Empowering Change: Summit Impact’s Criminal Justice Lab

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For over a decade, Criminal Justice has been a central area of learning and activism in the Summit community. From mainstages to intimate discussions, impactful programming led us to ask deeper questions about harm and healing, redemption and safety. After years of deep learning together, we moved from ideas to action. With the launch of Summit Impact in 2020 we piloted a new, community-based approach to driving progress in the field. The Summit Impact Criminal Justice Lab gathered our community around four remarkable Summit Fellows — those leading the way through dynamic storytelling, models for decriminalizing poverty, and the empowerment of progressive leaders with smart, modern and dignity-based solutions for public-safety. We encourage you to continue supporting these Fellows, and to join us to continue collaborating for a better future, for years to come.

OUR APPROACH TO CRIMINAL JUSTICE

Criminal Justice has been a focal cause area within the Summit community for over a decade now. Thanks to Summit team members like Audrey Buchanan and Kenji Summers, as well as community members like dream hampton, Mike de la Rocha, Pete White, Scott Budnick, Gina Belafonte, and Cristine DeBerry, we have held numerous mainstage talks, intimate workshops, and even immersive prison visits in LA county as meaningful elements of Summit events.

John Legend, Bryan Stevenson, Harry Belafonte

Whether it was a conversation between Harry Belafonte, John Legend, and Bryan Stevenson on the mainstage of Summit at Sea 2015, or an emotional gathering at Summit Outside after Trayvon Martin’s murder, we have repeatedly come together for these powerful discussions. We’ve learned about the expansive challenge posed by mass incarceration and continually set our sights on how we can and must do better.

THE HEART OF THE MATTER

Over the years, we noticed how the many discussions, performances, and immersive criminal justice experiences drew us into the heart of our community.

We concentrated on systems of incarceration, policy-level challenges, and misaligned incentive structures that hinder progress. However, it became clear from the start — something long understood by those in the field — that viewing criminal justice solely as a policy failure is insufficient.

If we fail to recognize the essential, universal questions of humanity that arise in criminal justice work, we miss the grandness and depth of the entire field. More importantly, we miss our own humanity when it matters most.

Look no further than Summit Fellow Artie Gonzales’ talk at Summit Palm Desert (min 5:22), and you’ll start to feel the questions arise -

Do we believe redemption is possible? For whom, and under what circumstances?

How much do we credit poor decision-making to environmental factors, and how much to personal responsibility?

Where do punishment and accountability overlap, and where do they differ?

What kind of accountability system would we want should one of our family members, our parents, our children, be caught doing something that harms themselves or others? Can we confidently say we want the same for someone else we don’t know or have any relation to?

How do we confront and address the disparities in incarceration, policing, and the criminalization of poverty that disproportionately impact Black and Brown communities?

How can we, as a community, create a future where Black and Brown youth who are disproportionately affected have the support and resources to pursue every opportunity, free from systems of incarceration and harm?

What makes us see some people, some children, as threatening, while seeing others as benign? Who are we willing to let become monsters in our eyes, in our hearts?

Why is there such a stark foster care-to-prison pipeline? What does this reveal about the kind of care children need and how we can address it?

What does it mean that families of crime victims are often the same activists advocating for a system focused on rehabilitation and restorative practices?

Can we, as individuals, create systems of love and safety with every decision and interaction in our lives? What would the world look like if we did?

If we all operated from this deeply loving place, whose lives could we change? Who could we help bring back home to themselves? Who could we protect with the fierceness of a loving and rehabilitative system?

We have been holding these questions as a community for years now. Living them, letting them enter our hearts, our imaginations.

Through years of creative programming, led largely by Audrey and then by Shira Abramowitz, Cari Levison, and Cat Levin, we heard from people who were formerly incarcerated like James Anderson and Piper Kerman, those wrongfully convicted like Jeffrey Deskovic, police chiefs turned progressive DAs like George Gascón, and iconic activists like Patrisse Cullors, dream hampton, and Scott Budnick, amongst others.

And as we listened and learned together, diving deeper in each year, we still held a central question — what can we do to end mass incarceration?

What action can we take together, to create a more just society?

THE EMERGENCE OF SUMMIT IMPACT

This question about criminal justice, about what we can do in social impact more broadly, was the impetus behind Summit Impact, the newer 501(c)(3) arm of the Summit ecosystem.

