Legal Empowerment Leader building Pathways from Prison Law Libraries to Community Justice
Jhody D. Polk, also known as d’Alchemist, is a legal empowerment practitioner, community peacebuilder, public speaker and tarot reader. She is the Founder and Director of the Legal Empowerment & Advocacy Hub (LEAH) and the Jailhouse Lawyer Initiative (JLI), housed at NYU School of Law’s Bernstein Institute for Human Rights.
Jhody lives for SDG16 (Peace, Justice, and Strong Institutions), human rights, and Black liberation, grounding her work in the belief that legal empowerment is abolition and that peace is possible.
She is a 2025 David Prize Winner, a 2024 Global Freedom Fellow, recipient of the 2020 Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Legacy Award, the 2019 Peacebuilder of the Year, and a 2018 Soros Justice Fellow. She currently sits on the board of Namati.
Jhody in the press
