Far too many take freedom for granted. For wrongfully convicted individuals, freedom is just the beginning—life after exoneration is full of hidden obstacles. In this episode of Women Advancing, host Kate Byrne speaks with Joi Thomas Adams, Executive Director of Life After Justice (LAJ), which centers the voices of exonerees and their loved ones. Learn how LAJ uses research to drive empathy, why the crisis affects many women, and the role of holistic healing. If you believe justice doesn’t end at release, tune in to see how you can help advance change. Listen now to uncover hard truths and hear why all ships rise when women lead.
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Watch the episode here
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Joi Thomas Adams | Life After Justice: Building An Ecosystem Of Healing, Advocacy, And True Freedom
Building A True Future For The Wrongfully Convicted
Far too many of us take for granted our freedom. I bring this up because there’s a sad growing population of wrongfully convicted folks who would give anything for what we live every day. When they finally do get free, it’s just the beginning. Sadly, they often end up feeling so incredibly abandoned because life after justice or freedom, it’s rife with many obstacles.
My guest is Joi Thomas Adams and she’s the Executive Director of Life After Justice. Life After Justice is created by and for the wrongfully convicted, and it’s changing what justice looks like, and frankly, sounds like. They have been busy creating data and research to help other organizations who are trying to help these unfortunate people who find themselves locked behind bars for no real true crime through the groundbreaking national campaign to amplify the voices of America’s wrongfully convicted and their loved ones.
They’re gathering data stories and the hard truths that so many people look the other way and for far too long have been silenced. They’re shining a light not only on the men who’ve been failed by the system, but the extraordinary, growing number of women, mothers, daughters, sisters, whose experiences are far too often invisible. They’re pairing that truth-telling with something that is just as radical and that’s healing.
Life After Justice is truly building an ecosystem of support, from mental health care to community reintegration, ensuring that when freedom comes, along with it is that dignity of self, stability and belonging it should have always carried. In this conversation, the two of us, we talk a lot about what it means to move to thriving, how data can actually drive empathy, and why amplifying voices may be the most powerful form of justice there is because who better than to tell the person who’s just had lived experience.
Please support this organization. They’re really doing extraordinary work. I’ll be sharing links on best how to support them. If you believe that real justice doesn’t end at release and it begins with being heard, then get ready to jump in and add your voice to this mix and change the legacy of many a generation to come. Don’t forget to stay to the end for the KB Takeaways.
I can’t wait to delve into this episode’s conversation, one that’s really important and so often people are uncomfortable to discuss. The more quickly that we get comfortable talking about it, the more we can really drive positive change. Let me introduce to you a powerhouse, Joi Thomas Adams, who is the Executive Director of an extraordinary entity named Life After Justice. Joi, welcome to the show.
Thank you so much for having me.
Pleasure. Before we jump in, and I believe me, I’m biting my tongue because I really want to jump into some key questions, share a little bit just about what Life After Justice is.
Founding & Initial Mission Of Life After Justice
Life After Justice was originally founded in 2012 by Jared Adams and also his fellow exoneree, Antoine Day. In 2012, Antoine and Jared came together and really a state of disbelief of what was happening in the wrongfully convicted community. That essentially summed up to nothing. There were no resources. Both Jared and Antoine had served respectfully for about a decade, wrongfully incarcerated. By the time they had come home, they had no resources, nothing.
In fact, Jared came home with just his state issued shoes from prison, and that is it, to a couch to his retired parents. Antoine and Jared started Life After Justice to build community within their community. Two things happened in 2012. They founded Life After Justice, but also Jared got into law school. Largely why Jared was wrongfully convicted when he was a teenager was that he had in inadequate counsel.
Jared’s other determination when he came home in 2007 was to become the advocate he didn’t have. He and Antoine made a pact in 2012 that they would start LAJ, but then he would go on to law school and become a clerk in the same circuit that overturned his conviction and then also become the Innocence Project of New York’s first staff attorney who was also exonerated themselves.
