Nearly 30 years ago, a conversation in prison between university students and incarcerated men led to an idea — that dialogue across difference affords the insight and understanding often missing from spaces where lived experience isn’t recognized as an essential source of knowledge. Inside-Out has grown through our students, educators, coaches, and community partners who continue to shape that idea in classrooms, correctional facilities, and community workshops and meeting rooms across the world.
As The Inside-Out Center continues this new chapter, our Board of Directors ensures that the values and pedagogy born from what participants have experienced and learned together continue to guide our work as we reach more people and find new possibilities in places of learning and public life. Inside-Out’s Board members bring experience from education, incarceration, research, and advocacy. Their biographies reflect the different ways they came to Inside-Out and their roles as we continue learning, connecting, and building communities to carry our work forward.
Shaul Cohen
Board Chair
Shaul Cohen is a professor in the Department of Geography at the University of Oregon, where he directs both the Prison Education Program and the Carnegie Global Oregon Ethics Program. His academic work began with a focus on ethno-territorial conflict and questions of identity, belonging, and place in communities around the world. Over time, those interests led him to prison education and reentry work in the United States, where he has become a leading advocate for expanding educational opportunities for incarcerated and formerly incarcerated individuals.
Shaul completed the Inside-Out instructor training at SCI-Graterford in 2010 and has remained actively involved with the program ever since, including serving as a Co-Facilitator for the Inside-Out Training Institute. He has taught Inside-Out classes in multiple Oregon correctional facilities and has worked closely with educators, policymakers, and community partners to strengthen prison education initiatives throughout the state.
In addition to his teaching, Shaul has served on legislative committees focused on higher education policy, prison education, and reentry. He currently serves as chair of the Oregon Coalition for Higher Education in Prison. Through his teaching, scholarship, and public service, Shaul works to expand access to education and create pathways for learning, civic engagement, and opportunity. Outside of work, he enjoys spending time outdoors and exploring the natural landscapes of the Pacific Northwest.
TL Hill
Board Treasurer
TL is a professor of management who designs and facilitates learning experiences that bring together MBA and doctoral students, faculty, business leaders, and community partners to address complex organizational, business, and social challenges. Research areas include the social mechanisms of network governance; the interplay between social legitimacy and political risk; the structure, design, and impact of social ventures and best practices in experiential education.
Before becoming a professor, TL was a managing director and editor for New Society Publishers, a company producing social justice publications, and a consultant for nonprofits, small businesses and family-owned firms. TL also spends as much time as he can outside, walking, running, paddling and otherwise trying to ignore the list in his head.
Joe Schwartz
Board Secretary
Joe Schwartz is the Development and Program Coordinator for The Inside-Out Center, where he also serves as a training coach for the Inside-Out Training Institute. An advocate for educational access and dialogue-based learning, Joe works to expand opportunities for people to build meaningful connections, and explore new possibilities for growth and civic participation. After serving 15 years in federal prison, he received clemency from President Barack Obama. Joe returned home with an appreciation for the transformative potential of education. In addition to his work with The Inside-Out Center, he serves on the Steering Committee of the Pennsylvania Consortium for Higher Education in Prison, supporting efforts to expand access to quality educational opportunities in correctional settings.
Joe believes education can restore dignity, foster connection, and help individuals imagine futures that may once have seemed out of reach. Outside of work, Joe is a family man and enjoys music, baking, the arts, and a good book.
James Forman Jr.
James Forman Jr. is the J. Skelly Wright Professor of Law at Yale Law School, where he teaches and writes about criminal justice, racial equity, and educational opportunity. Before entering academia, he worked as a public defender and co-founded the Maya Angelou Schools in Washington, D.C., which serve students including court-involved and incarcerated youth.
James completed the Inside-Out instructor training in 2009 and has taught criminal law in Connecticut state and federal prisons using the Inside-Out model. He is also the Faculty Director of the Yale Center for Law and Racial Justice and is founder of the Access to Law School Program, which supports creating pathways to law school for first-generation New Haven residents.
