Michelle Jones is a first-year doctoral student in the American Studies program at New York University, and a Research Fellow at the Charles Warren Center for Studies in American History at Harvard University. While incarcerated, Jones published and presented her research findings to dispel notions of the reach and intellectual capacity of justice-involved women. Also while incarcerated, Jones presented legislative testimony on a reentry alterative she created for long-term incarcerated people that was approved by the Indiana State Interim Committee on the Criminal Code. She is currently on the board of Constructing Our Future, a reentry alterative for women created by incarcerated women in Indiana, which provides women leaving prison with access to rehabilitative programming, carpentry job skills and the means to earn their own home and serves as Entrepreneurship Development Director for The Ladies of Hope Ministries as well as a 2017 Beyond the Bars fellow.