2025 Fellows
Alyssa Schmidt - Senior Fellow
Alyssa is a rising senior at American University studying an Interdisciplinary Public Policy major and Spanish Language. She has committed herself to learning more about Prison Reform by working with D.C. organizations, including Free Minds and the Georgetown Prisons and Justice Initiative. She is currently serving as a Program Leader at American University where she provides academic and social support to first year students. In her spare time, Alyssa enjoys reading and swimming.
Cheri Alcantar
I am an Arizona native currently living in Columbus, Ohio. I bring lived experience with incarceration and recovery to my work as a direct service provider with Accompanying Returning Citizens with Hope (ARCH) and as a Resource Navigator for RISE Court - a specialty docket of the Franklin County Common Pleas Court. My journey fuels my commitment to advocacy, healing, and support for individuals impacted by the justice system. This has motivated me to supplement my work with ARCH and RISE with volunteer work in the community with the Central Ohio Restored Citizens Collaborative. This direct service volunteerism has allowed me to begin honing my skills. As a Frederick Douglass Fellow, I aim to learn everything I can and to be a source of support, compassion, and guidance for those still incarcerated and formerly incarcerated.
Katy Beiner
Katy Beiner is an incoming senior studying Government and Spanish at Georgetown University with hopes of pursuing a career in public defense. Katy is originally from Madison, Connecticut, and has just returned from a semester abroad in Madrid, Spain. She is passionate about improving prison conditions and highlighting the humanity of incarcerated individuals. Outside of the classroom, she is acting president of Georgetown Students for Prison Justice and a lead academic tutor at the Arlington County Detention Center. She is eager to learn more about prison reform from the Douglass Project team this summer before joining the Office of the Federal Public Defender for DC as an Investigative Intern in the fall.
Brooke Groce
Brooke Groce is a senior at Michigan State University majoring in Political Science with a minor in Law, Justice, and Public Policy. She aspires to pursue a career in public interest law, with a focus on supporting individuals facing incarceration. During her undergraduate years, Brooke explored topics related to mass incarceration and prison reform through coursework and research. Her projects have examined the national response to addiction and how some countries approach its decriminalization, offering insights into alternative justice models.
Brooke’s passion for justice is rooted in personal experiences with family members affected by the corrections system. These experiences, along with a deeper understanding of recidivism and the disproportionate incarceration of marginalized communities, have strengthened her resolve to advocate for reform. She is driven to use her future legal education to serve and uplift those most impacted by systemic injustice and hopes to play a role in creating a more equitable legal system.
Wilfredo Laracuente
Wilfredo Laracuente is an advocate, educator, and formerly incarcerated leader. He aims to provide a voice for incarcerated people by not only providing insight into the struggles that incarcerated people face daily, but actively working towards deconstructing the harmful and dehumanizing nature of prison. He currently serves as the program coordinator for the Prison Education Project at the Center for Justice at Columbia University, in which he assists in teaching incarcerated students at Sing Sing prison. As part of another CFJ initiative, the Justice Ambassadors Youth Council, he mentors justice-involved young people and guides them through developing coping mechanisms associated with trauma and stress. At the Columbia Business School, Wilfredo tutors students in pre-algebra who participate in the Financial Empowerment course and he also is part of an ending forced labor in New York state prison focus group. Before coming home in July 2021, Wilfredo spent 20 years incarcerated in Sing Sing prison and earned his bachelor’s degree in behavioral science.
Hannah Figueroa Velázquez
Hannah Figueroa Velázquez is a senior at Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut, studying U.S. History. She hopes to pursue a career in criminal and immigration law, representing migrants entangled in the criminal legal system. Hannah has experience working with formerly incarcerated communities in New Haven, assisting with criminal record expungement, and has interned at immigration law firms during her summers. She is passionate about dismantling the system of “crimmigration,” which has contributed to the mass incarceration of migrants, and about challenging the U.S. carceral system as a whole. Hannah is eager to contribute to the Frederick Douglass Project for Justice, as she strongly believes that the path toward systemic change begins with meaningful conversations and empathy.