His first book, Locking Up Our Own: Crime and Punishment in Black America, won the 2018 Pulitzer Prize for General Non-Fiction. His most recent book is Dismantling Mass Incarceration: A Handbook for Change, co-edited with Premal Dharia and Maria Hawilo.
Reiko Hillyer
Reiko Hillyer is an historian, an educator, and an Inside-Out facilitator whose work explores the history of the American South, public memory, the built environment, and mass incarceration. She is Professor of History at Lewis & Clark College in Portland, Oregon. Reiko began teaching Inside-Out courses in correctional settings in 2012. In addition to facilitating courses, she serves as a Co-Facilitator for Inside-Out Instructor Trainings, where her experiences in Inside-Out classrooms have informed both her teaching and her scholarship.
She is the author of A Wall Is Just a Wall: The Permeability of the Prison in the 20th Century United States, a book inspired in part by her work with Inside-Out students. Her research and public scholarship have been featured by national media outlets, bringing broader attention to questions of incarceration, education, and civic life.
In 2021, Reiko received support from the Oregon Community Foundation to develop I Think of You, a theater production created with Inside-Out students, presented at Portland Center Stage. A short documentary about her Inside-Out class, Classroom 4, is now streaming on PBS. Reiko is a native New Yorker who has come to love Portland and shares her life with her partner Elliott, her daughters Ryo and Zulema, and their dog Chiquis.
Sue Hyatt
Susan B. Hyatt is Professor Emerita of Anthropology at Indiana University Indianapolis and taught at Temple University from 1996 to 2004. During her time at Temple, she witnessed the development of the Inside-Out Program and attended several course graduations before relocating to Indiana.
As Inside-Out expanded nationally, Sue and a colleague established the first Inside-Out Program in Indiana. In addition to teaching in several correctional facilities, she adapted the Inside-Out model for a residential program serving women in recovery, work-release programs, and a reentry center.
Over the years, Sue formerly served on the Inside-Out Steering Committee and helped coordinate Inside-Out programs across Indiana. In that role, she organized statewide Inside-Out conferences in 2008 and 2018.
Jeri Kirby
Jeri Kirby is an educator, scholar, and advocate whose work is shaped by both lived experience and academic expertise in the areas of incarceration, correctional reform, and reentry. After experiencing incarceration in the Federal Bureau of Prisons, she committed her career to expanding educational opportunities, advancing reform efforts, and promoting dignity for individuals impacted by the criminal legal system.
Jeri earned her PhD in Political Science from West Virginia University and serves as Associate Professor and Director of Graduate Studies in Criminal Justice at Fairmont State University in WV. For more than three decades, her teaching, research, and public engagement have focused on understanding the realities of incarceration, improving correctional policy, and strengthening pathways to education for justice-impacted individuals.
A certified instructor with The Inside-Out Prison Exchange Program, Jeri also serves as a Co-Facilitator for Inside-Out’s Instructor Training Institutes, and as a Federal Coordinator for The Inside-Out Center.
Through her scholarship, mentorship, and public speaking, Jeri emphasizes the role of education, accountability, and opportunity in supporting individual growth and strengthening communities. She continues to be a respected voice in national conversations on correctional education, reentry, and criminal justice reform.
John Pace
John Pace is an educator, advocate, and reentry leader whose work focuses on supporting individuals sentenced to life as young people – and advancing opportunities for people returning home from prison. Sentenced to life imprisonment at age 17, John served 31 years before being resentenced and released following the U.S. Supreme Court's landmark decisions in Miller v. Alabama and Montgomery v. Louisiana.
Since returning home in 2017, John has dedicated his work to helping others navigate the challenges of reentry while advocating for policies and practices that promote opportunity, healing, and justice. He is on The Inside-Out Center team and is the Senior Reentry Partnerships Manager at the Youth Sentencing & Reentry Project (YSRP). He also serves on the boards of the Philadelphia Bail Fund and PAR-Recycle Works.
