About Jesse Lava

Jesse Lava's career is about transforming hearts and minds to promote social justice. He now runs Brave New Foundation's Beyond Bars campaign, which produces videos and engages social media to fight mass incarceration in the United States. The campaign's most important job is storytelling; it inspires change by illuminating the lives of those ensnared in our nation's dysfunctional criminal justice system. Previously, Jesse has done communications for progressive groups, worked to reclaim the national values debate from the religious right, and campaigned door-to-door for political candidates. He got his bachelor's from Wesleyan University and a master's in public policy from Harvard University. Jesse lives in Los Angeles but will always be a Chicagoan at heart.