The Larger Conversation:

Stacey Borden is the Founder and Executive Director of New Beginnings Reentry Services, Inc (NBRS). Since 1982, for almost 30 years, Borden had been in and out of prison. From her personal experiences and understanding of the system, Stacey became an abolitionist and advocate for women suffering from domestic & sexual violence. Stacey created her organization in response to the lack of resources for these women suffering from past traumas and injustices within prison. The mission of her organization is to reduce recidivism by advocating for and providing services to women reentering local communities. With a Master’s Degree in Mental Health Counseling with a concentration in Addictions and Trauma, Borden is a strong advocate for Drama Therapy for the women she cares for in the organization. In addition to her NBRS work, Borden is an author, performance artist, motivational speaker and an activist. She has been on several panel discussions about the criminal justice system and has spent time as a guest lecturer at Berklee School of Music and Harvard Divinity School. Borden continues to be recognized for her incredible work. She has been honored with the Jane Doe Inc Award, for advocacy in DV and Sexual Abuse of women, the All Things Art Award, for advocacy in supporting women and community, and most recently, Borden won the PEG ERLANGER Award, for her advocacy of women rights against the criminal justice system and human rights by the Criminal Justice Policy Initiative. Currently, Borden is a board member for On With Living and Learning (OWLL) and Families for Justice as Healing. She is also a member of The National Council for Incarcerated and Formerly Incarcerated Women and Girls and The Association for Addiction Professionals (NAADAC).

Erika Rumbley is the Gardner Museum's Stanley P. Kozak Director of Horticulture and Co-Founder and Director of The New Garden Society (TNGS), a Boston-based organization dedicated to training students in the art and science of plants in Massachusetts prisons. Since 2013, Erika has been gardening alongside students in Greater-Boston prison yards on Monday afternoons. Erika is a graduate of Vassar College, with an Honors BA in Environmental Studies and is the recipient of numerous fellowships including the Helen Dwight Reid Fellowship for service on The Crow Indian Reservation. Since her first farm apprenticeship in 2005, Erika has grown ornamentals, cut flowers, fruit and vegetables on farms in New York, Rhode Island and Massachusetts. She honed her skills as a grower as the Greenhouse Manager at Langwater Farm from 2014-2017. In a parallel vein, Erika has served a range of land-based non-profits as a facilitator and adult educator, including Southside Community Land Trust, Boston Natural Areas Network and The Trustees of Reservations.

Photo by Michael Piazza.

Dr. André de Quadros is an artist and human rights activist with work in over 40 countries in the most diverse settings including professional ensembles, projects with prisons, psychosocial rehabilitation, refugees, and victims of torture and trauma. His work crosses race and mass incarceration, peacebuilding, forced migration, and Islamophobia. He is a professor of music at Boston University with affiliations in African, African American, Asian, Jewish, Muslim studies, prison education, and Antiracist Research. He directs choirs and choral projects in Indonesia, Sri Lanka, the United States, Israel and the Arab world, and the Mexico-US border. In 2019, he was a Distinguished Academic Visitor at the University of Cambridge.

Reginald Dwayne Betts is the founder and director of Freedom Reads, an organization that provides access to books for people who are incarcerated. A poet and lawyer, he is a 2021 MacArthur Fellow and the author of four books. His latest collection of poetry, Felon, was awarded the American Book Award and an NAACP Image Award. His additional publications include the poetry collections Bastards of the Reagan Era (2015) and Shahid Reads His Own Palm (2010) and the memoir Question of Freedom: A Memoir of Learning, Survival, and Coming of Age in Prison (2009). In 2012, President Barack Obama appointed Betts to the Coordinating Council of the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention and since 2018 he has served as a member of Connecticut’s Criminal Justice Commission, which appoints state prosecutors. He holds a J.D. from Yale Law School.

Photo by Mamadi Doumbouya.