We are thrilled to announce our inaugural Back to the Start Advisory Board. Back to the Start takes a multisector approach and, as such, we are partnering with subject matter experts and thought leaders at the intersection of education, health, social justice, literary arts, and storytelling/entertainment. We have longstanding relationships with our advisory board members grounded in aligned values. We are grateful for their collaboration and thought partnership in amplifying the growing series of Reflection Behind Bars childhood narratives to raise public awareness and galvanize support for systemic change to dismantle the cradle-to-prison pipeline. See profiles of our Advisory board members below.
W. Kamau Bell is a comedian, author, and filmmaker. His CNN docuseries United Shades of America won five Emmy awards, and he was awarded a Peabody for his docuseries We Need To Talk About Cosby. He is most proud of his Emmy award-winning and Television Academy Honors award-winning documentary 1000% Me: Growing Up Mixed. Kamau is a New York Times best-selling author of the book, Do The Work: An Antiracist Activity Book. In March of 2025, Kamau will have a chapter in bestselling author Michael Lewis’ new book, Who is Government? It is based on Kamau’s Washington Post article and short documentary, The Rookie. On the board of directors of Donors Choose, Live Free, and now on the advisory board of Back To The Start, Kamau is the ACLU's Artist Ambassador for Racial Justice. In 2023, he and his wife Melissa Hudson Bell co-founded Who Knows Best Productions, an Oakland-based media production company. In 2025, Kamau will be going on a nationwide stand-up
comedy tour.
Dr. José Alberto Arévalo, M.D., FAAFP is a board-certified family physician with a long and prominent reputation as a teacher, researcher and administrator. He has also served on the faculty of the UC Davis Medical School for the last 30 years where his research focused on reproductive health, gestational diabetes, and Type 2 diabetes. He was the first winner of the California Latino Medical Association Lifetime Achievement Award for Outstanding Contributions to Latino Health Issues. In addition to serving as the founding Chair of the Latino Physicians of California, he is the Founder and Immediate President/Chair of the Sacramento Latino Medical Association and the immediate past Chairman of the California Medical Foundation’s Network of Ethnic Physicians Organizations. He is the recipient of the Pioneer Award from the National Medical Foundation for his lifelong commitment to improving health care to underserved communities.
Rahsaan “New York” Thomas grew up in the notorious Brownsville section of Brooklyn, New York, where he faced gun violence, bullying, redlining, abusive policing policies, generational incarceration, and drug infestation. His choices in the face of such adversity landed him in prison with a 55-to-life sentence. From a cell, he turned his life around and became a writer, curator, director, producer, social justice advocate, restorative justice circle keeper, youth counselor, and runner. He is most known as “New York” on the Pulitzer Prize finalist and Dupont Award-winning podcast Ear Hustle. The Sundance Institute and The Marshall Project awarded him a grant to direct and produce a short documentary film called Friendly Signs, which premiered at the San Francisco Documentary Film Festival. Rahsaan also produced, What These Walls Won’t Hold, directed by Adamu Chan, which won the San Francisco International Film Festival. W. Kamau Bell featured Rahsaan in a United Shades of America episode—all while Rahsaan was still in prison. Now on parole, he is the Executive Director of Empowerment Avenue, an organization that works to develop the careers of incarcerated writers, artists, journalists, and filmmakers. He was a co-founder of the inaugural San Quentin Film Festival.
Carolyn Placente brings deep experience in the nonprofit and philanthropic sectors. She has held leadership roles on many boards and has devoted her life to serving people, especially people furthest from favor and opportunity. Dedicated to culturally-responsive, restorative policies and practices, she served as a Commissioner for the Marin County Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention Commission, where she helped to lead the Commission’s efforts in developing a countywide approach to addressing racial and ethnic disparities and implementing restorative practices in juvenile justice in partnership with schools, community-based organizations, community members, and the County’s Probation Department. She also served as Executive Director for OnePercent for Education which facilitated financial support for educationally-focused nonprofits working toward educational equity. She also leads violence prevention and health workshops for people of all ages. A humanist by training, Carolyn believes our stories are essential to the critical work of reimagining and refashioning our democracy, shaped by an understanding of intersectionality of identities, histories, struggles: who we’ve been and who we wish to become.
Francesca Bell is an accomplished poet, translator, and editor. Deeply active in the poetry world for more than 20 years, she is the Marin County Poet Laureate for 2023-2026, Events Coordinator for the Marin Poetry Center, and Arts Program Coordinator for the Friends of the San Quentin Prison Library. Formerly, she was poetry editor of River Styx. Her first book, Bright Stain (Red Hen Press, 2019), was a finalist for the Washington State Book Award, the Julie Suk Award, and the American Fiction Poetry Award. What Small Sound (Red Hen Press, 2023), was a finalist for the Julie Suk Award, shortlisted for the Eric Hoffer Award Grand Prize, was a finalist for the da Vinci Eye Award, and received an honorable mention in the Eric Hoffer Award Poetry Category. Her writing appears in many magazines including B O D Y, ELLE, Los Angeles Review of Books, New Ohio Review, North American Review, and Rattle, and her poetry has been translated into Italian and Hungarian.
Francesca is a translation editor for the Los Angeles Review. Her translations, from Arabic and German, appear widely in magazines such as Mid-American Review, The Massachusetts Review, New England Review, River Styx, and Waxwing. Her co-translation of Palestinian poet Shatha Abu Hnaish's collection, A Love That Hovers Like a Bedeviling Mosquito, was published by Dar Fadaat in 2017. Whoever Drowned Here, a collection of poems by Max Sessner that she translated from German, was published by Red Hen Press in 2023 and was nominated for a Northern California Book Award.
Bell first turned to poetry as a young person to process pain and isolation as she grappled with family alcoholism, financial instability, mental illness, her mother's hearing impairment, and frequent relocation. With limited access to formal education, Bell is largely self-taught. Multiple members of her family have been incarcerated, in state and federal facilities, and Bell was the main supporter of her cousin during his 16-year sentence for murder and after his release. She volunteers at the San Quentin Rehabilitation Center teaching needlework, leading poetry workshops, and organizing and facilitating author visits. Bell believes that reading and writing poetry can empower people to gain access to their feelings, achieve greater insight into their own lives, learn deeper empathy for others, and heal. She hopes to make a difference to those touched by incarceration as she and her family have been.
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