Along the way, Jared was blessed enough to meet and marry me. Fast forward to 2020, the world is on fire. We all know what happened that year. Jared and I had a lot of conversations about the state of the world in general, but also the state of his world and his experience so far and so was Antoine’s. That’s when literally, I remember waking up at 2:00 AM in the morning with everything going on, saying, “What are we going to do?” We knew that LAJ had to grow to meet the moment.
Unfortunately, I can’t tell you, Kate, that in 2020, things had improved. When LAJ was founded in 2012, no, there was still nothing. We now knew from Jared’s experience and from my observations what needed to happen. That’s was really the turning point of where we started re-imagining justice through Life After Justice.
That is fantastic. That’s really why you had to light a fire under it and get out there and really start getting people aware of the situation, because it’s so easy to put something like this off. “That’s so not my world, so not my thing.” Really in the long run, we’re all connected. It’s everyone’s issue. That’s one of the things I think of this because, just because, one, you’re wrongly convicted, then you get out. The physical release from prison doesn’t end the trauma at all. The damage is done. You are walking around with this albatross of this invisible sense. What are some of the most misunderstood emotional or mental health impacts of wrongful incarceration? How are you all helping people reclaim that sense of self so that they can walk with confidence and pride?
Mental Health Impacts Of Wrongful Incarceration
Life After Justice Board has collectively served almost over 90 years wrongfully incarcerated. All of the things that we do come from an informed lived experience space and thought and frankly, emotion. For us, mental health is where we start. Life After Justice does stuff in the legal space and our strategic litigation, national survey amplification, but really mental health support is what I want to say our main vein.
I would say, to answer your question about what I think from my observations, and it’s even just with this survey we can get into a little bit later, but we’ve been asking questions in the mental health space to get more information and voices directly from our population. I would tell you from the preliminary results from our survey that we’re in the middle of doing, one of the misunderstood factors about mental health impact is the loss of self or the theft of self.
How these individuals on top of having their lives stolen and coming home to nothing, are coming home with such a disassociation from who the state told them they were in order to wrongfully convict them. Also, who they were before even this happened, and then who they’ve become along this journey that’s been forced upon them. The complexity of that is not really talked about, like that aspect of it. It’s more than just the horrible impact of being incarcerated in some of the world’s worst prisons. It’s this complexity that when you didn’t do the thing, when you’re not the person that they painted you to be, and even convinced, unfortunately, some of your family members that you are.
That is horrific. If ever there was full, that didn’t make you feel completely abandoned in every possible level, be it yourself and others. What an extraordinary sense of helplessness and how I would think why bother-ish? You’re up against a wall.
I would say the other thing would be impact on women. I have to put that into this answer because women are a largely invisible population in wrongful conviction because when you think about wrongful convictions, I feel like the picture that you see usually is a male. For our statistics, Black males, because it’s more than 70% of wrongful convictions impact people of color, particularly African Americans.
Women are a largely invisible population in cases of wrongful conviction. Share on XWhat we left out of the conversation in that mental health impact, the physical and emotional impact is not talked about enough and is not looked from their unique perspective. Even what is the population of wrongful convicted women, the large majority of them are tied to the death of their child. All of these different complexities that go to being a woman in this tragedy, frankly, is sometimes I feel like very much misunderstood and not talked about.
I would think so, and I bet it lingers, but why don’t people talk about it?
From my observations and just, again, being in this work and talking to people inside out, I feel like sometimes we think that there are one-offs because there are a couple of concepts that we have to sit with in order to have the conversation. The first largely being is that our system gets it wrong. That is a possibility. At Life After Justice, we’re not necessarily about dismantling the system itself. It’s more of making it live up to the expectation that Americans have for it because we’re paying for it.
