Just Trust Ceo Ana Zamora on Why Criminal Justice Reform Is a Philanthropic Issue

When Ana Zamora was 8, her older brother was arrested for stealing from her parents.

"And so I remember hearing a knock on the door one night and seeing police officers come into our house and handcuff my brother right down the stairs from my little pink bedroom with all my stuffed animals," she tells Vox.

"That is burned into my memory."

Her parents "were at their wits end," she says.

"They were at a loss, they were at their wits end.

And they did the only thing that I think our society offers parents in that situation, which was to call the police and have their son arrested."

Her brother is now in recovery, and "he is thriving right now in spite of the trauma that he faced being wrapped up in the criminal justice system."

As director of criminal justice reform at the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, Zamora was responsible for handing out millions of dollars in grant money to organizations working on the ground to implement practical solutions to mass incarceration.

Her new organization, Just Trust, is distributing $350 million in grant money to address the persistent inequities in the criminal justice system.

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