Danny Murillo

Danny Murillo is the Research and Program Analyst at The Opportunity Institute, a non-profit organization focused on educational equity and creating access to higher education for currently and formerly incarcerated people. He is a Co-Founder and Advisory Board Member of the Alliance for

Higher Education in Prison. The Alliance supports the expansion of higher education in prisons, empowering currently and formerly incarcerated students, and shaping public discussion about education and incarceration on a national level. While at UC Berkeley, Danny was a co-founder of the Underground Scholars Initiative, a student organization dedicated to supporting formerly incarcerated students. In 2013, he was the spokesperson for the Prison Hunger Strike Solidarity Coalition. The coalition was supporting the Short Corridor Collective, a group of incarcerated men in the Security Housing Unit at Pelican Bay State Prison who were engaged in a movement to end long-term solitary confinement in California prisons.

Danny has been awarded the Rockwood Leadership Institute’s 2017 Returning Citizens Fellowship and is a 2016 Soros Justice Advocacy Fellow and a 2015 John W. Gardner Fellow for Public Service.  In 2014 he was awarded a Peter E. Haas Public Service Leadership Scholarship, and the Ronald E. McNair Scholarship. He graduated from the University of California, Berkeley in 2015, with a degree in Ethnic Studies.