Summit Impact exists to turn ideas into action. To activate the power of community to create a more regenerative and equitable future.

In many ways, those of us who launched Summit Impact intended to design the missing puzzle piece — an organization that could offer in-depth collective learning in partnership with Summit Series, and build a bridge from this creative learning into collaborative action.

OUR PILOT: A CRIMINAL JUSTICE IMPACT LAB

Our Impact Labs model emerged as a mechanism of gathering and activating the Summit community.

The model is led by experts from the field — those with lived experience and deep field knowledge. Those with the brightest solutions.

We believe that if we can empower these leaders, those who are actively building a better future, with the unique support of a network like Summit, then we might deepen, accelerate, and scale their impact.

We call this our Summit version of Network Leadership — a leadership and community-coalition building program in one. A training program for the boldest leaders that asks them to operate in a relational field. Summit Fellows evolve their ideas, expand their reach, and access new resources, all through network training and engagement.

Our pilot approach uses these steps:

1. We map the field, understanding various approaches to progress and how they might complement each other — taking the ecosystems view that we need multiple solutions to succeed at once, and that we all win when we win together.
2. We identify shining star Fellows — leaders who have the brightest solutions that can affect systems-level change, and who have lived experience and/or decades of field experience that is guiding their work from a place of authenticity and integrity.
3. We gather the community — through Summit flagship events as well as dinners and virtual events throughout the year that build relationships and spotlight the Fellows’ work.
4. We engage and activate the network around the Fellows through highly curated 1:1 introductions, facilitated group brainstorm calls, and expert-led workshops, all designed to meet the Fellows’ individual needs and advance their key objectives.
5. We tell their stories — on Summit stages and in our Summit Impact newsletters and media we amplify the Fellows’ work. We celebrate their progress in ways that build momentum, engage new audiences in their work, and expand our collective effort.

THE FELLOWS: BOLD LEADERS CHANGING THE WORLD TODAY

We were remarkably fortunate, beyond anything we could have imagined, to work with the four Fellows who comprised our pilot Criminal Justice Lab.

• Artie Gonzales // Founder, Lessons from a Lifer
• Cristine Soto DeBerry // Founder, The Prosecutors Alliance
• Pete White // Founder, LA CAN & EcoHood
• Mike de la Rocha // Founder, Revolve Impact & Tepito Coffee

Throughout the lab program, each Fellow brought an exceptional level of wisdom from years of work in criminal justice reform to our collective effort. More than that, they each brought a commitment to building from love.

Spend a day with any one of these Fellows, and you’ll start to see the world with new eyes. You’ll start to understand possibilities for humanity that we so often forget in our day to day.

Pete White may take you on a tour of LA CAN, the arts, music, and community center in the heart of skid row. Perhaps you’ll hear the gorgeous voices of the Freedom Singers (recently featured on America’s Got Talent!) or witness the legal services they offer to combat the criminalization of poverty, or the advocacy work they do with clarity and conviction in LA County. Or, if you’re lucky, Pete may walk you through a tour of EcoHoods — their newest land development project providing the most cost-effective, sustainable housing solution that LA has ever seen.

Spend a day with Artie Gonzales, and you might find yourself completely challenged in how you understand our human capacity for forgiveness and transformation. Perhaps he’ll share his own story of being sentenced as an adult and incarcerated at age 16 — the radical transformation he underwent in the most impossible circumstances of solitary confinement, and what he now believes is possible if we build a system of rehabilitation that leads to a more loving, safe, and just society.

If you want a more holistic view of activism and media, of where power, creativity, and community meet, you may want to drop in with Mike de la Rocha. A long-time Summiter, musician, entrepreneur, and activist, Mike uniquely understands how we can use the platforms we have and the skillsets we possess to step into new layers of leadership and responsibility. Mike doesn’t just see it clearly, he lives it every day. Redefining masculinity through his writing about his father, building a diverse, multifaceted team that leads nation-wide creative campaigns like “Homes Not Prisons”, and centering storytelling and creativity in the face of any systems-level challenge.

