INN Founder and Executive Director is Dr. Baz Dreisinger, Professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, City University of New York; author of the critically acclaimed book Incarceration Nations: A Journey to Justice in Prisons Around the World; founder of John Jay’s groundbreaking Prison-to-College Pipeline program; 2018 Global Fulbright Scholar and current Fulbright Scholar Specialist. Dr. Baz speaks regularly about justice issues on international media and in myriad settings around the world. Incarceration Nations has been published in translation in China, Japan, Taiwan, Italy and in Spanish and Portuguese.
Helene comes to INN with a host of experience in the nonprofit and education sectors as well as in the business of media, having worked at major radio stations in New York City, Philadelphia and Hartford, CT. She is a graduate of City College of New York and The Connecticut School of Broadcasting, and also a loving mother to Reymo.
MT is a citizen of Cape Town, South Africa, where he is an entrepreneur, speaker and leader with lived experience. His organizing and leadership started while he was incarcerated for 13 years in South Africa; it motivates him to work tirelessly to be a change agent and the role model that he never had. Before working full-time with INN, MT worked as a reintegration leader for The Message South Africa, part of a global partnership of organizations working together to raise up generations of urban heroes. He supported formerly incarcerated and incarcerated men and women in job readiness, and also trained them to become baristas. MT is an advisor for Beyond the Bars, which supports women in prison in South Africa, and is Chairman of the SA Community Corrections’ “Offender’s Desk.”
Kofi is the Reintegration Leader at the Ubuntu Learning Community (ULC), a partnership between Brandvlei Correctional Center and Stellenbosch University, launched as part of the Prison-to-College Pipeline-SA initiative. In this role he works with students coming home from prison, supporting them in all aspects of their reintegration and their continued studies. Kofi was himself enrolled in this program while incarcerated, and is now completing his LLB law degree with the University of South Africa(UNISA). He is also a curator for INN’s The Writing on The Wall installation, and a sought-after public speaker and moderator.
João is a Brazilian human rights activist under the intersection of criminal justice and drug policy.
As the Global Coordinator & South America Team Leader with INN, João manages partnerships globally and supports INN’s Education Not Incarceration initiative, with Brazil as one of its focus. João is also involved with the Global Freedom Fellowship and other projects at INN.
In his global activism, João also works as an international working group member at Youth RISE, representing Brazil and Canada in the youth-led network, and is part of the International Coalition on Drug Policy Reform and Environmental Justice. While in Montreal, João is involved with GRIP (Groupe de Recherche et d’Intervention Psychosociale) as a harm reduction supervisor.
At the tender age of 17, Nicholas Khan was sent to prison for multiple charges. It was there, with the help of a fellow incarcerated person serving a life sentence, that he learned to read. After being introduced to the book “The Rose That Grew From Concrete,” by the late Tupac Shakur, he found a passion for poetry. Using an illegal phone inside the prison, he began to share his stories and words, gaining recognition for his work. Through this he met his book publisher and published two books of poetry. Nicholas’s success caught the eye of the Commissioner of Prisons at the time, who, instead of getting Nicholas into trouble,provided him with the opportunity to mentor youth in schools and promote his books on local television and radio stations. Finding a passion for spoken word performance, Nicholas became the first incarcerated person in Trinidad to have a public book launch and perform in a spoken word slam. He also started a T-shirt printing business with his younger brother, Dreamstar Branding, to prevent him from ending up on the wrong path. Shortly after his release in 2023, Nicholas was offered a job as the Reintegration Coordinator for the Link Up program, a Prison-to-College Pipeline initiative through the College of Science, Technology and Applied Arts; he was also awarded a full scholarship to earn his degree at COSTAATT, where he has already founded the school’s first spoken-word poetry club.
Nicholas was selected to be a Global Freedom Fellow by Incarceration Nations Network and in 2024 traveled to South Africa with 15 other formerly incarcerated leaders from around the world. Today he is the Trinidad & Tobago Team Leader for Incarceration Nations Network, where he is running INN’s multiple projects on the island: The Prison-to-College Pipeline program, a legal empowerment initiative with the University of the West Indies, two The Writing on the Wall as Enterprise businesses including a barbershop training academy for people coming home from prison and Critical Mas, the Caribbean’s first musical group of formerly incarcerated artists. He has traveled to Brazil, Antigua and Jamaica as a representative of INN.
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