Colette Payne

Colette Payne is an organizer, leader, student, mother and grandmother. Her passion is to educate families to build healthier communities. From 2014 to 2017, Colette was the coordinator of the Visible Voices program for CLAIM (Chicago Legal Advocacy for Incarcerated Mothers), a program of Cabrini Green Legal Aid. Currently, she serves as the director of the Reclamation Project for the Women’s Justice Institute. In her role, she helps engage women directly impacted by the criminal legal system to become agents of change and to create solutions to end the incarceration of women and girls. In 2015, Colette joined the delegation to assess women’s prisons in Illinois, becoming the first formerly incarcerated woman to serve in this role in the entire United States.