Greetings!

I need support paying off a financial balance and covering my tuition for the next two semesters in my doctoral program.

I wanted a Ph.D. before I even earned my GED. During my incarceration, I got the crazy idea that I wanted to get a Ph.D. I cannot even say exactly what compelled me to have this aspiration. I never felt confident in school. I was tracked into special education and failed two grades before dropping out of school. But after going through a healing and transformative process that helped me realize my true potential and how the systems that I interacted with growing up were rooted in white supremacy and a racist belief that I was intellectually inferior and innately criminal, I courageously recommitted myself to succeeding educationally...in a maximum security prison.

Two degrees later, I am a little over a year away from completing my doctorate. The journey has been far from easy. Being formerly incarcerated has posed challenges that I could never have foreseen. Reacclimating to the free world after a decade of being socially on pause in prison made focusing exclusively on my academic career nearly impossible. Also, as a wounded healer working in nonprofit, I was equally committed to helping others heal and reclaim their power similar to the way that others supported that process for me. And most importantly, as a father raising two boys in the healthiest way possible, my education had to take a back seat to life.

Anyone who knows me in the slightest way knows that I will use my doctorate to help others heal and to elevate the experiences of formerly incarcerated students.

In love and solidarity!

Richard