Our Team

Meet Our Team

Interested in working with or volunteering with the Alliance? Go here to view current openings.

Meet Our Advisory Board

Founding Advisory Board (2017 - 2019)

  • Robert Carmona, Co-Founder, STRIVE International
  • Naomi Dennis, Appellate Judge and Lieutenant Colonel, United States Air Force
  • Mary Gould, Associate Professor of Communication and Director, Prison Education Program, Saint Louis University
  • Jody Lewen, Founder and Executive Director, Prison University Project
  • Danny Murillo, Soros Justice Advocacy Fellow, Opportunity Institute
  • Brendan Ozawa-de Silva, Associate Professor of Psychology and Associate Director for the Center for Compassion, Integrity and Secular Ethics, Life University
  • Sean Pica, Executive Director, Hudson Link for Higher Education in Prison
  • Margaret Quern Atkins, Director, New Jersey Scholarship and Transformative Education in Prisons Consortium (NJ-STEP)
  • Bianca Van Heydoorn, Director of Educational Initiatives at the Prisoner Reentry Institute, John Jay College of Criminal Justice
  • Stephen B. Walker, Chief of Governmental Affairs, California Correctional Peace Officers Association
  • Cheryl Wilkins, Senior Director of Education and Programs, Columbia University’s Center for Justice
  • Donna Zuniga, Dean of the Lee College Huntsville Center in Huntsville, Texas


Emeritus Advisory board

Naomi Dennis               Brendan Ozawa-de Silva               Stephen B. Walker


In Memoriam

Stephen Blount (1953 - 2022)

“I had the opportunity to go inside and actually sit through a class. I was so unprepared for the level of engagement, and insight, and knowledge that the student’s possessed. I saw the students get this exposure and this opportunity. You can literally just see them begin to blossom.”
Stephen Walker, Director of Correctional Health and Political Logistics,
California Peace Officers Union
Advisory Board Member, Alliance for Higher Education in Prison

Meet Our Fiscal Sponsor

The Alliance for Higher Education receives structure, finance and administrative services from Community Partners.

For more than 25 years, hundreds of individuals, groups, foundations and other institutions have worked with Community Partners to create new nonprofit projects, establish coalitions, and manage major philanthropic initiatives to benefit the region. Its mission is to accelerate ideas into action to advance the public good. We achieve this in three basic ways:

Fiscal Sponsorship

Provide the structure, finance and administrative services, and expert counsel that help nonprofit leaders succeed

Intermediary Services

Help foundations, corporations, government agencies and other institutions achieve greater impact

Knowledge Sharing

Deliver workshops, reports, speaking engagements and a range of publications help strengthen the field

Meet Our Funders

Note: Current funders are highlighted

Meet Our Consultants

In addition to our staff, the Alliance regularly is supported by a team of consultants who contribute to various aspects of our work.

Note: Current consultants are highlighted

Meet Our Other Contributors

The Alliance for Higher Education in Prison would like to thank photographer Babita Patel and the following higher education in prison programs for contributing photographs for our website and print materials:

The Journal of Higher Education in Prison owes a tremendous amount of gratitude to the editorial team at the Journal of Critical Scholarship on Higher Education and Student Affairs and Michael LeVan, Editor-in-Chief/Founding Editor of Liminalities: A Journal of Performance Studies for their guidance as we founded a new journal.