(quiet music)
- The path that brought
me to where I am today
starts with my father,
who was incarcerated when I was a child.
He was in and out of federal
prison throughout my childhood
and I didn't really know
the significance of that
until I went to college
and I actually stumbled across a nonprofit
that worked with children
of incarcerated mothers,
which was just a revelation
that there was a group of
people like me out there.
My name is Felicity Rose,
I received my master's of public policy
from the Goldman School
at UC Berkeley in 2011,
and I'm currently the Director
of Research and Policy
for criminal justice reform at FWD.us.
I had studied literary arts in college,
I had a writing and a
communication background,
but I had avoided, basically,
any math (giggling)
or social science classes
because in high school,
I felt like math was completely
disconnected from people
and people was what I cared about.
So it took going to the Goldman School
to understand how I
personally could use data
in my quest to reduce mass incarceration.
FWD works primarily in four states,
some of the highest incarcerating
states in the country,
Oklahoma, Arizona,
Mississippi, and New York,
to try and reduce the
incarceration rate in those states
and expand opportunities for
people and their families
who are impacted by the system.
One of the stories that we told
with the Commutation Campaign
was a woman named Juanita
and when she was sent to
prison, the oldest was 18.
It was lucky that she was 18
because she could then become
the guardian for her siblings,
so they didn't have to enter
the foster care system.
But she had been in school
and she had to essentially drop out.
She had to work and take
care of her siblings
who were as young as six.
And she did that for two years
while her mom was serving
a 10-year sentence
for marijuana possession.
It was pretty incredible
to see her get released
and get to reunite with her kids
and be able to try and
take care of them again
and let them be kids and not little adults
who are trying to survive without her.
It was really amazing to
be able to be part of that.
Stories are incredibly important
but when you're doing policy,
if you want things to actually work,
(chuckling) you also have to understand
the numbers you're talking about.
Somebody will put forward a policy
and say oh, this will solve everything
but when you actually dig down into it,
it'll only affect 20 people
and we're trying to affect 10,000.
And so you have to be able
to understand those nuances
and so that's where the Goldman School
really set me up for success,
was in teaching me how
to make those connections
to see that those data points
are people and they matter.
(emotional music)