I feel like most people think that our system is working the way that it’s supposed to, or if it isn’t, they’re not connecting the real damage of when they get it wrong. The human aspect of it, there’s a lot of systematic change in conversations about social justice transformation and change in the system, but I feel like wrongful conviction is not talked about because they feel like it’s the one thing. It’s a one-off, it’s one person here we see on the news, there’s one here, but this growing population that’s only been tracked since 1989. That’s only with the numbers shown. I feel like it’s America’s growing secret.
Best kept secret. It’s really interesting that that is the case because it does seem so random and it potentially, statistically, is a smaller portion. You just said the key piece, but it’s growing. That’s the thing that you have to really pay attention to.
Just to be clear, this is everybody’s problem.
I think that’s a big piece of it, too. I think those who aren’t and haven’t experienced it disassociate. Whenever you do that, everyone, I’m just going to say it’s just like saying, “I would never do that.” Just saying, chances are you will be impacted at some point. Share a little bit about your survey and the research projects, because they’re really groundbreaking in that they bring about data and humanity together. What are the stories and statistics revealed to you about the systems and how they continue to fail people even after exoneration?
Groundbreaking Data & Research Strategy (National Amplification Campaign)
Our national amplification campaign was started out of LAJ’s vision for the future is that we are pioneer builders for ecosystem of support for wrongfully convicted individuals and their loved ones. When we are starting to have these conversations, the first thing that when you’re talking about ecosystem building, you have to really know who’s in your ecosystem and what they need
When you’re looking at the landscape, there’s not been like a very national broad scope survey of questions to this population. In order for us to really talk about what needs are, questions needed to be asked. We needed to build the data because it’s not currently existing. It’s like one study here and there, but not something at national scope and comprehensive, asking the various different categories.
More importantly, what is very significant to LAJ is that it is being done from an impacted perspective. We’re challenging taking the science experiment because even though there’s not a broad database, this population has been over surveyed through academia. There’s been many people who are curious about wrongful individuals and have done different types of surveys, different types of qualitative and quantitative research. We were challenging that construct. If we were going to put a mirror up to our own community and tell our own stories, then shouldn’t we be leading the charge? LAJ took a group of individuals who are impacted, lived experience-led, and trained them to be the scientists instead of the scientist experiment.
Freedom: Life After Justice isn’t necessarily about dismantling the system, but about making it live up to the expectations Americans have for it.
Smart. Flip the script. Nice.
Exactly. Our survey was crafted and designed by lived experience, not just from our LAJ board, but in also larger individuals from the larger innocence community on purpose, because we wanted to build a table. The board knew we’re talking about programs, even though they collectively have served 90 years wrongfully incarcerated, they’re not the total sum of experience in their own community. That’s why we built the survey. That’s why we’re asking questions that were not asked before, particularly for families, because that’s personal to me.
As I mentioned, I am married to Jared Adams, our co-founder. In addition to that, I had a brother who was incarcerated. I grew up going to visit prisons and jails across various different states and understanding that impact from someone who was otherwise incarcerated. That’s what really pushed me into this work because when I met Jared and learned about the wrongful convicted community and through my own experiences, it blew my mind to think that you don’t even belong here, and then your family don’t belong here either. It was mind-boggling to me. I’m like, “There’s no help for you all? There’s no one asking who you are and what you need?”
That’s the part of the survey that we’re focused on gathering. Through that, we’re hoping to then be able to have data-driven conversations because we have the stories. Obviously, looking at 2025, there are still holes. Those stories have in driven change transformation. We need more than just stories. We need data to say, “If here is who they are and what they need, and if you do this, here’s your return on investment.”
That’s what I was going to say, that last piece exactly. Complete the loop and call it back to here’s the ROI you’re going to gain. Back to your very first statement, this is all of our issues because it impacts us. It’s a whole domino effect.
It’s a community ripple effect. We’re collecting financial information for the first time, which is uncomfortable too with talking about this with people who were taking our survey. The community needs to understand the real cost of wrongful conviction. Not just to the wrongful convict individuals themselves, not just to their family, but to these communities.
