Our Advisory Committee

Our Advisory Committee (AKA Leadership Council) are individuals who are currently incarcerated all across the US who guide us on how to best advocate for them and prepare for their reentries. They determine the trajectory of our organization as the most important stakeholders in this equation.

Kirk Haugen

Kirk is a gay man currently incarcerated in Illinois. He is deeply interested in critiquing the current systems of support for and punishment of “sex offenders,” and longs for a world in which prisons (and the legal system as a whole) was dedicated to therapy and correction of oneself.

Stressla Johnson

Stressla is a bisexual  Black man incarcerated at the Oregon State Penitentiary. He is the founder and leader of the Equality 8 group- the first LGBTQ+ group at the prison. He is passionate about justice. He is kind-hearted, and gentle, but meticulous in his work.

Jennifer Sutton

A Native American transgender woman in Washington, Jennifer is best known for her advocacy efforts at Washington State Penitentiary, where she has been working on starting up a Gay Straight Alliance. She has been incarcerated for 22 years and is studying the law in order to help others with their legal cases.

Matthew Craig

Matthew has been a part of Beyond These Walls since the beginning. A 30-year-old gay man incarcerated in Florida, he always extends a helping hand to his fellow prisoners (and free-world penpals). Wiccan, technologically-savvy and business-minded, looks forward to his release, when he can design video games and open his own herbal remedy shop.

Chloe Wakabayashi

Chloe is a transgender woman living at the Oregon State Penitentiary. She has been an advocate of trans rights at her prison. She feels a deep connection to her Asian heritage and says she aims to approach things with an intersectional lens.

Julian Tarver

Julian is a non-binary person who has been incarcerated since the age of 19. They have been a prisoner rights activist for many years, participating in many lawsuits against the Washington Department of Corrections.

Shawn Womack

Shawn is a transgender woman living at Oregon’s only women’s prison. As a Black woman, she has faced a lot of adversity during her imprisonment. She is tenacious and hard-working. She fought the system and successfully got herself transferred from a men’s prison to a women’s prison.