ROMARILYN RALSTON, is program director of Project Rebound at California State University Fullerton  and also serves as the Co-chair of the CSU Project Rebound Policy and Advocacy Committee.  Project Rebound supports the higher education and successful reintegration of the formerly incarcerated with a vision that higher education disrupts the revolving door practices of mass incarceration. Romarilyn is a black feminist prison abolitionist scholar working to interrupt criminalization at the intersections of race, gender, and education.

After 23 years of incarceration Romarilyn earned a Master in Arts degree in Liberal Arts at Washington University in St. Louis and Bachelor in Arts degree in Gender & Feminist Studies at Pitzer College. She has received several honors and awards for her work over the years including being named Pitzer College’s 2020 Distinguished Alumni Honoree, California Senator Ling Ling Chang’s 2020 Woman of Distinction Social Justice Champion awardee, and National Council of 100 Black Women (Orange County Chapter), 2018 Civil Rights and Advocacy recipient. Romarilyn is a 2017-2018 Women’s Foundation of California Women’s Policy Institute alumnus where she served as an integral member of the criminal justice reform team and helped to pass several pieces of legislation in law.