Romarilyn Ralston
Executive Director
UCLA Prison Education Program
Romarilyn Ralston is a nationally recognized advocate for education justice, policy reform, and transformative leadership. She currently serves as the Executive Director of the UCLA Prison Education Program, where she leads efforts to institutionalize higher education in prison and create reintegration pathways for incarcerated and formerly incarcerated students.
Romarilyn brings over three decades of leadership and advocacy experience shaped by her lived experience as a formerly incarcerated woman and her academic scholarship. She is a doctoral student in Management at the Peter F. Drucker School of Management at Claremont Graduate University, where her research centers on leadership identity, resilience, and carceral systems. She previously served as the Executive Director of Project Rebound at Cal State Fullerton, where she expanded educational access and wraparound services for system-impacted students.
Her commitment to structural change is rooted in abolitionist principles and community organizing. Romarilyn has advanced criminal justice policy through her work with the Women’s Policy Institute (WPI), where she collaborated on legislation impacting the lives of incarcerated women and families. As a long-time member of the California Coalition for Women Prisoners (CCWP), she has worked on campaigns for sentencing reform, conditions of confinement, and the leadership development of incarcerated women lifers. She has also served on numerous national advisory boards, helping to shape strategies, research agendas, and movement-building efforts that support the dignity, freedom, and leadership of incarcerated and formerly incarcerated people.
Romarilyn was the Activist-in-Residence at UCLA’s Center for the Study of Women, where she worked on her forthcoming abolitionist memoir Monsters & Matriarchs and partnered with the Hammer Museum on the public program Fighting Two Fires. Her writing and thought leadership appear in All Our Trials, Critical Perspectives on Teaching in Prison, Socialist Feminism, and Citizen by Claudia Rankine.
Romarilyn leads with a vision of equity, healing, and institutional transformation.