Episode Details

In episode twelve of the 12-part podcast series, "White Men & the Journey Towards Anti-Racism," Tim interviews Jared Fishman, a civil right lawyer and Founding Executive Director of Justice Innovation Lab, a company building data-driven solutions for a more equitable, effective & fair justice system.

This series was created to be a resource for white men who might be wrestling with questions like, “What’s my role in anti-racism, equity, inclusion, and justice work as a white man with power and privilege?” and “How might my personal commitment to do this work manifest itself in the organization I help lead?”

Are you new to the series? Check out episode 54 where podcast co-hosts Lauren Ruffin and Tim Cynova introduce and frame the conversations. Download the accompanying study guide. And explore the other episodes in this series with guests:

• Raphael Bemporad (Founding Partner) & Bryan Miller (Chief Financial Officer), BBMG
• Ted Castle (Founder & President) & Rooney Castle (Vice President), Rhino Foods
• Ron Carucci, Co-Founder & Managing Partner, Navalent
• David Devan, General Director & President, Opera Philadelphia
• Jay Coen Gilbert, Co-Founder, B Lab; CEO, Imperative21
• Kit Hughes, Co-Founder and CEO of Look Listen
• Marc Mannella, Independent Consultant, Former CEO KIPP Philadelphia Public Schools
• John Orr, Executive Director, Art-Reach
• David Reuter, Partner, LLR
• Sydney Skybetter, Founder, CRCI; Associate Chair & Senior Lecturer, Theatre Arts & Performance Studies Department, Brown University

Want to explore resources related to this episode? Jared suggests:

• [Race and the Criminal Justice System] New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness by Michelle Alexander
• [Race and the Criminal Justice System] 13th, A Documentary
• [Race and the Criminal Justice System] Slavery by Another Name: The Re-Enslavement of Black Americans from the Civil War to World War II by Douglas Blackmon
• [Race and the Criminal Justice System] Condemnation of Blackness: Race, Crime, and the Making of Modern Urban America by Khalil Jibran Muhammad
• [Race and the Criminal Justice System] Punishment without Crime: How Our Massive Misdemeanor System Traps the Innocent and Makes America More Unequal by Alexandra Natapoff (on the impact of low level charges)
• [Race and the Criminal Justice System] Locked In: The True Causes of Mass Incarceration and How to Achieve Real Reform by John Pfaff (on prosecutors role)
• [Data and Justice] Weapons of Math Destruction: How Big Data Increases Inequality and Threatens Democracy by Cathy O’Neil
• [Date and Justice] The Rise of Big Data Policing: Surveillance, Race, and the Future of Law Enforcement by Andrew Guthrie Ferguson
• [Alternatives to the Status Quo] Until We Reckon: Violence, Mass Incarceration, and a Road to Repair by Danielle Sered
• [Behavioral Science] The Behavioral Code: The Hidden Ways the Law Makes Us Better…or Worse by Benjamin Van Rooij & Adam Fine
• [Behavioral Science] The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion by Jonathan Haiti
• The Marshal Project’s daily newsletter of the most important criminal justice stories from across the U.S.
• Serial Podcast, Season 3 is another good resource explainer on the Criminal Justice system.

Guest

JARED FISHMAN is a former federal prosecutor and the founder and executive director of Justice Innovation Lab, an organization that designs data-informed solutions for a more equitable, effective, and fair justice system.  Justice Innovation Lab uses a collaborative approach to identify and fix inequities in jurisdictions across the United States. Prior to founding Justice Innovation Lab, Jared served for 14 years as a senior civil rights prosecutor at the US Department of Justice, where he led some of the most complex civil rights prosecutions in the country, securing convictions in high-profile cases involving police misconduct, hate crimes and human trafficking.   He began his career as a line prosecutor at the Washington, DC US Attorney’s Office, where he handled domestic violence and sex offense cases. Jared regularly speaks on issues of data-driven criminal justice reform, police accountability, hate crimes, and human trafficking, and has trained international and local police, prosecutors, and judges. His work and analysis have been featured on CNN, CBS, CBC, and in the New York Times and the Washington Post., and he serves as adjunct faculty at Georgetown University and at the George Washington University Law School.

Host

TIM CYNOVA (he/him) is the Principal of Work. Shouldn’t. Suck., an HR and org design consultancy helping to reimagine workplaces where everyone can thrive. He is a certified Senior Professional in Human Resources (SPHR) and a trained mediator, and has served on the faculty of Minneapolis College of Art & Design, the Banff Centre for Arts & Creativity (Banff, Canada) and The New School (New York City) teaching courses in People-Centric Organizational Design and Strategic HR. In 2021, he concluded a 12-year tenure leading Fractured Atlas, a $30M, entirely virtual non-profit technology company and the largest association of independent artists in the U.S., where he served in both the Chief Operating Officer and Co-CEO roles (part of a four-person, shared, non-hierarchical leadership team), and was deeply involved in its work to become an anti-racist, anti-oppressive organization since they made that commitment in 2013. Earlier in his career, Tim was the Executive Director of The Parsons Dance Company and of High 5 Tickets to the Arts in New York City, had a memorable stint with the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra, was a one-time classical trombonist, musicologist, and for five years in his youth he delivered newspapers for the Evansville, Indiana Courier-Press.