Piper Kerman

When she served on JLUSA’s Founding Advisory Board, Piper Kerman was the author of the memoir Orange is the New Black: My Year in a Women’s Prison. The book was then adapted into an Emmy Award-winning original series for Netflix.

Piper collaborates with nonprofits, philanthropies, and other organizations working in the public interest and has served on the board of directors of the Women’s Prison Association and the advisory boards of the PEN America Writing For Justice Fellowship, InsideOUT Writers, and Healing Broken Circles. She has been called as a witness by the U.S. Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights and Human Rights to testify on solitary confinement and women prisoners, and by the U.S. Senate Governmental Affairs and Homeland Security Committee to testify about the federal Bureau of Prisons. Piper has spoken at the White House on re-entry and employment to help honor Champions of Change in the field, as well as the importance of arts in prisons and the unique conditions for women in the criminal justice system.

In 2014 she was awarded the Justice Trailblazer Award from John Jay College’s Center on Media, Crime & Justice and the Constitutional Commentary Award from The Constitution Project. The Equal Justice Initiative recognized Piper as a Champion of Justice in 2015.