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Advancing Smart Justice in California: Meet the 2025 Spark Community Advisors
Published Date
California is home to thousands of individuals who have been impacted by the justice system and are seeking pathways to education, healing, and meaningful careers. This year, the Michelson 20MM Foundation is sharpening our Spark Grants focus to support innovative efforts in Smart Justice. This includes initiatives that expand higher education in prison and create reentry pathways into the workforce. To help guide this work, we’re proud to introduce the 2025 Spark Community Advisors whose lived experience and expertise ensure our grantmaking remains responsive and inclusive.
2025 Smart Justice Focus Areas
- Efforts that scale and increase higher education and workforce development pathways for incarcerated individuals pursuing firefighting careers
- Initiatives with innovative approaches to higher education in prison (HEP) programming
- Projects that help ensure the quality of education being provided in HEP programs
- Efforts that analyze the landscape of HEP programming in California to support the launching of a California HEP consortium, a group that will advance recommendations on best approaches in HEP/Reentry programming and policy statewide
Meet the Spark Community Advisors
To ensure the Smart Justice Spark Grants reflect the needs and realities of the communities most impacted, we’ve partnered with five advisors. They bring deep lived experience and professional expertise in higher education in prison, reentry, and restorative justice. They’ve helped us design this funding cycle ensuring its focus on advancing systems change, uplifting justice-impacted voices, and shaping a more equitable future for Californians.
Jessica Hicklin
Co‑Founder and Co‑Executive Director, Unlocked Labs
Jessica Hicklin is the co‑founder and co‑executive director of Unlocked Labs, a St. Louis–based nonprofit. Hicklin’s team is on a mission to “build a better justice system from the inside out.” Drawing from her lived experience, Hicklin helps lead the development of UnlockEd, which is an open‑source educational platform for incarcerated learners. Hicklin also oversees initiatives that hire currently and formerly incarcerated developers to build tools that improve accessibility and measurability of prison programming.
Taffany Lim
Deputy Director, Prison Education Program, University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA)
Taffany Lim, Ed.D. is the deputy director of the Prison Education Program at UCLA. She wrote the book, The Ripple Effects of College Programs in Prison: Hope, Humanity, and Transformation (Bloomsbury Publishing, 2025), in partnership with 13 formerly incarcerated college grads whom she has worked with for more than a decade. Previously, Dr. Lim served as the executive director of California State University, Los Angeles’ Center for Engagement, Service, and the Public Good, where she oversaw campus programs and initiatives that promoted community engagement and collaboration.
Julissa O. Muñiz
Assistant Professor of Education, UCLA
Julissa O. Muñiz, PhD is an assistant professor of education in the School of Education and Information Studies at UCLA. She examines the conditions that both enable and constrain teaching, learning, and identity development among incarcerated youth who are living and learning in juvenile court schools. Dr. Muñiz earned both her PhD and MA in Human Development and Social Policy from Northwestern University; her Ed.M. in prevention science and practice from the Harvard Graduate School of Education; and her B.A. in Ethnic Studies from the University of California, Berkeley.
Azucena Ortiz
Co-Founder, Healing and Justice Center
Azucena Ortiz (ella, she, her, they) is a Guatemalan-born, Los Angeles–raised facilitator and co-founder of the Healing and Justice Center. For over 21 years, she has created spaces of healing and resilience through movement, nonviolent parenting, and restorative practices. Ortiz co-leads Parenting Beyond Walls, collaborates with Mend Collaborative on Days of Healing inside prisons, and is a teaching artist with We Still Move.
Miguel Quezada
Co-Founder and Co-Director, Mend Collaborative
Miguel Quezada is the co-founder and co-director of Mend Collaborative. Mend Collaborative is a restorative justice organization that creates access to healing processes for families and individuals impacted by violence. Previously, Quezada served as a batterer intervention program facilitator, crisis intervention counselor, community health worker, community organizing, policy director, program manager, and consultant creating curriculum for rehabilitative programs.
The Smart Justice Spark Grants funding cycle will close on September 16, 2025. To learn more and submit a proposal, visit our website.
About Michelson 20MM
Michelson 20MM is a private, nonprofit foundation working toward equity for underserved and historically underrepresented communities by expanding access to educational and employment opportunities, increasing affordability of educational programs, and ensuring the necessary supports are in place for individuals to thrive. To do so, we work in the following verticals: Digital Equity, Intellectual Property, Smart Justice, Student Basic Needs, and Open Educational Resources (OER). Co-chaired and funded by Alya and Gary Michelson, Michelson 20MM is part of the Michelson Philanthropies network of foundations.