Vera Institute of Justice

Danny is currently a Soros Justice Advocacy Fellow, working to create a network of formerly incarcerated students throughout California's postsecondary education institutions.

Previously, Danny was a program analyst at Vera, where he worked on the Pathways from Prison to Postsecondary Education project. He also worked as a completion counselor at the NJ-STEP Mountainview Program at Rutgers University-Newark, and was a John W. Gardner Fellow in Public Service at the University of California, Berkeley, from which he holds a BA in ethnic studies.

At UC Berkeley, Danny participated in the Ronald E. McNair Scholars program. His research focused on the disproportionate rate of suspension of black male students in Oakland’s public schools. Danny was also a Peter E. Haas Public Service Leader at the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights; his role was national policy intern on a community-driven research project that addressed the economic impact of mass incarceration on communities of color. He was also a research assistant for the Carceral Geographies Course Thread, a curricular initiative sponsored by the Townsend Center for Humanities. Danny also co-founded the Underground Scholars Initiative, a student association dedicated to supporting UC Berkeley students who have been personally impacted by incarceration. The mission of the initiative is to create alternatives to criminalization and incarceration. It firmly believes that, through a critical education, formerly incarcerated people can rehabilitate and transform their lives.