A certified paralegal and Inside-Out instructor, John earned both his Associate's and Bachelor of Arts degrees from Villanova University, with minors in Criminal Justice and Sociology. As an Ambassador for Represent Justice, he recently produced the documentary Disrupted: Injustice, Trauma, and Healing, using storytelling as a tool for education, reflection, and social change.
Lori Pompa
Lori has been going into prisons for more than 40 years and has taken thousands of students and community members into correctional facilities. She served on the Criminal Justice faculty at Temple University from 1992 to 2025 and was the Founder and Executive Director of The Inside-Out Prison Exchange Program. Today, she continues as Founder and Executive Director to guide the work of The Inside-Out Center in its new chapter as an independent nonprofit organization.
What began as a single class in a local jail in 1997 grew into an international model of transformative education. As a 2003 Soros Justice Senior Fellow, Lori worked alongside people on both sides of prison walls to help shape and expand the Inside-Out pedagogy. Over the years, the program has grown organically through a global network of educators, students, and community members committed to dialogue, learning, and social change.
Outside of her life's work, Lori enjoys music, reading, streaming films and other programs, playing online games, and spending time with friends. Her cats, Shawn and Dino, hold a special place in her heart. Her father’s words to her as he lay dying several years ago continue to motivate her on a daily basis. He asked: Don’t we have more work to do? And she lives by a fundamental, simple belief: Do what you love—the rest will come.
Tore Price
Tore Price is a formerly incarcerated father, educator, advocate, and researcher whose work focuses on decarceration and the role of education in the lives of justice-impacted individuals, families, and communities. His work is informed by both lived experience and a commitment to advancing approaches to justice that center dignity, belonging, and human potential.
Tore serves as a Training Coach and Special Programs and Outreach Coordinator for The Inside-Out Center, where he supports educator training, program development, and community engagement initiatives. Through his work with Inside-Out, he helps to create learning environments that encourage dialogue, critical reflection, and meaningful engagement across lines of difference. He is also a teaching assistant for the Restorative Justice, Decarceration, and Abolition course at the University of Michigan, contributing to conversations about justice, accountability, and social transformation.
In 2023, Tore was awarded a Samuel Centre Research Fellowship to explore how education can restore dignity and a sense of belonging, supporting liberation in environments shaped by punishment and exclusion. His research examined the transformative potential of educational spaces for individuals impacted by incarceration and the broader communities to which they belong. Through his advocacy, teaching, and research, Tore works to ensure that the voices and experiences of those most affected by the criminal legal system remain central to efforts aimed at creating lasting social change.
Danielle Strickland
Danielle Strickland is an educator, researcher, and advocate whose work centers on prison education, violence prevention, and the rights of children and marginalized communities. After moving to Mexico in 2000, she co-founded CODENI, a nonprofit organization that works with children, youth, and families to create alternatives to life on the streets and strengthen opportunities for social inclusion.
Since 2010, Danielle has cultivated a commitment to transformative learning in carceral settings. She serves as the national coordinator of Inside-Out in Mexico. She is also the editor of the prison journal Rompemuros. She is also a member of the Citizen Security Council for the state of Jalisco, a specialist on security and justice issues for the citizen observatory Jalisco Cómo Vamos, and president of the AHALA Children’s Rights Foundation.
Danielle is a professor at ITESO University in Guadalajara, where her research focuses on prisons, organized crime, youth, and community responses to violence.
Janet Wolf
Janet Wolf is an organizer, educator, pastor, mediator, and advocate whose work has centered on social justice, community engagement, and nonviolent social change. Her career has spanned a wide range of roles, including poverty rights organizer, United Methodist pastor serving both urban and rural congregations, college and seminary professor, community mediator, and facilitator in educational and dialogue-based initiatives both inside and outside prison settings.
Throughout her work, Janet has remained committed to public theology, transformative justice, and nonviolent direct action organizing. She partners with individuals and communities directly impacted by incarceration to develop leadership and advance efforts to disrupt the cradle-to-prison pipeline.
