Michelle Kuo

In 2004 Michelle Kuo joined Teach for America, which placed her in the Mississippi Delta at an alternative school for children expelled from other public schools. She then attended Harvard Law School and worked as a student attorney at the Criminal Justice Institute. Upon learning that her former student Patrick Browning had been arrested and was awaiting trial for murder, Kuo returned to rural Arkansas to help him with his case; she published a memoir of her experience, Reading with Patrick, in 2017. She later taught at the Prison University Project and the American University of Paris, where she is an associate professor.