When you’re looking at some of these payments that are going out, they’re tax dollars, so these are going away from paying for a park or education and things like that. Do we understand how much a city spends on lawyers dealing with these cases and fighting compensation? Is this really what taxpayers want to do with their dollars? I don’t know. I can’t speak for everyone, but my point is we have to have data so we can have real conversations about real solutions here.
What I want to really share with people, and thank you for that point, is that this is not just a big city problem. I was sharing with Joi when we were getting to know each other, I had to go through the most eye-opening situation I’ve ever experienced a long time with the Charlottesville traffic court. It was ridiculous. They’ve sent 7 people to jail for 48 hours. I get speeding, but these were for speeding. All I kept thinking was that’s expensive for everybody, for that person who came from Tennessee because they were driving through the state. Anyway, the whole thing needs to be rethought.
Those are some questions need to be really asked. What are we doing? Why are we doing it? Is this what we really intend to see happen? Jared says that I’m always very optimistic in a sense. Fundamentally, we don’t believe that that’s what we want to see out of the systems that we are funding and that represent us. I fundamentally don’t think that that is supposed to be the result, but it is. That’s what we’re dealing with.
We’ve talked a bit about the barriers that regional investors and philanthropists face in funding systemic justice work, which has got to be incredibly frustrating. What’s the biggest misunderstanding about where the real leverage points in the justice reform lie?
I would say it is in our two main areas of focus, mental health care. I feel that if people understood that deep and transformative investment in mental health care, it is the linchpin of any return on investment. If you are looking to invest to build programs and for housing, employment, all of these things, I will tell you what my board has said. All of those things are needed and important factors, not just for our wrongfully convicted population, but for other populations. Investors want to do this in these communities. If we are not really talking and having conversations about holistic healings for these individuals, how successful will those programs be?
Deep and transformative investment in mental health care is the linchpin of any return on investment. Share on XWhen our board decided to focus on, we’re doing a survey, but what service we were going to offer, actually dig in and build internally to LAJ, we landed on mental health care because we knew that return on investment would yield the most results. We are preparing people to be able to receive and bear the fruit of investment in other areas of job growth and all of the other sort. I would also say the other misunderstanding I would fill in this field is the deep investment of data. When numbers haven’t been gathered from the voices of the people you are trying to help, how are we really building these programs and how effective will they be?
It’s no different than when people parachute into another country and they say, “We’ve got the answers,” and then they drop something and then they go when they actually ha don’t have anything, bear absolutely no interest or any help at all to the community at large.
The intention is there. I think it’s just time to take that intention and have open ears and listen and be curious first. That’s what we are doing.
Lead with curiosity. I like that.
I feel like curiosity is the first answer before you can get to a solution.
The Model Of True Partnership With Funders (Chicago Beyond)
I know that Chicago Beyond’s investment with you was catalytic and it helped launch programs that didn’t exist before. Thank you, Chicago Beyond. What have you learned from that with what like true partnership really looks like between funders and frontline change makers?
Chicago beyond, I feel like they’re so at the forefront of thinking about what it really means to be social justice impact investors because they knew from the get-go that it wasn’t about just writing a check. It was about building a table. I would say empowering us to build the table. Chicago Beyond just didn’t write a check. What they did was truly see us and see who we were, what our vision for the world. They said, “We’re going to stand behind you, beside you, whatever you need us to, our role to play to make sure you get there.”
They didn’t just write a check. They provided us with research and resources and true partnerships every step of the way by remaining curious, by asking questions, by setting up a flow between us and them of communication and constant insight that they were growing but from a place of curiosity. Not that I know how you should do this but, “What are you thinking, Joi? What are you thinking, Jared? We know someone in this area. Why don’t we set you up to talk to them?” When we were strategic planning, “Why don’t we sit down at the table and work together with this?” To be frank, I wish other funders had an opportunity to really learn how Chicago Beyond moves, because it’s in the direction that we need.
