Judith Clark is honored to be taking on the role of Director of the Survivors Justice Project. Before taking on this position, she worked for Hour Children, which serves women and their children in Bedford Hills and Taconic prisons and provides housing, family reunification and services for women emerging from incarceration. In her role as Community Justice Advocate, she was active in coalition efforts toward parole and sentencing reform, closing Rikers and issues critical to women and their families impacted by the criminal legal system.

During her 38 years in prison, she worked with her sisters to create peer organizations to address challenges they faced and their desire to grow, to take responsibility for the harm they caused and repair relationships with their families and communities. She was a founder of ACE (AIDS Counseling and Education) and the committee that helped bring back college after public funding was eliminated.  Working in the Children’s Center, she developed programs for mothers to sustain bonds with their children and mentored new mothers living in the prison nursery. She has written extensively about that work, the experience of mothers inside, the spiritual work of remorse and the efforts of women inside to build community.

Judith is a visiting scholar at the CUNY Graduate Center, and lectures at Columbia Law School and Union Theological Seminary, and a member of the Center for Justice’s Right/Write to Heal. In addition, she serves as a senior advisor for the Women and Justice Project, and on the Community Action Board of Elmhurst Hospital’s Growing Hope Doula Program and was one of the founding members of Women Building Up.