SUSAN BURTON
After Susan’s five-year old son was accidentally hit and killed by a car, she numbed her grief through alcohol and drugs. As a result, she became enmeshed in the criminal justice system for nearly two decades before finding freedom and sobriety in 1997. Drawing on her personal experiences, she founded A New Way of Life Re-Entry Project (ANWOL) in 1998, dedicating her life to helping others break the cycle of incarceration. ANWOL provides resources such as housing, case management, employment, legal services, leadership development and community organizing on behalf of, and with, people who struggle to rebuild their lives after dwelling in an underworld of incarceration.
Susan is widely recognized as a leader in the national criminal justice reform movement. A past Soros Justice Fellow, Women’s Policy Institute Fellow and Community Fellow under the California Wellness Foundation’s Violence Prevention Initiative, Susan has served on the state’s Little Hoover Commission and the Gender Responsive Strategies Task Force. In recognition of her leadership, she was appointed by Los Angeles County Supervisor Mark Ridley-Thomas as a member of the Los Angeles County Sybil Brand Commission for Institutional Inspections. In this role she is authorized to inspect Los Angeles County correctional facilities and advocate for the health and well-being of people housed in the facilities.
Susan is a co-founder of All of Us or None (AOUON) and the Formerly Incarcerated and Convicted People’s Movement (FICPM), both national grassroots civil rights movements comprised of formerly incarcerated individuals, their families and community allies. In collaboration with UCLA’s Critical Race Studies Program, she launched the Employment Rights Re-Entry Legal Clinic which has grown to be the largest of its kind in Southern California.
Susan has earned numerous awards and honors for her work. In 2010, she was named a CNN Top Ten Hero and received the prestigious Citizen Activist Award from the Harvard Kennedy School of Government. Susan is currently a recipient of both the Encore Purpose Prize (2012) and a James Irvine Foundation Leadership Award (2014). In 2015, on the 50th Anniversary of Selma and the Voting Rights Act, Susan Burton was named by the Los Angeles Times as one of eighteen New Civil Rights Leaders in the nation.
A New Way of Life was recently honored with a Ford Freedom Unsung Award that salutes “organizations that have positively impacted communities with achievements that inform and inspire others.”
A New Way of Life Re-Entry Project PO Box 875288 Los Angeles, CA 90087 | 323-563-3575 | www.anewwayoflife.org