimism Press. She is currently a Gilbert Foundation Senior Fellow of the Criminal Justice Program at UCLA School of Law.
Reginald Dwayne Betts is a poet and lawyer. He is the Director of the Million Book Project, an initiative out of the Yale Law School’s Justice Collaboratory to radically transform the access to literature in prisons. For more than twenty-years, he has used his poetry and essays to explore the world of prison and the effects of violence and incarceration on American society. The author of a memoir and three collections of poetry, his latest collection of poetry, Felon, explores the post incarceration experience and lingering consequences of a criminal record. In 2019, Betts won the National Magazine Award in the Essays and Criticism category for his NY Times Magazine essay that chronicles his journey from prison to becoming a licensed attorney. He is a 2018 Guggenheim Fellow and a 2018 Emerson Fellow at New America and holds a J.D. from Yale Law School.
Brandon Buskey is the Director of the Criminal Law Reform Project at the American Civil Liberties Union, where he has worked since 2012. A major part of his and the project’s work focuses on reforming pretrial justice, including ending excessive pretrial detention and wealth-based detention; guaranteeing a right to counsel for bail hearings; and limiting restrictive conditions of release like GPS monitoring and drug testing. Prior to the ACLU, Brandon worked at the Equal Justice Initiative in Montgomery, Alabama, representing individuals on death row and children sentenced to die in prison. He is a 2006 honors graduate of New York University Law School, where he was a Root-Tilden Kern and AnBryce Scholar. Following law school he clerked for the Honorable Janet C. Hall of the United States District Court for the District of Connecticut. He received his B.A. from North Carolina State University.
Lisa Gersh was most recently the Chief Executive Officer of Alexander Wang, a fashion brand based in New York City. Prior to Alexander Wang, Ms. Gersh had served as the CEO of Goop, Inc. and Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia, Inc. Ms. Gersh has extensive experience in media, including serving as President of Strategic Initiatives at NBC, serving as the Managing Director of the Weather Channel Companies for NBC Universal, and co-founding Oxygen Media. While at NBC Universal, she also pioneered the creation of the company’s groundbreaking Education Nation platform. A graduate of the State University of New York Binghamton, Ms. Gersh holds a law degree from Rutgers Law School and began her career in law, first as an attorney with Debevoise & Plimpton, before co-founding the New York law firm, Friedman Kaplan & Seiler LLP.
Zach Herz-Roiphe was The Bail Project’s Chief Financial Officer from 2018 to 2021. Zach also worked previously with TBP CEO Robin Steinberg to help establish Still She Rises, Tulsa, the first public defender office in the country dedicated exclusively to the representation of women. He is currently Vice President of Business Operations at Applecart, a Series B marketing technology firm. Previously, he held roles at New Mountain Capital, a private investment firm with over $30 billion in assets under management, and Bain & Company, a global management consulting firm. Zach received a BA from Yale University and lives in New York.
Lili Lynton is the co-founder and operating partner of The Dinex Group, which manages 17 Daniel Boulud branded restaurants. She previously co-founded Telebank, an Internet bank sold to E*Trade in 1999. Lili serves on the boards of East Harlem Tutorial Program and the four New Visions charter high schools in the Bronx. Lili is a member of the Advisory Council of The Hamilton Project, a division of Brookings which develops proposals for a more equitable and robust U.S. economy.
Michael E. Novogratz is the CEO of Galaxy Investment Partners and chair of the board of The Bail Project. Mike was formerly a principal and a member of the board of directors of Fortress Investment Group LLC and Chief Investment Officer of the Fortress Macro Fund. He is founder and Board Chairmen of Beat the Streets, a non-profit organization which builds wrestling programs in New York City public schools, the Honorary Chairman of USA Wrestling Foundation and Chairman of The Friends of the Hudson River Park. Additionally, he serves on the board of the NYU Langone Medical Center, Vita Sports Partners, the Princeton Varsity Club, the Jazz Foundation of America, and is a former board member of the Acumen Fund. Mike received his B.A. from Princeton University and served as a helicopter pilot in the U.S. Army.
Vincent Southerland is the inaugural Executive Director of the Center on Race, Inequality, and the Law at NYU Law. Prior to joining NYU Law, Vincent worked as an Assistant Federal Public Defender with the Federal Defenders for the Southern District of New York. He spent seven years at the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc. (LDF), where, as senior counsel, he litigated civil rights cases and represented people on death row and youth sentenced to life without parole nationwide. A former staff attorney at The Bronx Defenders, Vincent began his career as a law clerk to Judges Theodore McKee, of the US Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit and Louis H. Pollak, of the US District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, and spent two years as an E. Barrett Prettyman Fellow at Georgetown University Law Center. Vincent holds an LL.M from Georgetown University Law Center, a J.D. from Temple University School of Law and received his B.A. from University of Connecticut.
OUR TEAM
We’ve been fortunate to learn that a just and ambitious cause attracts truly amazing people. Our staff, from our Bail Disruptors and Client Advocates across the country to our Storytellers, Data Scientists, and Policy Advocates, are the driving force behind our organization’s success.
ADVISORY BOARD
Societal progression requires the collaboration of the leaders who are representing and shaping our culture. We are honored to have a dedicated group of luminaries to shine light on our path forward.
Danny Glover is an actor, producer and humanitarian who has been a commanding presence on screen, stage and television for more than 35 years. Glover has gained respect for his wide-reaching community activism and philanthropic efforts, with a particular emphasis on advocacy for economic justice, and access to health care and education programs in the United States, Latin America, the Caribbean and Africa. He currently serves as UNICEF Ambassador and Ambassador for the United Nations International Decade for People of African Descent.