And if you want to take a step further, into a fiercely loving way of building the world we dream about, spend your day with Cristine Soto DeBerry. Cristine is a veteran of the criminal justice field having been a prosecutor, defense attorney, and policy leader. She now leads the way as an entrepreneur, scaling an organization that educates the masses and aligns progressive leaders. There is no one who better understands the barriers we face, or the financial incentive structures and funding parties standing in the way of progress. There is also no one who can better design a system built from love; who can envision improved laws and policies that not only recognize our humanity, but are enacted from that core understanding.

WHAT WE LEARNED TOGETHER

Piloting a project in an arena we care about is challenging. For every triumph and connection made we also felt the untapped potential, the gap between where we have been standing and where we could be. Perhaps this is the inevitable stance of any impact entrepreneur at the start of a new organization or initiative — when you care this much, the gap between what is and what could be feels daunting at best, disillusioning or even shameful at worst.

At Summit Impact, we are fortunate to pilot new programs to support and uplift remarkable leaders as a collective effort, constantly growing and learning together.

We are proud of our accomplishments over the past few years, including our commitment to and support for our Fellows, and all that we’ve learned about improving the Impact Labs model for the future.

Most of all, we are proud of and inspired by our Fellows’ achievements and honored to play a small role in their stories as they continue to grow:

“I’ve learned so much in the past two years through this fellowship…I’ve learned how to network for myself and to develop relationships that are meaningful. I have generated confidence in asking for what I want, going for the yes… I have a better sense of the framework that has to be wrapped around something like the platform I’m developing… I didn’t have a team before like I did at Summit Impact that was able to scaffold me and create outlines and agendas and get people in the room.” — Artie Gonzales

“The fellowship helped me express the heart of the work more concisely…It has given me some incredible relationships with the other Criminal Justice Fellows and has allowed me to access some incredible leaders who gave advice and guidance on building out our organization.” — Cristine Soto DeBerry

You can see more of what we accomplished through our Lab Program in our artfully designed, comprehensive Criminal Justice Lab Report Linked Here.

In the report you’ll see the kinds of events we produced, from an LA Action Day to a series of virtual events on the Power of Forgiveness. And you’ll see the innovative collaborations that the Fellows created over the course of the fellowship — like the five prison visits coordinated by Artie and Cristine that brought over 100 prosecutors to view the system they work in everyday from a new perspective.

Overall, this pilot program taught us a tremendous amount about the field of criminal justice and about how to structure our Impact Labs as we improve the efficacy of our model and scale our work. About how we can activate the power of our network in service of a better future.

A few key lessons we are carrying into the next chapter include:

• Deeper Immersion into our Fellows’ work: Leaders who are in a daily fight for social justice have limited time and bandwidth. Figuring out how to find the area where we can be most helpful, while using the least amount of the Fellows’ time, is an art that our Fellows have helped us learn over the course of this program. Helping leaders optimize their time using the power of a network is one of the key value propositions we can offer for our future Network Leadership programs.
• Personal Connections are Everything: A strong community thrives on consistent, meaningful connections between members, fostering lasting relationships. This isn’t always easy to focus on when you’re heads down getting a new organization up and running. But for an organization meant to activate the power of community, it has to remain top priority.
• Consistency & Clarity: Developing clear models for goal-setting, project identification, and facilitated brainstorming helps both Fellows and community members engage more effectively.When we have these set up and clear from the start, it makes it easier for Fellows & community members alike to engage.
• Communities Thrive in Rhythms of Connection: Regular, predictable interactions — whether annual events, quarterly calls, or other touchpoints — enhance relationship-building. Designing effective rhythms will strengthen our network-building methods.
• Storytelling is Magic: Sharing our successes is crucial for building momentum. Without visible stories of impact, much of the benefit from network engagement is lost. The more we tell these stories, the greater our momentum, influence, and potential for impact.

When it comes to criminal justice and our current system of mass incarceration, there is much more work to do. Summit Impact is still in the early stages of exploring how we can contribute meaningfully to those leading the way toward a safer, more just, and compassionate future.

We are endlessly grateful to everyone who has joined us in this journey, everyone who has been in the arena with us — learning, taking action, and recognizing that this work is central to our community’s identity.

We look forward to continuing forward with you as partners, friends, and collaborators, for years to come.

With care & commitment,

The Summit Impact team

(Authored by Shira Abramowitz, Ashlea Faith Haney, Nick Kislinger, Jordan Reeves, Missie Frandsen, and Valeria Catán, with kind support from Cristine DeBerry and Alyssa Kress)