Our Leaders
The people below are helping guide our organization toward a collective community that promotes the education and empowerment of formerly incarcerated people.
Board Members
Terrell Blount
Director Terrell A. Blount is a motivational speaker, mentor, and advocate for the advancement of postsecondary education opportunities for people who have experienced incarceration. Terrell’s reach spans nationally, speaking publicly at various K-12 schools, colleges and universities, prisons and reentry organizations. He continues to lend his expertise to education initiatives regarding directly-impacted people, participating on the steering committee for the Alliance for Higher Education in Prison (AHEP), a founding board member of FICGN, the Rutgers Initiative for Education & Justice (IEJ) and is a board trustee of The Petey Greene Program. He currently serves as a Program Associate for The Vera Institute of Justice in New York, working with college programs in prisons in ten states, as a part of a federally funded program. Terrell holds a BA in Communication and his MPA, both from Rutgers University.
Susie Bannon
Board Secretary Susie is a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Texas at Austin whose research seeks to improve the communication about and within communities directly impacted by the criminalization system. As an active/ engaged/ public scholar, she shares her work in a variety of forums including guest lectures on college campuses, public speaking engagements, organizational trainings, and panel discussions. For an example of Susie’s public speaking, please see this TedX event at Texas State University, where she earned her MA in Communication Studies.
As Director of Communications for the Texas Inmate Families Association, Susie uses her training as a rhetorician and first-hand experience with the criminalization system to help families of incarcerated people tell their stories and advocate for policy change. Susie is also a founding member of FICGN and serves on the Board of Directors as Secretary. 
Sue Ellen Allen
Board Director Sue Ellen Allen is the founder and president of ReInventing ReEntry. After leading a prison program for seven years, she had an AHA moment. Change on a large and effective scale won’t happen until the general public realizes the failure of our current prison system in both cost and humanity. A University of Texas grad, educator, community leader, former inmate and current activist, she found her purpose while in prison.
In 2016, Sue Ellen was one of twenty-three Americans honored to sit with the First Lady in her box at President Obama’s final State of the Union message, representing criminal justice reform. She has visited both the Obama and Trump White Houses, honored to continue working on justice reform. She is thrilled that in 2018, President Trump signed into law The First Step Act, a bipartisan effort involving many of the formerly incarcerated, dedicated to change. She is the author of The Slumber Party from Hell, a memoir about prison life, and the recipient of the Dawson Prize in Memoir in the 2009 Prison Writing Contest for PEN American Center. She was a 2018 Fellow with the Philadelphia Mural Arts for Justice program. 
Chris DiRusso
Board Director, Emeritus |
Vincent Garrett
Board President Vincent is a graduate student at the University of San Francisco, working on a Master’s degree in Organization & Leadership in the Department of Leadership Studies, within the School of Education. His goal is to become an educator, scholar and practitioner for programs that support formerly incarcerated college students and inform policies that impact formerly incarcerated students. He currently works for a program called Restoring Our Communities that supports formerly incarcerated students at Laney College. His Master’s Thesis will be on creating a framework for the creation, implementation, operation and evaluation of what he terms “Campus Reentry Support” programs for formerly incarcerated students. He graduated from UC Berkeley in 2016 with BA in Sociology; graduated from Merritt College with 5 AA degrees and was once a certified union sound and communications data installer.
Bronwyn Hunter, PhD
Board Director Bronwyn is an Assistant Professor of Community Psychology at the University of Maryland Baltimore County. Her research program identifies factors that promote successful prisoner re-entry and reintegration by examining stigma, health, and well-being among individuals with criminal justice and substance abuse histories. Specifically, she focuses on: 1) the relationship between stigma, stigma management, and health-related outcomes for individuals transitioning from prison to the community; and 2) program development and evaluation to improve health and well-being for women who have been involved in the criminal justice system. I am particularly interested in using participatory methods to develop university-community partnerships to affect individual, community, and policy change.
Stanley Andrisse, MBA, PhD
Vice President Dr. Stanley Andrisse is a formerly incarcerated person who is now an endocrinologist scientist at Johns Hopkins Medicine. Amongst many other things, he is a co-founder and Executive Director of From Prison Cells to PhD as well as a Board member for the Advocates for Goucher Prison Education Partnership (GPEP).
Ryan Ramnarace
Board Vice President, Emeritus 
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Derek Boyd
Treasurer Derek Boyd is a recent formerly incarcerated graduate of Michael G. Foster School of Business at University of Washington, Seattle (BABA, 2021). In 2013, while still incarcerated, Derek co-founded Huskies for Opportunities in Prison Education, a UW Registered Student Organization—supporting incarcerated students in their academic pursuits and mobilizing the student body to engage on issues of mass incarceration. He remains actively involved with HOPE as a non-student member and alum.
As a former board member of Underground Ministries, Derek worked to expand reentry options for returning citizens. He stepped down from the board in December 2021 to take a staff position as the One Parish Prisoner program coordinator—fostering relationships of embrace and trust between the incarcerated and parishes in the communities to which they return. Derek aspires to enter public accounting and is currently studying to sit for the CPA exam later this year. His interest lies in serving nonprofits, disadvantaged business entities, and formerly incarcerated entrepreneurs. 
Pamela Winn
Board Director Pamela Winn is an activist from Atlanta, who studied Biology at Spelman College, earned 3 post-secondary degrees in Nursing, an entrepreneur of two successful businesses, single mother of two sons, and served a 78 month federal sentence for a white-collar crime.
Pamela is a co-founder of the newly organized Formerly Incarcerated College Graduates Network which promotes higher education of convicted people. Pamela Winn is the founder of RestoreHER US.America, a nonprofit reentry advocacy organization dedicated to enhancing the lives of directly impacted women. Pamela is currently spearheading the campaign for #DIGNITY For Incarcerated Women GA. Pamela Winn was invited to to the White House for the first Prison Reform Summit where she spoke on Women’s Issues. She was instrumental in the historic passing of The First Step Act. Pamela is a 2018 Erin J. Vuley Fellow with the Feminist Women’s Health Center and also a 2017 Leading with Conviction Fellow of JustLeadershipUSA. 
Chris Beasley, PhD
Board Director Chris is a community psychologist who conducts community-engaged applied research to strengthen communities while also participating in grassroots organizing to support such settings and helping students develop knowledge and skills for this type of work. As the Principal Investigator for the Post-Prison Education Research Lab (PERL), he uses a variety of psychological sub-disciplines to better understand social and psychological factors that facilitate and hinder transitions from prison to college. As an Assistant Professor, he's also helping the University of Washington Tacoma strengthen support for people making these transitions to UWT. As a community organizer, Chris co-founded FICGN and supports the development of similar networks of formerly incarcerated leaders and advocates for prison and post-prison higher education. Lastly, Chris is a Board Director for From Prison Cells to PhD, an organization that provides mentoring and educational counseling to individuals returning from incarceration and individuals from disadvantaged backgrounds so that they may position themselves to start building their career as opposed to obtaining temporary employment.
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