It also goes back to everyone has such a flat definition of what success is usually. To your point, everyone thinks investment is financial first. Yes, that is very important. There’s no getting around that. Financial, there are so many currencies we all have. Social, relational, everything. When you are considering these things, at Good Lake Capital where I worked for a while, we used to call it Smart Money, where you arrive and in addition to your dollars, you say, “How else can I help you all improve, get smart? What else do I have to give beyond just the money and just be dumb and wait for returns?”
I want to make sure I say this. Chicago Beyond are very smart investors, talking about investing these transformative amounts into these non-profit organizations. For me, the way that they invest and how is very smart. If you take a business analysis of it, you’re shoring what you are investing in, the thing that you’re betting on. Let me tell you to be clear, the check is important. The money is important. Hands down, that is what is necessary to do all the things. They understand that in order to get your full return of investment on it, it can’t just stop at the check writing. That’s what I think it makes Chicago Beyond the way that they do and move in this space, it makes them very brilliant investors.
We’ve touched a little bit upon it. LAJ is led by people who have lived. What they really now want is to work to heal. How does that change and or does it change, affect, impact the conversation inside the organization’s walls and in rooms for policy or philanthropy are being shaped?
Absolutely because if you look at what we’re doing, our programs and our focus of doing a national survey of focusing on mental health care, and then our litigation strategy. No one else is doing this work in our innocence space. No one else has created a mental health program, particularly that is designed to deal with the barriers that once existed for people often convicted getting this help. No one has collected the data at this stage, in this way from an impact-led perspective. Nothing about us without us.
We’re looking to eradicate wrongful eviction by looking at not just post-trial work, but pre-trial work, building relationships to say, “How do we stop this at the funnel, at the beginning of the funnel versus just at the end?” I would say all of that comes from the fact that we are led by people who have lived it. They see the world differently. They see the possibility of solutions.
Jared says this all the time. He gives this analogy about the fire hydrant in a fire. You pull up to the fire and the firetruck all line up and everyone is aligned to the holes to control the water to get it to the fire. Who do you think knows where to point the hose at the best? The people at the front of the line, the people who are closest to the flames.
I would say the fact that we have this experience leading everything that we do is where our creativity comes from, our perspective. Also, leading by example. When we’re talking about policy, and we’re talking and we’re having these conversations, it is led from an experience from a human perspective. It’s not just numbers. It is human saying, “This is what we need and who we are.” It’s always going to be different, Kate, in any scenario. The product, the result and the impact will always be different.
I’ll let you does all this work with all that, and thank you for sharing that because I think it’s really important that people hear that. You work across every layer of the system and this one, it’s got a lot of layers. It’s a big honking onion. How do you balance the urgency of the individual needs with that painfully slow grind of structural change? I would have no hair. I would pull every strand out. It would so frustrate me.
When you think about it and you think about what the conditions of wrongful convicted individuals, and again, going to how our board operates, on average, it takes about 9 to 10 years for someone to come home after a wrongful conviction. You’re talking about individuals who are very familiar with how slow the system works.
However, they are individuals understanding the priority and the immediate need that individuals on the ground need. We have to do both. We have to act in the moment as best as we can. Even though we can only take so many cases, we are limited with our funding, and then we only can have so many people in our mental health care pilot program, but all of those individuals need our help now.
They can’t wait for the systems to change and funding to catch up. What we’re hoping to see is that by doing this immediately on the ground, we are collecting the data and the stories that when the systems are catching up to where we already know they need to go, we’re ready. We can have meaningful conversations, so we have to do both.
It’s like the slow plotting in the long run. It may be a little slower, but in the long run, it’ll end up getting you.
This is just not checkers.
