Jhody Polk, d’Alchemist, is the founder of the Jailhouse Lawyers Initiative (JLI) and the Legal Empowerment & Advocacy Hub (LEAH), housed at NYU School of Law’s Bernstein Institute for Human Rights. She is a 2025 David Prize Winner, 2024 Global Freedom Fellow, 2020 Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Legacy Award recipient, 2019 Peacebuilder of the Year, and a 2018 Soros Justice Fellow.
She co-founded the International Incarcerated Paralegals Congress (IIPC), a growing global alliance of incarcerated paralegals from across the world and organizations growing legal empowerment in prisons.
Jhody helped lead Florida’s historic Amendment 4, a people’s campaign, restoring voting rights to 1.5 million people with felony convictions. She also served as the Director of Community Justice at the River Phoenix Center for Peacebuilding and currently sits on the Board of Directors for Namati.