Bryan Stevenson Bryan Stevenson Is the Founder and Executive Director

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Bryan Stevenson Bryan Stevenson is the founder and Executive Director of the Equal Justice Initiative and one of the most acclaimed and respected lawyers in the nation. His memoir, Just Mercy, is the story of a young lawyer fighting on the frontlines of a country in thrall to extreme punishments and careless justice. It is an inspiring story of unbreakable humanity in the most desperate circumstances, and a powerful indictment of our broken justice system and the twisted values that allow it to continue. Nobel Peace Laureate Desmond Tutu has called Stevenson “America’s young Nelson Mandela.” His work on individual cases has generated national attention and his efforts have reversed death penalties for dozens of condemned prisoners. Stevenson’s remarkable twenty-minute TED Talk on the subject of injustice has been viewed over 2.35 million times on the TED website and another 299k times on YouTube; The New Yorker named it one of five essential TED Talks. After graduating from Harvard Law School in 1985, Stevenson moved to the South, a region on the verge of a crisis: the states were speeding up executions, but many of the condemned lacked anyone to represent them. On a shoestring budget he started the Equal Justice Initiative, a law practice dedicated to defending some of America’s most rejected and marginalized people. The cases he took on would change Stevenson’s life and transform his understanding of justice and mercy forever. Stevenson is the recipient of numerous awards, including the MacArthur Foundation “Genius” Grant and the NAACP Image Award for Best Non-Fiction, and was named one of Time’s 100 Most Influential People for 2015. Stevenson is a tenured law professor at New York University School of Law. http://www.prhspeakers.com/speaker/bryan-stevenson .

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ANNUAL REPORT 2018 2019 Carroll Bogert PRESIDENT Susan Chira EDITOR-IN-CHIEF Neil Barsky FOUNDER AND CHAIRMAN BOARD OF DIRECTORS Fred Cummings Nicholas Goldberg Jeffrey Halis Laurie Hays Bill Keller James Leitner William L. McComb Jonathan Moses Ben Reiter Topeka Sam Liz Simons (Vice-Chair) William J. Snipes Anil Soni ADVISORY BOARD Soffiyah Elijah Nicole Gordon Andrew Jarecki Marc Levin Joan Petersilia David Simon Bryan Stevenson CREDITS Cover: Young men pray at Pine Grove Youth Conservation Camp—California’s first and only remaining rehabilitative prison camp for offenders sentenced as teens. Photo by Brian Frank for The Marshall Project/California Sunday Magazine. Back cover: Photo credits from top down: WILLIAM WIDMER for The Marshall Project, Associated Press ELI REED for The Marshall Project. From Our President and Board Chair Criminal justice is a bigger part of our national political conversation than at any time in decades. That’s what journalism has the power to do: raise the issues, and get people talking. In 2013, when trying to raise funds for The Marshall Proj- more than 1,350 articles with more than 140 media part- ect’s launch, we told prospective supporters that one ners. Netflix has turned our Pulitzer-winning story, “An of our ambitious goals was for criminal justice reform to Unbelievable Story of Rape,” into an eight-part miniseries. be an integral issue in the presidential debates one day. We’ve reached millions of Americans, helped change “I would hope that by 2016, no matter who the candidates laws and regulations and won pretty much every major are… that criminal justice would be one of the more press- journalism prize out there.
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