The power of partnership is key to the success of driving anything. You can’t do things alone. Share on XWith all that, I could imagine you work so hard and then when it does come through, it’s incredibly heartening. What gives you hope when that work feels heavy, and if those systemic boulders feel so incredibly unmovable?
I sit in a space of gratitude to be able to do this work and to serve this community because when I start feeling that way, I think about our board, the people that we are touching through LAJ, these individuals who have seen the worst of life, like the worst of what these systems have to offer. However, they choose to sit at the table to be a part of solution. They’re not required to do that. When you are the survivor, you are not required to then go fix the problem that impacted you.
These individuals choose to lean in and to do this work, which is sometimes re-traumatizing for them. That’s where I get that. That grace, that energy is insatiable, that optimism. Even though the world has shown them the worst, they see a vision, a possibility, they’ve not given up on our society, on our systems. That’s what I sit in when these moments seem impossible, where it’s like watching paint dry. Their energy is their response to this. Their tenacity. That’s what drives me. It’s what centers me. They’re amazing.
Lived Experience Leadership & Source Of Hope
Share a bit with the readers too who the board members are comprised of, because some of these folks, lived experience.
You have our co-founders, Antoine and Jared, and then we have Obie Anthony. He also founded his own organization, Exoneration Nation. We have Terrill Swift. Terrill was behind legislation connected to his case of juveniles and when you are questioned by the police and changing the rules around that, not just in California, but also in Illinois.
We have Anna Vasquez, who’s currently the first exonerated president of the Innocence Network. You have these community leaders. I call them my Justice League because they’re all these heavy hitters in this community that have dug deep in this work. They all collectively decided to come together with Life After Justice because of their work in the communities. They understood the need for collective work and collective community building. The power of partnership is another key, I feel like, to success of driving anything. You can’t do this alone. Our board knows that. As I said, they’re a powerhouse team of individuals who share a vision of hope and determination for the future. That’s why that is to help bring it together.
It’s a really important point, I think, for everyone who’s reading. It’s true in certain areas, but in general, there can be so many nonprofits and what ends up happening is they don’t collaborate. They take care of this little piece. Everyone’s fighting for the same dollars. The magic that could be made if everybody joined forces and then got some collective grants and then deployed accordingly based on their area of expertise.
The truth is, if you break down the process, it is a process. If part of it doesn’t get its funding, the whole thing gets screwed up. I really applaud you all for recognizing that and saying, “This bigger piece, this end result is the most important piece of all. We’ve got to just get over ourselves and do whatever we possibly can to get this thing done.”
Absolutely. Mission first. Our board understands how we move. I go back to our survey, one of the reasons why we are collecting this data is not for LAJ just to hold. It is to be a tool for the community because what we also know, we are not on the ground in all every single state, but with the data, we can partner and say, “What do you know your community needs? Here is data that can help you get that.”
Everybody has a goal. For instance, with our mental health program, the reason why we’re doing a pilot is because our hope is that we have data so we can say, “Illinois, here is data that supports you on the ground in your community, the way your community needs, building a mental health program. Here’s a structure.”
That is the energy that LAJ brings as being a value-add organization. That’s driven by our board’s understanding of what you just said. We are better together. In this current climate, if we don’t lock arms and hands and toes and feeding all the parts, we are not going to survive. If LAJ goes away, if we are not able to find support to continue our work, no one else is doing it. It becomes a void. That can’t happen.
LAJ is literally like a leg up for everyone. Thank you for setting that. In closing, huh? Now that you know what, my friend, what would you tell your younger self?
What I mentioned before, curiosity for me is the first answer before you can get to a solution. I remain curious in all facets of my life. I think that helps and serves me. I think that talking to my younger self, I would tell her to be extremely curious all the time. Ask all the questions, and don’t be afraid of asking questions. That’s okay.
