Transforming Higher Education Through Lived Experience: Seven Lessons from Overseeing the FICGN Board of Advisors
*”The true measure of our character is how we treat the one who can do nothing for us.” — Malcolm Forbes*
A Different Kind of Leadership
Leadership takes many forms. Some lead from the front, blazing trails with bold pronouncements and visionary rhetoric. Others lead from behind, quietly nurturing talent and creating space for others to shine. My role on the governance committee of the Formerly Incarcerated College Graduate Network (FICGN), where I oversee the board of advisors, has taught me a third path: leadership through stewardship, accountability, and lived experience.
This post shares seven profound lessons I’ve learned in this unique leadership position—insights that have application far beyond the specific context of our organization’s mission. These are lessons about authentic leadership, systemic change, and the extraordinary power of creating institutions that center the experiences of those most affected by the systems we seek to transform.
Lesson 1: Expertise Comes in Many Forms, and Lived Experience May Be the Most Valuable
The Conventional Wisdom
Traditional advisory boards typically prioritize credentials and institutional affiliations—the university presidents, corporate executives, and policy experts whose presence lends legitimacy and opens doors. When I first took on the responsibility of overseeing the FICGN board of advisors, I faced subtle pressure to follow this conventional model.
The Transformative Truth
What I’ve learned instead is that while traditional expertise has its place, the most valuable insights often come from lived experience. The formerly incarcerated scholars, educators, and advocates who comprise our leadership bring an expertise that no degree or title can confer—the deep, nuanced understanding of how systems actually function, where they fail, and what meaningful reform requires.
This isn’t about diminishing professional expertise but rather expanding our conception of what expertise entails. The doctoral-level scholar who studied prison education from the inside, the community college graduate who navigated financial aid systems with a felony record, the law student who experienced firsthand the collateral consequences of conviction—these individuals bring invaluable perspectives that cannot be gained through secondary research or professional practice alone.
In Practice
As overseer of the board of advisors, I’ve implemented a “majority expertise” model—ensuring that while we welcome allies with traditional credentials, at least 60% of our advisors bring direct experience of incarceration and higher education. This isn’t merely symbolic; it fundamentally shapes the quality and authenticity of our work.
During a recent strategy session on expanding prison education programs, an advisor with both a PhD and seven years of incarceration experience provided insights that completely reframed our approach. He identified security protocols we hadn’t considered, relationship dynamics between education providers and corrections staff that would impact implementation, and subtle but crucial language choices in our materials that could either engage or alienate potential students.
These insights—impossible to glean from research alone—have made our programs demonstrably more effective and authentic.
Lesson 2: Governance Structures Reveal Your True Values
The Conventional Wisdom
Many organizations claim to value inclusion, equity, and lived experience—but their governance structures tell a different story. Decision-making remains concentrated among those with traditional power and privilege, while those with direct experience serve in advisory capacities with limited authority.
The Transformative Truth
I’ve learned that governance structures aren’t merely administrative frameworks—they are physical manifestations of an organization’s values and power relationships. How decisions are made, who has authority over resources, whose approval is required for action—these structural elements reveal an organization’s true priorities far more clearly than mission statements or public pronouncements.
In Practice
As part of the governance committee overseeing the board of advisors, I’ve helped implement several structural innovations that align our governance with our values:
1. **Reverse advisory relationships**: Rather than formerly incarcerated members advising institutional leaders, we’ve created structures where institutional leaders advise formerly incarcerated leadership.
2. **Distributed authority**: We’ve decentralized decision-making across multiple committees with clear authority over specific domains, preventing power concentration.
3. **Transparent resource allocation**: We’ve developed participatory budgeting processes where membership has direct input into funding priorities.
4. **Formalized accountability mechanisms**: We’ve created systems where advisory boards regularly report to membership councils rather than the reverse.
These structural innovations have transformed not just who has a voice but who has power—creating an organization where authority flows from those with lived experience to those with institutional leverage, rather than the reverse.