Janet serves on the Coordinating Team of the National Council of Elders and on the Advisory Board of the James Lawson Institute for the Research and Study of Nonviolent Movements. She is the author of Practicing Resurrection: The Gospel of Mark and Radical Discipleship. She and her husband, Bill Haley, are the parents of five sons and grandparents to seven grandchildren.
Shaul Cohen
Board Chair
Shaul Cohen is a professor in the Department of Geography at the University of Oregon, where he directs both the Prison Education Program and the Carnegie Global Oregon Ethics Program. His academic work began with a focus on ethno-territorial conflict and questions of identity, belonging, and place in communities around the world. Over time, those interests led him to prison education and reentry work in the United States, where he has become a leading advocate for expanding educational opportunities for incarcerated and formerly incarcerated individuals.
Shaul completed the Inside-Out instructor training at SCI-Graterford in 2010 and has remained actively involved with the program ever since, including serving as a Co-Facilitator for the Inside-Out Training Institute. He has taught Inside-Out classes in multiple Oregon correctional facilities and has worked closely with educators, policymakers, and community partners to strengthen prison education initiatives throughout the state.
In addition to his teaching, Shaul has served on legislative committees focused on higher education policy, prison education, and reentry. He currently serves as chair of the Oregon Coalition for Higher Education in Prison. Through his teaching, scholarship, and public service, Shaul works to expand access to education and create pathways for learning, civic engagement, and opportunity. Outside of work, he enjoys spending time outdoors and exploring the natural landscapes of the Pacific Northwest.
Joe Schwartz
Board Secretary
Joe Schwartz is the Development and Program Coordinator for The Inside-Out Center, where he also serves as a training coach for the Inside-Out Training Institute. An advocate for educational access and dialogue-based learning, Joe works to expand opportunities for people to build meaningful connections, and explore new possibilities for growth and civic participation. After serving 15 years in federal prison, he received clemency from President Barack Obama. Joe returned home with an appreciation for the transformative potential of education. In addition to his work with The Inside-Out Center, he serves on the Steering Committee of the Pennsylvania Consortium for Higher Education in Prison, supporting efforts to expand access to quality educational opportunities in correctional settings.
Joe believes education can restore dignity, foster connection, and help individuals imagine futures that may once have seemed out of reach. Outside of work, Joe is a family man and enjoys music, baking, the arts, and a good book.
Sue Hyatt
Susan B. Hyatt is Professor Emerita of Anthropology at Indiana University Indianapolis and taught at Temple University from 1996 to 2004. During her time at Temple, she witnessed the development of the Inside-Out Program and attended several course graduations before relocating to Indiana.
As Inside-Out expanded nationally, Sue and a colleague established the first Inside-Out Program in Indiana. In addition to teaching in several correctional facilities, she adapted the Inside-Out model for a residential program serving women in recovery, work-release programs, and a reentry center.
Over the years, Sue formerly served on the Inside-Out Steering Committee and helped coordinate Inside-Out programs across Indiana. In that role, she organized statewide Inside-Out conferences in 2008 and 2018.
John Pace
John Pace is an educator, advocate, and reentry leader whose work focuses on supporting individuals sentenced to life as young people – and advancing opportunities for people returning home from prison. Sentenced to life imprisonment at age 17, John served 31 years before being resentenced and released following the U.S. Supreme Court's landmark decisions in Miller v. Alabama and Montgomery v. Louisiana.
Since returning home in 2017, John has dedicated his work to helping others navigate the challenges of reentry while advocating for policies and practices that promote opportunity, healing, and justice. He is on The Inside-Out Center team and is the Senior Reentry Partnerships Manager at the Youth Sentencing & Reentry Project (YSRP). He also serves on the boards of the Philadelphia Bail Fund and PAR-Recycle Works.
