Liz Swavola

Liz Swavola serves as Chief Impact Officer at the Women’s Prison Association, leading the Impact Department, which leverages storytelling, data, research, and advocacy to shift public opinion, influence criminal legal system practices and policies, and advance community-based support as an alternative to incarceration. With her team, Liz ensures that WPA’s data, resources, communications, and advocacy are cohesive and align with the organization’s impact goals and mission to make incarceration of women obsolete. 

For nearly 20 years, Liz has partnered with communities and coalitions across the country to drive transformative systems change and advance racial and gender justice. Most recently, as the Director of Public Safety Innovations at the Center for Policing Equity (CPE), Liz collaborated with Black and Brown communities, advocates, and government actors to redesign public safety. Before that, Liz was the Director of the Jail Decarceration Initiative at the Vera Institute of Justice, leading a team of researchers and policy experts to end mass incarceration at the municipal and county level. Liz has also worked to improve law enforcement and community responses to gender-based violence, co-founded an organization serving people coming home from prison to the Bronx, and was a law clerk in the New Jersey Superior Court Appellate Division.