criminal-justice-reform
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Clementine Jacoby
Clementine Jacoby is the co-founder and CEO of Recidiviz, a nonprofit that untangles the fragmented, decades-old data systems that quietly trap people in the U.S. criminal justice system. A former Google product manager and aerial-hoop acrobat who once taught circus to gang members in Brazil, she built Recidiviz out of a Google volunteer project after watching her own uncle cycle through prison. Within two years of launch, the platform helped states identify and release more than 40,000 people who had already earned their freedom. She is a TED Fellow, a Forbes 30 Under 30 and TIME100 Next honoree, and one of Fast Company's Most Creative People.
Noah Freedman
Noah Freedman is the co-founder and CEO of Nucleos, a public benefit company that builds secure, tablet-powered learning systems for people inside U.S. jails and prisons. What started as PortableCloud - an offline education project for under-resourced schools in India, Zimbabwe and Kenya - pivoted hard after an incarcerated colleague showed Freedman that the same digital divide existed inside American corrections. Today his Achieve DXP platform handles the roughly 95% of mainstream e-learning that prisons can't otherwise allow for security reasons, tracking courses and credentials so people can walk out with a path to a job. A Princeton public-policy grad who ran global e-learning software at Stanford's Graduate School of Education, Freedman has turned a quiet conviction about second chances into a working business that's free for the facilities that use it.
Uzoma Orchingwa
Uzoma 'Zo' Orchingwa is a Nigerian-American social entrepreneur and the co-founder and co-CEO of Emerge Career, an AI-powered workforce development and reentry company that partners with governments to train and place justice-involved and low-income people into high-paying, AI-resilient skilled trades. He previously co-founded Ameelio, a technology nonprofit that broke open the exploitative prison communications industry by offering free letters, calls and education to incarcerated people and their families. A Yale-trained lawyer and Cambridge criminologist who moonlit as a DJ, he has been named to MIT Technology Review's 35 Innovators Under 35 and Fast Company's Most Creative People in Business.
Victor Boutros
Victor Boutros is the CEO and co-founder of the Human Trafficking Institute, a Dallas- and Washington-based nonprofit that embeds investigators and lawyers inside the criminal justice systems of developing countries to help them dismantle trafficking networks at the source. A former U.S. Department of Justice federal prosecutor who tried human trafficking cases of national significance, he co-wrote the Washington Post bestseller The Locust Effect with Gary Haugen, work that earned the 2016 Grawemeyer Prize for Ideas Improving World Order. He left a stable government career with no safety net in 2016 to build an organization that has helped Uganda prosecute traffickers at nearly ten times the global average.
Tory Reiss
Tory Reiss is the CEO and co-founder of Equi, a New York-based investment manager and technology platform that brings hedge-fund-style alternative strategies to investors. A three-time venture-backed fintech founder, he previously co-founded TrustToken (later Archblock), where he helped launch TrueUSD, one of the fastest-growing stablecoins in crypto history, and TrueFi, which originated more than $1.7 billion in loans. Before crypto he co-founded Harvest, an AI-driven debt-management platform. A self-described entrepreneur, activist, and educator, Reiss has taught financial literacy for over a decade and advocates for criminal justice reform.
Diana Frappier
Diana Frappier is the co-founder of Promise, an Oakland-based AI-powered government payment platform that helps municipalities and utilities distribute relief, recover revenue, and automate eligibility checks at scale. A UC Hastings-trained lawyer turned social entrepreneur, she co-founded the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights with Van Jones in 1996, helped launch the first Green Jobs Corps in Oakland, and then pivoted to fintech after years running operations at Green For All and Honor. At Promise, she and CEO Phaedra Ellis-Lamkins have raised over $48M and built a platform that has distributed $150M+ in government relief to hundreds of thousands of residents.
Phaedra Ellis-Lamkins
Phaedra Ellis-Lamkins is the co-founder and CEO of Promise, an Oakland-based govtech company valued at $520 million that helps municipalities and utilities offer zero-interest payment plans to struggling residents. A former union organizer turned labor federation executive turned music manager for Prince, she now runs a platform that has reached 5 million+ households across 20+ states, proving that treating people with dignity is not just ethical — it is a business model. Named #247 on the Forbes Self-Made 250, she built Promise from a YC Winter 2018 bet to a $23 million-funded company generating $33M+ in annual revenue.