Samantha Kennedy is the Executive Director of Promise of Justice Initiative (PJI), a criminal defense and civil rights organization based in New Orleans. PJI challenges some of the most oppressive and harmful systems targeting Black, brown, and poor people, including the harms of mass incarceration.

Samantha is an attorney, lecturer, capital defense mitigation expert, and strategist. She has led complex investigative fieldwork throughout Europe, South Asia, the Middle East, Sub-Saharan Africa, and the United States. For almost a decade, Samantha focused on the Global War on Terror developing a case against the death penalty for a defendant at being held at Guantanamo Bay. Samantha is the former co-director of the ACLU Capital Punishment Project’s Scharlette Holdman Mitigation Mentorship Program, a national effort to support mid-career specialists.

Samantha obtained a Bachelor of Arts degree in Sociology/Anthropology from Carleton College and a juris doctor from Loyola University New Orleans College of Law.

Sara Gozalo is the narrative storyteller at Promise of Justice Initiative in New Orleans. Since she joined PJI, Sara has worked on our End Jim Crow Juries and End Plantation Prison campaigns. Sara's diverse educational and professional experiences have all been motivated by her desire to fight for the right of every person to live in dignity. Sara earned a Ph.D. in immunology because she wanted to help find a cure for HIV/AIDS. When she found herself craving a more creative means to fight for social justice, Sara moved to New York City and earned an MFA. Her training in media and storytelling through film became critical to her community organizing work as she began to use writing and filmmaking as a medium for activism. Sara is originally from Madrid, Spain. She is a queer immigrant who is determined to imagine and build a just world.

Terrance Winn is a Shreveport, Louisiana resident who at the age of 16, was sentenced to life imprisonment. He ultimately served 30 years after the U.S. Supreme Court decision Montgomery v. Louisiana where he was ultimately granted parole. Winn was incarcerated at the slave plantation, Angola, or Louisiana State Penitentiary. For decades, while in prison, Winn was forced to work in the fields of Angola. When he refused to pick cotton, Winn was punished with solitary confinement. Winn endured at least six periods in solitary confinement, including one that lasted 13 months.

While incarcerated, Winn obtained a GED diploma and culinary degree. Since his release in 2020, Winn founded the non-profit Priorities, Intentions, Positive Exchanges (PIPES), an organization that advocates for criminal justice reform. Winn has testified twice before the United Nations and at the United States Senate in support of Senator Cory Booker’s bill addressing forced labor in prison.