Jarrell E. Daniels

Jarrell E. Daniels is a community organizer, research scholar, and the founding director of the Justice Ambassadors Youth Council (JAYC) at Columbia University’s Center for Justice. Rooted in an ethos of “policy-by-proximity,” JAYC facilitates meaningful connections between government officials and young adults from New York City’s most underserved neighborhoods, in an effort to integrate the voices and experiences of marginalized individuals into government policy solutions, with a focus on system reform and community empowerment. 

JAYC was borne of Jarrell's own remarkable journey from incarceration to academia. He enrolled in his first college class (“Inside Criminal Justice”) while still in prison and later went on to earn a BA in Sociology and African American Studies from Columbia’s School of General Studies. As an emerging leader in the movement for justice, safety and liberation, he worked closely with the New York City Mayor’s Office of Criminal Justice and Kings County District Attorney’s Office to launch Project Restore Bed-Stuy, an innovative community-based gang-violence intervention program designed to address the root causes of violence and transform the lives of young adults deeply entrenched in street-crew dynamics. 

Currently pursuing his doctoral studies at New York University, Jarrell was a member of the 2023 inaugural cohort of the Global Freedom Fellowship, was a 2021 Truman Scholar, and was awarded a Youth Activist Fellowship in 2019 from the Open Society Foundations.