I would say, again, the power in partnership. You cannot do this alone. You have to be humble enough to know when to ask for help. Also, empower yourself to understand just as much as you can see everybody else’s magic, recognize your own. I feel like I would definitely tell her to make sure that you’re watching how your magic grows as you continue to get deep into this work.
Have fun along the way. Joi, how can people help you? Should they go to your site?
Yeah. Please go to LifeAfterJustice.org. Click that Donate button because as I said, the dollars are important. That’s how we need to grow and to be able to get to where we want to see the world. Also reach out, Joi@LifeAfterJustice.org. Email me. If you have thoughts or as you said, the different types of currencies that we need, the relationship building, LAJ is a new organization. We need more people to know us, what we’re doing and how we’re moving in order for us to reach our goals. Click that donate button and reach out. I would love to talk to any and everyone.
Let’s get on it. Don’t be strangers, please, because this is so important. As we’ve just shared, this impacts all of us. When we link hands and, obviously, share wallets, everything helps. Joi, such an honor and a pleasure. Thank you so much for taking the time. Talk about doing God’s work, seriously. Jared, too. There are a lot of people who would’ve gone through that and said, “Bye. See you. Talk to the hand.” It’s just so heartening to hear about that depth of character. I would hope it would seed the question. Let’s use that as an inspiration to see if we can help. If we haven’t discovered that in ourselves, how could we and who else can we help?
If Jared were here, he would say that people may find him impressive, but hopefully, his experience would impress upon them the need to help.
With that, a huge thank you to you. We’re going to be keeping an eye on what ends up happening. Possibly, if I can, at the Women Advancing Summit, would love to have you all come and share.
Absolutely. I would love that. Thank you, again, for having me.
My pleasure. Until next time.
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Powerful conversation with Joi Thomas Adams and scary stats, especially with the impact of wrongful incarceration on women alone. The population is up 600% and 80% of that are with wrongful crimes. It’s ridiculous. It’s scary. I want to say my KB Takeaways, stay curious, for sure. This is everyone’s problem. It’s not theirs over there. It’s all of our problems.
Second KB takeaway, power of partnership. Link arms together to really drive this change. Know your own value and then put it to play. When you’re an investor, remember, investing doesn’t only have to be financial. There are so many different forms of currency. Social networks is equally, if sometimes not more important than just financial. Collaborate.
With that, I’m going to leave it there because I want you to think a little bit about what you could perhaps do to help change this incredible situation and growing situation of wrongfully incarcerated folks. What would the impact be if we were even able to diminish it 10%, 15%? The legacy that lives in shifts really is phenomenal. I look forward to our next conversation. Let me know what you think.
Important Links
About Joi Thomas Adams
Joi Thomas Adams, Executive Director, Life After Justice
Inspired by her passion for bringing compelling stories to life, Joi Thomas Adams uses her skills as a lawyer to draft and negotiate a variety of television and film programming deals. Her colleagues and clients value her adept ability to anticipate business changes, offer innovative solutions and share legal guidance on risk allocation, regulatory compliance and strategic planning. And it’s that breadth of experience that she brings to her non-profit work.
Joi’s involvement in the non-profit world began years ago – first as a board member and then as the decade-long president of Chicago’s Minority Legal Education Resources (MLER). Joi’s visionary leadership was punctuated with masterful fundraising and consensus-building. With those tools, she revitalized the existing programming and redeveloped its resources devised to assist law students from underserved communities in passing the Bar exam.
In her personal life, Joi met and later married Jarrett Adams – a man wrongfully convicted at age 17, exonerated a decade later and today a lawyer – who co-founded Life After Justice (LAJ). Her marriage brought her to a new purpose and the culmination of her experiences made her an invaluable member of LAJ.
With Joi at the helm of Life After Justice, she helps bring to life Jarrett’s pledge that no other wrongfully convicted individual goes through what he did to regain his freedom. By building on his story, Joi and the Life After Justice board and team are creating a new ecosystem of support for the wrongfully convicted community.