Danielle Allen, James Bryant Conant University Professor at Harvard University, and Director of Harvard’s Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics, is a political theorist who has published broadly in democratic theory, political sociology, and the history of political thought. Widely known for her work on justice and citizenship in both ancient Athens and modern America, Allen is the author of The World of Prometheus: The Politics of Punishing in Democratic Athens (2000), Talking to Strangers: Anxieties of Citizenship since Brown vs. the Board of Education (2004), Why Plato Wrote (2010), Our Declaration: A Reading of the Declaration of Independence in Defense of Equality (2014), Education and Equality (2016), and Cuz: The Life and Times of Michael A. (2017). She is the co-editor of the award-winning Education, Justice, and Democracy (2013, with Rob Reich) and From Voice to Influence: Understanding Citizenship in the Digital Age (2015, with Jennifer Light). She is a Chair of the Mellon Foundation Board, past Chair of the Pulitzer Prize Board, and a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the American Philosophical Society. Allen is also the principal investigator for the Democratic Knowledge Project, a distributed research and action lab at Harvard University. The Democratic Knowledge Project seeks to identify, strengthen, and disseminate the bodies of knowledge, skills, and capacities that democratic citizens need in order to succeed at operating their democracy. The lab currently has three projects underway: the Declaration Resources Project, the Humanities and Liberal Arts Assessment Project (HULA), and the Youth and Participatory Politics Action and Reflection Frame.
Sir Richard Branson is Founder of the Virgin Group. Conceived in 1970, Virgin has gone on to grow successful businesses in sectors including mobile telephony, travel and transportation, financial services, leisure and entertainment and health and wellness. Virgin is a leading international investment group and one of the world’s most recognised and respected brands. Since starting youth culture magazine “Student” at aged 16, Richard has found entrepreneurial ways to drive positive change in the world. In 2004 Richard established Virgin Unite, the non-profit foundation of the Virgin Group, which unites people and entrepreneurial ideas to create opportunities for a better world. Most of his time is now spent building businesses that will make a positive difference in the world and working with Virgin Unite and organisations it has incubated, such as The Elders, The Carbon War Room, The B Team and Ocean Unite. He also serves on the Global Commission on Drug Policy and supports ocean conservation with the Ocean Elders.
David Feige is the former Trial Chief of The Bronx Defenders, the co-creator of the TNT series “Raising the Bar” and the author of “Indefensible: One Lawyer’s Journey Into the Inferno of American Justice.” He has written about law for the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Washington Post and Slate, and is a credited writer and producer on over 100 hours of scripted television. In 2016, David won the Albert Maysles Best New Director award at the Tribeca Film Festival for directing and producing “Untouchable,” a documentary that examines sex-offender laws through the lives of individuals on the sex offender registry. A nationally known lecturer on criminal law and trial tactics, David served as a Professor of Law and Director of Advocacy Programs at Seton Hall Law School, and has been on the faculty of the National Criminal Defense College for over a fifteen years. David was the co-founder and chair of the board of The Bronx Freedom Fund through its creation, expansion and ultimate merger with The Bail Project.
John Legend is a world-renowned singer-songwriter, actor, and social justice advocate. He has garnered ten Grammy Awards, an Academy Award, a TONY Award, and a Golden Globe.Legend serves as one of the principles for Get Lifted Film Co., a film and television production company based in Los Angeles. An advocate for racial justice and criminal justice reform, Legend is the founder of the Show Me Campaign, which seeks to give every child access to education, and #FREEAMERICA, a program designed to change national conversations and policies about our country’s misguided criminal justice system.
Robin Lenhardt is a Professor of Law and the Founder and Faculty Director of the Center on Race, Law & Justice at Fordham Law School. Professor Lenhardt specializes in matters pertaining to race, equality, civil rights, family, and citizenship. A former law clerk to U.S. Supreme Court Justice Stephen G. Breyer, Professor Lenhardt was a member of the litigation team that defended the University of Michigan in the Grutter v. Bollinger and Gratz v. Bollinger affirmative action lawsuits. Professor Lenhardt received a Skadden Foundation Fellowship to work as a staff attorney for the National Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights and was employed as an attorney advisor in the U.S. Department of Justice’s Office of Legal Counsel during the Clinton Administration. She later returned to the DOJ to review civil rights issues as part of President Barack Obama’s transition team. She holds a LL.M. from the Georgetown University Law Center, a J.D. from Harvard Law School, a M.P.A. from Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government and a B.A. from Brown University.
Richard Williams, or Prince Ea—as he’s known from over a billion views on YouTube and Facebook—is a rapper, spoken word artist, and passionate environmentalist. His videos focus on the power of individual growth and the importance of sustainable lifestyles. By producing creative, inspirational and thought-provoking content, he has touched the hearts, minds, and souls of millions of people worldwide, and was featured in one of Oprah’s “Super Soul 100” posts. Prince Ea studied Anthropology at University St. Louis-Missouri and graduated Magna Cum Laude from a full scholarship. Today, when he’s not creating, he speaks at conferences and gives lectures to high school/university students nationwide, on the topics of self-development, living your passion, and the importance of being motivated and engaged in the classroom.
Advancing our vision
through action.
Advocating for Better Policies
By advocating for better policies, we seek to take money out of justice and to create a pretrial system that is more just, equitable, and humane.
Providing Free Bail Assistance
By providing free bail assistance to those in need, we restore the presumption of innocence, reunite families, and gather evidence for change.
A Death Sentence Without Ever Going to Court
A cash amount is all that stands in the way of millions being forced into deadly jails each year.
