Boris Franklin - Wings of Freedom Club

He is a formerly incarcerated individual who served 11 years in prison and is now a Lead Community Organizer with New Jersey Together. Boris graduated Rutgers University in New Brunswick with a B.A. in Sociology and a minor in Psychology.  Boris was an Instructor for Rutgers University’s TEEM Gateway, a work ready program for at risk youth. He sits on the board of the New Jersey Prison Reentry Program and appointed to Corrections Ombudsperson advisory board. He is also a visiting fellow at the Global Center for Advance Studies in Brooklyn, and an advocate for prison reform and social justice.  He is the author of The Poetic Side of a Man’s Mind, published in 2007, as well as an author and actor in the play “Caged” recently produced and performed at the Passage Theatre in Trenton NJ.

Ivelisse Gilestra - Wings of Freedom Club

She has worked on criminal justice issues at the intersection of higher education challenging exclusionary policies, harmful assimilation and the normalization of the effects to the Prison Industrial Complex. Dissenter by nature and birthplace, she believes in justice inclusive of community healing, and political education uprooting the historical wound of colonialism. Ivelisse has developed effective ways to cultivate relationships to ignite transformational power. A graduate of Rutgers University, she is Co-chair of Survivors of the System. She currently works as an organizer for Metro Industrial Areas Foundation (IAF).