founders
honorary council
board of directors
staff
volunteers

• Jay Jackson, Executive Director
• Dow Gordon, Inside Prisons Program Manager
• Ruby Phillips, Part-Time Staff
• Katie Talbot, Volunteer Coordinator
• Keith Brooks , Community Program Manager
• Verne Garvie, Office Administrator

Katie Talbott

I have known about Freedom Project since its inception, but I did not become involved until I met three people who had originally participated in the program as prisoners — Rusty, Verne and Dow — at a fundraiser last fall.    Their openness and commitment to connection inspired me to attend a community circle, and then to volunteer in the prison program.  I feel so grateful to all of the members of this community — both inside and outside prison — for opening their hearts and sharing their stories, and for being willing to participate in this shared path of growth.

I have been studying NVC since spring of 2007 and I appreciate the opportunity to use these skills to live as part of a more whole community.   Freedom Project marries two things that are of central importance to me: the practice of being aware of the present moment and the ability to connect with each other through the beauty of our common needs.  Offering these tools and practices to prisoners — members of our community who have tended, through our ethic of blame and punishment, to become either demonized or invisible — has been a relief for me.  Real justice involves the recognition of the ways in which we are all interconnected and in which we all — criminal, victim and bystander — share the same fate.  This work is one small step toward the realization of real justice, that place where we no longer ignore parts of our own "body" or choose to hurt parts of our own "soul."  I am delighted to be part of the Freedom Project team.