The impact has been profound. When a major foundation approached us with a significant funding opportunity that would have pushed our work in a direction inconsistent with member priorities, our governance structure enabled a clear, principled response that preserved our mission integrity. The foundation, impressed by this clarity, ultimately revised their approach to align with our member-driven priorities.
## Lesson 3: Effective Change Requires Working at Multiple Levels Simultaneously
The Conventional Wisdom
Many change efforts focus primarily on either direct service (helping individuals navigate existing systems) or policy advocacy (changing the systems themselves). This creates a false dichotomy that limits impact.
The Transformative Truth
Through overseeing the FICGN board of advisors, I’ve learned that transformative change requires synchronized efforts across multiple levels—individual support, institutional reform, and systemic policy change. These approaches aren’t competing strategies but complementary elements of a comprehensive change model.
In Practice
I’ve guided our advisory structure to support work at three interconnected levels:
**Individual Support**: Our campus chapters provide direct support to formerly incarcerated students, helping them navigate financial aid, academic requirements, housing, and employment challenges. This direct service work creates immediate impact while generating insights that inform broader reforms.
**Institutional Transformation**: Our institutional partnerships team works with colleges and universities to implement concrete policy changes—from admissions practices to financial aid access to campus housing policies. These institutional reforms create more welcoming environments for current and future students.
**Systemic Policy Change**: Our policy team leverages insights from both direct service and institutional work to advocate for state and federal policy changes that remove structural barriers to higher education for justice-impacted individuals.
The power of this multi-level approach became evident when we tackled financial aid access. Through our direct service work, we identified specific FAFSA questions that deterred formerly incarcerated applicants. Our institutional partners implemented workarounds and supplemental advising to address these barriers. Simultaneously, our policy team used this evidence to advocate for federal financial aid reforms that ultimately removed these questions entirely.
No single approach could have achieved this outcome. It required the synchronization of direct support, institutional adaptation, and systemic advocacy—all informed by lived experience and guided by a unified strategy.
Lesson 4: Authentic Relationships Trump Transactional Partnerships
The Conventional Wisdom
Nonprofit partnerships often focus on transactional arrangements—exchanging resources, services, or recognition in ways that benefit both organizations but remain fundamentally transactional.
The Transformative Truth
As overseer of the board of advisors, I’ve learned that transformative work requires moving beyond transactional partnerships to build authentic relationships anchored in shared values and mutual accountability. These relationships—though often more challenging to establish and maintain—create foundations for more substantive and sustainable collaboration.
In Practice
I’ve guided our advisory board to prioritize relationship depth over partnership breadth through several key practices:
1. **Values-based partnership criteria**: Before entering any institutional partnership, we conduct a thorough assessment of alignment with our core values of justice, equity, authentic leadership, and educational access.
2. **Mutual accountability frameworks**: Our partnerships include explicit accountability measures for both parties, rather than one-sided reporting requirements.
3. **Shared learning commitments**: We structure partnerships around commitments to learn together and adapt based on emergent insights.
4. **Long-term relationship investment**: We prioritize depth of engagement over quantity of partners, focusing our limited capacity on relationships with transformation potential.
This approach was tested when a prestigious university approached us about a partnership that would have brought significant visibility and resources. However, during our values-alignment process, we discovered the institution had recently implemented harsh disciplinary policies against student activists—many of whom were advocating for the very issues at the heart of our mission.
Rather than pursuing a transactional partnership that would have compromised our values, we engaged in honest dialogue about this contradiction. While initially uncomfortable, this conversation led to a more authentic relationship. The university acknowledged the concern, invited our input on policy revision, and ultimately implemented changes that better aligned with principles of justice and student voice.
This outcome—institutional transformation rather than mere partnership—would have been impossible through a purely transactional approach.
Lesson 5: Effective Advocacy Requires Both Moral Clarity and Strategic Pragmatism
The Conventional Wisdom
Many advocacy organizations feel forced to choose between uncompromising moral positions and pragmatic incremental change—between “purity” and “progress.”
