Rhonda Leland

I was incarcerated for 28 years, and during that time I started working with what would become the Freedom to Choose Project back in 2004. David and Bonnie Paul turned it into a nonprofit organization and came into the prison, and I continued doing the work for the next 23 years while still incarcerated. When I came home, I stepped right into this work full-time. My responsibilities include developing programs inside California prisons and revamping existing programs. I work with a distance learning program where volunteers provide feedback for individuals working on themselves via mail. I facilitate workshops with over 200 to 250 incarcerated men, which has been a huge accomplishment for me, especially stepping into that front-of-the-room speaker role after being incarcerated for so many years. Right now, I'm relocating to Fresno for three months to personally teach classes twice a week at Central California Correctional Facility for Women, the largest women's prison in the United States, to resurrect a failing program and train the women there to become facilitators themselves. We're in five different prisons, and my plate is pretty full with curriculum development, workshop facilitation, paperwork, and onboarding new volunteers to become mentors.