Alejo Rodriguez

Alejo Rodriguez

  • Lecturer in Law
Education

MPS New York Theological Seminary
BA Syracuse University

Director of Strategic Initiatives for the Center Institutional and Social Change at Columbia Law School, Founder and Lecturer in law of Breakthrough in Advocacy Through Transformative Learning Exchange (BATTLE) Lecturer of Law.  Founder and curator of our Community-Centered Participatory Justice practice; Alejo is an innovative program designer and social justice advocate for dismantling the prison-industrial complex and structural racism. Providing leadership in building participatory collaborations through skill based learning exchanges between law school students and individuals who have direct lived experience with incarceration. A public speaker, a social justice advocate whose struggles with parole and legal discoveries were published in CUNY Law Review Obscure Legacy of Mass Incarceration: Parole Board Abuse of Parole Eligible Lifers. His poetry appears in Outlaw Bible of American Poetry and Doing Time 25 Years Of PEN Prison Writer Awards. Alejo’s insights as a teaching artist while incarcerated appears in “And Still I Write,” in PEN America’s The Sentences That Create Us. Alejo is also a founding lead facilitator of Tribeca Film Institute’s screening series at Otisville Correctional Facility. He is also the co-screenwriter of a short film entitled UNBECOMING. A facilitator of Trauma Informed Lawyering 101 training and professor of Punishment, Prisons and Global (In)justice at The New School. A Research Consultant for MDRC’s Council of Lived Experience Advisors. Alejo also serves as an executive board member for Gideon’s Promise and the Parole Preparation Project.