The Transformative Truth
Through my governance committee role and oversight of the board of advisors, I’ve learned that effective advocacy requires both moral clarity and strategic pragmatism—not as competing approaches but as complementary elements of a sophisticated change strategy.
In Practice
I’ve helped our advisory structure develop what we call “principled pragmatism”—an approach that maintains unwavering commitment to core values while demonstrating tactical flexibility in how we advance them:
1. **Clear non-negotiable principles**: We’ve articulated explicit values and principles that remain constant across all our work, including the centrality of formerly incarcerated leadership, commitment to educational equity, and recognition of structural racism in both higher education and criminal justice systems.
2. **Strategic flexibility**: Within these principles, we embrace tactical flexibility—working with unlikely allies, accepting incremental gains, and finding entry points for change within imperfect systems.
3. **Multiple advocacy tracks**: We pursue parallel advocacy strategies—supporting both “inside game” reform efforts and more disruptive “outside game” approaches that shift the boundaries of possible change.
This balanced approach proved crucial in our advocacy around Pell Grant restoration for incarcerated students. While maintaining our principled position that educational access is a right, not a privilege, we engaged pragmatically with the complex political realities of federal policy change.
Our advisory board coordinated a sophisticated campaign that included insider policy negotiations, public advocacy, research evidence, and powerful testimonials from formerly incarcerated scholars. We accepted incremental steps and imperfect implementation plans while continually pushing for more comprehensive change.
The result—restoration of Pell eligibility for incarcerated students after a 26-year ban—represents one of the most significant policy victories in higher education access for justice-impacted individuals in decades. It would have been impossible without both moral clarity about the right to education and strategic pragmatism about how to achieve policy change in a complex political environment.
Lesson 6: Narrative Change and Policy Change Are Inseparable
The Conventional Wisdom
Many organizations separate their policy work from their communications and narrative efforts, treating public perception as separate from political change.
The Transformative Truth
Through my work with the FICGN governance committee and board of advisors, I’ve learned that narrative change and policy change are inseparable elements of the same process. Policies are ultimately expressions of public values and perceptions—and those values and perceptions are shaped by the stories we tell about who deserves opportunity and what justice requires.
In Practice
I’ve guided our advisory structure to integrate narrative and policy work through several key strategies:
1. **Centering impacted voices**: We ensure that formerly incarcerated scholars and graduates are the primary messengers for both personal stories and policy positions, challenging dominant narratives about who has expertise and authority.
2. **Reframing issues**: We’ve developed specific language and framing strategies that shift conversations from individual deficits to structural barriers, from charity to justice, and from risk to potential.
3. **Strategic storytelling**: We carefully curate personal narratives that illustrate systemic issues, avoiding both exploitative trauma narratives and exceptional “success despite the odds” framing that can reinforce rather than challenge harmful systems.
4. **Narrative impact metrics**: We track not just policy outcomes but narrative shifts in media coverage, institutional language, and public discourse about formerly incarcerated students.
This integrated approach has created remarkable shifts in both narrative and policy. When we began our work, media coverage of higher education for justice-impacted individuals overwhelmingly focused on exceptional individual stories or rehabilitation narratives. Through strategic communication and consistent messaging, we’ve helped shift coverage toward structural issues—the barriers to education, the policies that create them, and the systemic changes required.
This narrative shift has directly supported policy change. Lawmakers increasingly frame educational access not as a privilege to be earned but as a right to be protected—language directly reflecting our consistent messaging. Institutional partners have revised mission statements and strategic plans to explicitly include justice-impacted students—changes that subsequently drive concrete policy reforms.
The lesson is clear: narrative change doesn’t just support policy change; it makes it possible by shifting the underlying values and assumptions that shape what policies are considered necessary, desirable, or even imaginable.
Lesson 7: True Leadership Creates the Conditions for Others to Lead
The Conventional Wisdom
Traditional leadership models often emphasize the individual leader’s vision, decisions, and authority—their capacity to direct others toward predetermined outcomes.