A certified paralegal and Inside-Out instructor, John earned both his Associate's and Bachelor of Arts degrees from Villanova University, with minors in Criminal Justice and Sociology. As an Ambassador for Represent Justice, he recently produced the documentary Disrupted: Injustice, Trauma, and Healing, using storytelling as a tool for education, reflection, and social change.
Lori Pompa
Lori has been going into prisons for more than 40 years and has taken thousands of students and community members into correctional facilities. She served on the Criminal Justice faculty at Temple University from 1992 to 2025 and was the Founder and Executive Director of The Inside-Out Prison Exchange Program. Today, she continues as Founder and Executive Director to guide the work of The Inside-Out Center in its new chapter as an independent nonprofit organization.
What began as a single class in a local jail in 1997 grew into an international model of transformative education. As a 2003 Soros Justice Senior Fellow, Lori worked alongside people on both sides of prison walls to help shape and expand the Inside-Out pedagogy. Over the years, the program has grown organically through a global network of educators, students, and community members committed to dialogue, learning, and social change.
Outside of her life's work, Lori enjoys music, reading, streaming films and other programs, playing online games, and spending time with friends. Her cats, Shawn and Dino, hold a special place in her heart. Her father’s words to her as he lay dying several years ago continue to motivate her on a daily basis. He asked: Don’t we have more work to do? And she lives by a fundamental, simple belief: Do what you love—the rest will come.
Danielle Strickland
Danielle Strickland is an educator, researcher, and advocate whose work centers on prison education, violence prevention, and the rights of children and marginalized communities. After moving to Mexico in 2000, she co-founded CODENI, a nonprofit organization that works with children, youth, and families to create alternatives to life on the streets and strengthen opportunities for social inclusion.
Since 2010, Danielle has cultivated a commitment to transformative learning in carceral settings. She serves as the national coordinator of Inside-Out in Mexico. She is also the editor of the prison journal Rompemuros. She is also a member of the Citizen Security Council for the state of Jalisco, a specialist on security and justice issues for the citizen observatory Jalisco Cómo Vamos, and president of the AHALA Children’s Rights Foundation.
Danielle is a professor at ITESO University in Guadalajara, where her research focuses on prisons, organized crime, youth, and community responses to violence.
TL Hill
Board Treasurer
TL is a professor of management who designs and facilitates learning experiences that bring together MBA and doctoral students, faculty, business leaders, and community partners to address complex organizational, business, and social challenges. Research areas include the social mechanisms of network governance; the interplay between social legitimacy and political risk; the structure, design, and impact of social ventures and best practices in experiential education.
Before becoming a professor, TL was a managing director and editor for New Society Publishers, a company producing social justice publications, and a consultant for nonprofits, small businesses and family-owned firms. TL also spends as much time as he can outside, walking, running, paddling and otherwise trying to ignore the list in his head.
James Forman Jr.
James Forman Jr. is the J. Skelly Wright Professor of Law at Yale Law School, where he teaches and writes about criminal justice, racial equity, and educational opportunity. Before entering academia, he worked as a public defender and co-founded the Maya Angelou Schools in Washington, D.C., which serve students including court-involved and incarcerated youth.
James completed the Inside-Out instructor training in 2009 and has taught criminal law in Connecticut state and federal prisons using the Inside-Out model. He is also the Faculty Director of the Yale Center for Law and Racial Justice and is founder of the Access to Law School Program, which supports creating pathways to law school for first-generation New Haven residents.
His first book, Locking Up Our Own: Crime and Punishment in Black America, won the 2018 Pulitzer Prize for General Non-Fiction. His most recent book is Dismantling Mass Incarceration: A Handbook for Change, co-edited with Premal Dharia and Maria Hawilo.
Reiko Hillyer
Reiko Hillyer is an historian, an educator, and an Inside-Out facilitator whose work explores the history of the American South, public memory, the built environment, and mass incarceration. She is Professor of History at Lewis & Clark College in Portland, Oregon. Reiko began teaching Inside-Out courses in correctional settings in 2012. In addition to facilitating courses, she serves as a Co-Facilitator for Inside-Out Instructor Trainings, where her experiences in Inside-Out classrooms have informed both her teaching and her scholarship.
