Laurin Leonard (Hodge) is the Executive Director of Mission: Launch and a co-founder of R3 Score. Together with her mother and co-founder, Teresa Hodge (2015 LwC Fellow), Laurin started Mission: Launch based on their lived experience with mass incarceration. The organization advocates for civic technology and inclusive entrepreneurship as a means to accelerate self-sufficiency post-release from prison and/or jail.  Laurin and Teresa were named “Foot Soldiers of the Week” on MSNBC’s Melissa Harris-Perry Show.

By way of LaunchPad, an invitation-only business and leadership development accelerator for entrepreneurs living with criminal convictions, Laurin has supported the formation of worker-owned cooperatives, sole proprietorships and limited liability corporations throughout Maryland and Washington, DC. Laurin is a graduate of Old Dominion University and The Johns Hopkins University, Carey Business School. She is an Echoing Green Fellow, a Cordes Fellow, an Ashoka and Aspen Institute Emerging Nonprofit Leader, an Ashoka and American Express North American Emerging Social Innovator, a Points of Light honoree and a proud member of various communities such as StartingBloc and Hopkins’ Social Innovation Lab.