Michael Simmons, 48, is an accomplished educator and writer whose leadership has shaped both education and policy reform in Illinois. His childhood was marked by generational trauma that followed his family from the Jim Crow South to Chicago’s inner city, including the loss of his father to gun violence at age six.

Years later, Michael stood in a Cook County courtroom, convicted for participating in a crime that took another man’s life. When the victim’s mother spoke, her words offered not condemnation but hope. Her forgiveness became the seed of Michael’s transformation—and the beginning of his work to break the cycle of trauma.

Twenty-four years into his fifty-year sentence, Michael has worked to ensure her gift was not in vain. Through discipline and purpose, he has achieved what few thought possible. While incarcerated, he earned a master’s degree through North Park Theological Seminary—one of the first in Illinois to do so—and now serves as a Teaching Fellow and adjunct professor at Lewis University—among the first in the nation hired for this role while still incarcerated. He also became one of the first incarcerated individuals in Illinois to earn a WestCare Certified Associate Addiction Professional (CAAP) credential, expanding his service through trauma-informed care.

In addition, he co-founded Parole Illinois and helped lead the peer education component of the Re-Entering Citizens Civics Education Act, later signed into law by Governor J.B. Pritzker. Michael’s petition for clemency, submitted to Governor Pritzker in 2020, was supported in 2022 by then Cook County State’s Attorney Kim Foxx.

Michael is a son, brother, father, uncle, friend, colleague, and partner—with a large, welcoming community ready to greet him home!