Executive DirectorFor Freedoms
Claudia Peña is an artist and serves as the Executive Director of For Freedoms which is an artist collective that uses art and creativity as a catalyst for transformative connection and collective liberation. She is the founding co-director of the Center for Justice at UCLA which centers art and uses education, research and advocacy to end mass incarceration. It is also home of the Prison Education Program which creates innovative courses that enable faculty and students to learn alongside participants who are currently incarcerated. She is on faculty at UCLA School of Law and in the Gender Studies department where her scholarship focuses on civil, human, and disability rights, race and gender, as well as social movements, decarceration, and trauma + resilience-informed lawyering. Claudia has devoted her entire life to social justice work through community organizing, consciousness-raising across silos, coalition-building, teaching, advocacy through law & policy and the arts.