Staff

Executive Director Jody Lewen, PhD

Jody Lewen started volunteering with the San Quentin College Program in 1999.  She is the founder and executive director of the Prison University Project and is the extension site director of Patten University at San Quentin. She received an M.A. in philosophy and comparative literature from Freie Universität, Berlin and a Ph.D. in rhetoric from UC Berkeley.

Jody has published and presented extensively in the fields of psychoanalysis, literary theory, and criminal justice. She was the 2006 recipient of the Peter E. Haas Public Service Award from UC Berkeley.

Program Director Amy Roza

Amy brings ten years of relevant experience to her work with the Prison University Project. With the Center for Court Innovation, she designed and led prevention and intervention programs for court-involved families and for families from New York City neighborhoods over-represented in the criminal justice system. She also served for four years with the Prison Education Initiative, a collaborative of educators leading academic classes at New York City’s Rikers Island jail. Prior to this work, Amy was a classroom teacher and then supported and trained new teachers in under-resourced public schools. Most recently, she led assessment-driven program improvement at a national literacy non-profit. Amy holds a Masters in Teaching from Trinity College and a BA in Public Policy and Anthropology from Pomona College. Amy began volunteering with the San Quentin College Program in 2009.

Program Associate, Kara Urion

Kara Urion has been co-teaching English and Spanish classes with the Prison University Project since 2009. She holds a BA from Mills College in Oakland in Literary & Cultural Studies with a concentration in Spanish. Kara has worked in prisons and with communities affected by the prison system in various capacities for the past ten years. In 2007, she designed and implemented a health and nutrition course at a women’s prison in Quetzaltenango, Guatemala. From 2003 to 2006, she worked at the Adolescent Reception and Detention Center at Rikers Island in New York, where she led writing workshops and taught G.E.D. classes to high-classification incarcerated adolescents awaiting sentencing. She served as advisor to the literary publication produced by these young men each semester, Keeping It Real. Prior to this, she interned with the Fifth Avenue Committee in Brooklyn, NY, where she facilitated a support group for women with incarcerated family members. While there, Kara also worked with people convicted of felonies, helping them to find housing and job placement upon paroling. Kara began her work in the field in Boston, when she volunteered at MissionSAFE, an after-school program and youth center in the Mission Hill area of Roxbury, MA. In addition to working with PUP, Kara also volunteers with KidCAT, the juvenile lifer group at San Quentin.

Operations Manager Jacqueline Nelson

Before joining PUP, Jackie served as a House Manager at the Center for Women in Transition and as a Workforce Development Specialist at the Human Development Corporation in St. Louis, MO. She holds an M.P.A. (with an emphasis in Human Rights and Social Justice) and a B.S. in Industrial and Labor Relations (with a concentration in Inequality Studies), both from Cornell University.