She is the author of A Wall Is Just a Wall: The Permeability of the Prison in the 20th Century United States, a book inspired in part by her work with Inside-Out students. Her research and public scholarship have been featured by national media outlets, bringing broader attention to questions of incarceration, education, and civic life.
In 2021, Reiko received support from the Oregon Community Foundation to develop I Think of You, a theater production created with Inside-Out students, presented at Portland Center Stage. A short documentary about her Inside-Out class, Classroom 4, is now streaming on PBS. Reiko is a native New Yorker who has come to love Portland and shares her life with her partner Elliott, her daughters Ryo and Zulema, and their dog Chiquis.
Jeri Kirby
Jeri Kirby is an educator, scholar, and advocate whose work is shaped by both lived experience and academic expertise in the areas of incarceration, correctional reform, and reentry. After experiencing incarceration in the Federal Bureau of Prisons, she committed her career to expanding educational opportunities, advancing reform efforts, and promoting dignity for individuals impacted by the criminal legal system.
Jeri earned her PhD in Political Science from West Virginia University and serves as Associate Professor and Director of Graduate Studies in Criminal Justice at Fairmont State University in WV. For more than three decades, her teaching, research, and public engagement have focused on understanding the realities of incarceration, improving correctional policy, and strengthening pathways to education for justice-impacted individuals.
A certified instructor with The Inside-Out Prison Exchange Program, Jeri also serves as a Co-Facilitator for Inside-Out’s Instructor Training Institutes, and as a Federal Coordinator for The Inside-Out Center.
Through her scholarship, mentorship, and public speaking, Jeri emphasizes the role of education, accountability, and opportunity in supporting individual growth and strengthening communities. She continues to be a respected voice in national conversations on correctional education, reentry, and criminal justice reform.
Tore Price
Tore Price is a formerly incarcerated father, educator, advocate, and researcher whose work focuses on decarceration and the role of education in the lives of justice-impacted individuals, families, and communities. His work is informed by both lived experience and a commitment to advancing approaches to justice that center dignity, belonging, and human potential.
Tore serves as a Training Coach and Special Programs and Outreach Coordinator for The Inside-Out Center, where he supports educator training, program development, and community engagement initiatives. Through his work with Inside-Out, he helps to create learning environments that encourage dialogue, critical reflection, and meaningful engagement across lines of difference. He is also a teaching assistant for the Restorative Justice, Decarceration, and Abolition course at the University of Michigan, contributing to conversations about justice, accountability, and social transformation.
In 2023, Tore was awarded a Samuel Centre Research Fellowship to explore how education can restore dignity and a sense of belonging, supporting liberation in environments shaped by punishment and exclusion. His research examined the transformative potential of educational spaces for individuals impacted by incarceration and the broader communities to which they belong. Through his advocacy, teaching, and research, Tore works to ensure that the voices and experiences of those most affected by the criminal legal system remain central to efforts aimed at creating lasting social change.
Janet Wolf
Janet Wolf is an organizer, educator, pastor, mediator, and advocate whose work has centered on social justice, community engagement, and nonviolent social change. Her career has spanned a wide range of roles, including poverty rights organizer, United Methodist pastor serving both urban and rural congregations, college and seminary professor, community mediator, and facilitator in educational and dialogue-based initiatives both inside and outside prison settings.
Throughout her work, Janet has remained committed to public theology, transformative justice, and nonviolent direct action organizing. She partners with individuals and communities directly impacted by incarceration to develop leadership and advance efforts to disrupt the cradle-to-prison pipeline.
Janet serves on the Coordinating Team of the National Council of Elders and on the Advisory Board of the James Lawson Institute for the Research and Study of Nonviolent Movements. She is the author of Practicing Resurrection: The Gospel of Mark and Radical Discipleship. She and her husband, Bill Haley, are the parents of five sons and grandparents to seven grandchildren.
