Philanthropy Innovation Summit 2025 | Salon Sessions

Michael Mendoza is the California-based National Criminal Justice Director for LatinoJustice.  

At 15, Michael was transferred to adult court and sentenced to 15 years to life in prison. While incarcerated, Michael turned his life around and focused on healing and education to become the person he wanted to be. Changes in California state law gave Michael the opportunity to demonstrate that he matured into a healthy and prosocial adult.

Michael earned his release in 2014 after 17 years of incarceration. He immediately began advocating for juvenile and criminal justice and earned a B.A. degree in political science from San Francisco State University. Throughout his career, Michael has helped pass over two dozen pieces of legislation in California and other states across the country testifying and advocating for key changes to law. His favorite bill to work on was SB 1391 which made California the first state in the country to prohibit 14- and 15-year-old kids from being transferred to adult court in 2018. 

The California state legislature has also recognized Michael for his advocacy and impact on the juvenile and criminal justice system and reentry. Michael was appointed by President Biden as a Member Practitioner for the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP) to ensure we treat children like children, keep them close to home, and provide children meaningful opportunities to reach their full potential.

Elizabeth Calvin is an attorney, and the senior advocate in the Children’s Rights Division of Human Rights Watch. Her work focuses on children, youth, and young adults who face the harm of the juvenile and criminal systems, and she uses policy and legal advocacy, research and writing on human rights violations, and strategic action for change. Elizabeth relies on the leadership of people directly impacted by human rights violations to determine the direction of her work, and she is in constant partnership with youth activists, faith groups, family members of incarcerated youth, survivors of crime, people in prison, and people who were formerly incarcerated, among others.

Her leadership in coalition-grounded efforts in California has led to more than two dozen significant laws being passed, many with first-in-the-nation strategies to reduce incarceration and prioritize the potential of young people. These laws serve as models for change in other states, and Elizabeth regularly consults on legislative efforts across the country. In California, their passage means, among other things, youth are much less likely to be prosecuted as adults, and instead must be provided services and educational opportunities in the youth system; young people never face police interrogation alone, without an attorney; the sentence of life in prison without parole for people under age 18 has effectively ended; and half of all prison parole hearings in the state benefit from the Youth Offender Parole law.

In addition, a series of laws Elizabeth worked on are shifting the youth justice system from being corrections-based to one focused on public health approaches; established the first office of youth justice and youth ombudsperson; and enacted the Youth Bill of Rights for youth who are locked up. These and other changes in law affect the lives of tens of thousands of young people.

In 2025, Elizabeth’s work is meeting the urgency of this moment, recognizing the need to safeguard from attack the protections for youth that have been won in recent years, and defeat attempts to return to the “super predator” era that demonized young people of color. Simultaneously, there is a need to not lose sight of long-term goals and press forward with changing the youth justice system. ­­­­This coming year, she will head up efforts in California to defeat harmful bills, work on passing laws that help prepare youth to successfully reentry their communities, and lead a team working toward ending the prosecution of children as adults in other states.

Elizabeth is the author of Human Rights Watch reports on youth sentenced to life without parole, foster care and homelessness, and the effects of prosecuting of children under 16 as adults.

Liz Simons is chair of the board of the Heising-Simons Foundation. A former teacher, Liz worked in Spanish-bilingual and English as a Second Language (ESL) classrooms, and subsequently founded Stretch to Kindergarten, a spring-summer early childhood education program. Liz is chair of the board of The Marshall Project, a nonpartisan, nonprofit news organization that seeks to create and sustain a sense of national urgency about the U.S criminal justice system. She also serves on the boards of The Foundation for a Just Society, Math for America, and the Learning Policy Institute. She is a founding pledger of One for Justice, and an advisory board member of Smart Justice California. Additionally, she volunteers at The Beat Within, a magazine by and for incarcerated youth.

In 2023, President Biden appointed Liz to serve as a member of the Coordinating Council on Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, an independent organization in the executive branch of the federal government that examines how federal programs serving systems-impacted youth and other federal programs and activities can be coordinated among federal, state, and local governments to better serve vulnerable children and youth.Liz earned a bachelor’s degree in journalism from the University of California, Berkeley, and a master’s degree in education from Stanford University. Liz Simons and Mark Heising founded the Foundation in 2007 and joined the Giving Pledge in 2016, publicly committing the majority of their wealth to philanthropic causes.