The Transformative Truth
My most profound lesson from overseeing the FICGN board of advisors is that the highest form of leadership doesn’t draw attention to itself but rather creates conditions for others to develop and exercise their own leadership. True leadership is ultimately about creating infrastructure, opportunity, and support for collective leadership to emerge and flourish.
In Practice
As governance committee member overseeing the board of advisors, I’ve worked to implement what we call “generative leadership”—approaches that continuously expand leadership capacity throughout the network:
1. **Structured leadership development**: We’ve created explicit pathways for members to develop leadership skills and assume increasing responsibility within the organization.
2. **Distributed authority**: We’ve designed governance structures that distribute decision-making authority across multiple individuals and committees rather than concentrating it at the top.
3. **Intentional mentorship**: We’ve established formal mentorship relationships that pair emerging leaders with more experienced ones, creating channels for knowledge transfer and skill development.
4. **Resource access**: We ensure that emerging leaders have access to the relationships, information, and resources needed to implement their ideas effectively.
The impact of this approach has been extraordinary. In just three years, over 40 formerly incarcerated members have assumed formal leadership positions within the network or partner organizations. Several have launched independent initiatives that extend our mission in new directions. Others have been appointed to state and national advisory bodies on higher education and criminal justice.
Most significantly, we’ve seen leadership capacity continuously expand rather than contract. Traditional organizations often struggle with leadership transitions and succession. Our model of generative leadership has created an organization that becomes stronger with each new cohort of leaders—each bringing fresh perspectives while building on the foundation established by those who came before.
The Blessing of Purpose: Reflecting on My Journey
Serving on the governance committee and overseeing the board of advisors for the Formerly Incarcerated College Graduate Network has been one of the most profound privileges of my professional life. It has challenged conventional wisdom about expertise, leadership, and change while demonstrating what becomes possible when we build institutions that center the voices and experiences of those most affected by the systems we seek to transform.
Beyond the specific lessons outlined above, this work has reinforced my belief in the extraordinary untapped potential within communities that have been systematically marginalized. I have witnessed formerly incarcerated scholars produce groundbreaking research, develop innovative programs, secure significant funding, and influence policy at the highest levels—achievements that challenge pernicious narratives about who has expertise, authority, and leadership capacity.
I’ve also developed a deeper understanding of genuine systemic change—the kind that transforms not just policies and practices but the underlying values, assumptions, and power relationships that shape them. This type of change isn’t achieved through singular breakthroughs or heroic leadership but through patient, persistent, multi-faceted efforts guided by those with the deepest understanding of the systems being changed.
Perhaps most importantly, this work has reinforced my conviction that education is not merely a path to individual advancement but a powerful tool for collective liberation and social transformation. When we remove barriers to educational opportunity—particularly for those who have been most systematically excluded—we unleash potential that benefits not just individuals but entire communities and institutions.
As I continue in this role, I carry these lessons into each new challenge and opportunity. The path forward isn’t always clear, and the barriers remain substantial. But I draw constant inspiration from the extraordinary individuals who comprise this network—people who have overcome incarceration, systemic barriers, and societal stigma to become scholars, educators, advocates, and leaders.
Their journey reminds me daily that the true measure of any institution lies not in its prestigious affiliations or resource accumulation but in its capacity to create conditions where human potential can flourish—especially for those who have been most systematically denied the opportunity to develop and share their gifts.
That remains the core mission of the Formerly Incarcerated College Graduate Network and the guiding principle of my service on its governance committee and oversight of its board of advisors. It is work that challenges, inspires, and fulfills me daily—a blessing of purpose for which I remain profoundly grateful.
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*This blog post reflects my personal views and experiences as a member of the governance committee and overseer of the board of advisors for the Formerly Incarcerated College Graduate Network. If you’re interested in learning more about the network or getting involved with its mission, please visit the official FICGN website.*
