Today’s episode is with Shoareged Phillpotts and Sydni Turner from It Takes a Village Collaborative, a nonprofit organization that works with Youth, Women, and Female Returning Citizens in Washington DC. Shoa and Sydni have done excellent work with our Returning Citizens through their “To Be Me” holistic wellness program, where they work with formerly incarcerated women to build self-confidence, awareness, resilience, and advocacy skills. Hope you enjoy and stay tuned for more!

Our guest is Tony Lewis Jr and we invited him to our podcast because he is a native Washingtonian, community leader, re-entry expert, activist, and has focused a great part of his career on families and children with incarcerated parents. He's experienced first-hand the consequences of having a parent sentence to a federal prison and openly speaks about how it has affected his trajectory. In our episode we focus on the city, the criminal justice system, and Tony's life. Enjoy!

This week's podcast episode is with Patrice Sulton, founder of the DC Justic Lab, a non-profit organization consisted of law and policy experts researching, organizing, and advocating for large-scale changes to DC's criminal legal system. She has collaborated with the National Reentry Network on many occasions and has worked closely with retuning citizens to teach them the art of advocacy, giving a chance to be heard. We hope you enjoy our conversation with her.

We invited Councilmember Trayon White to speak on our first podcast episode about the bills and measures he's working on regarding Returning Citizens. Not only that, but because of the past guidance and mentorship he provided to our host for this week, Councilmember Trayon White was able to see how his former youth football player, grew up to be an advocate for criminal justice reform post incarceration. It’s not every day that you can see someone’s journey come full circle.

Our Black Table Talk is soon to be out! Our episodes will aim to bring out the advocate in you- so stay engage because there's much more to come.