Pay-What-You-Wish Night: Faith, Reentry, and Prison Reform

Quaiser Abdullah, Ph.D. is the Director of the Mayor’s Office of Muslim Engagement in the City of Philadelphia. Dr. Abdullah is also an Assistant Professor in the Communication and Social Influence department and the Program Director for the Master of Science in Communication Management in Klein College of Media and Communication at Temple University. He teaches undergraduate and graduate courses on conflict resolution, mediation, conflict in educational systems, interpersonal communication, leadership development and organizational development and assessment. Quaiser earned his Bachelor’s degree in Political Science and Religion, with a minor in Asian Studies. He then went on to earn a Master’s degree in Adult Learning and Organizational Development and a Ph.D. in Educational Psychology.

Quaiser’s research interests center around identity and conflict, leadership and conflict management and religious identity. He authored the chapter entitled “Muslim Leader Formation and Education,” published by SAGE in the Religious Leadership: A Reference Handbook (2012). His chapter, “Daanaa Abdullah: Exemplar of Community Leadership” was published in Democratic Ethical Educational Leadership: Reclaiming School Reform, in 2015 by Routledge. He has a number of published interviews on the topic of religion and identity in public spaces in various news media. He is also a frequent guest presenter to local and national audiences on topics relating to Islam, identity and conflict.

Quaiser is a scholar with the Institute for Social Policy (ISPU) and a recipient of the Trailblazer Award from the Muslim Wellness Foundation. He currently serves as co-president at the Association for Conflict Resolution (2023-2024), the faculty advisor for the Muslim Student Association at Temple (ongoing), and board member of the Black Muslim Leadership Council. Previously, he served as board chair of Interfaith Philadelphia (2021-2024), Police Chaplain for the 18th District in the Philadelphia Police Department, co-chair of the Mayor’s Commission on Faith-Based and Interfaith Affairs in Philadelphia (2021-2023), an Imam at Masjid Quba in West Philadelphia, and as an expert witness to share insights on verbal aggression and violence as it relates to police officers who were disciplined for engaging in verbally aggressive communication on social media. Quaiser’s most current project is as a co-convener of the new Muslim Coalition for Criminal Justice Reform established in 2020 in Philadelphia; which has been on hiatus since 2022. Quaiser continues to serve in other organizations locally and nationally.

Quaiser is the former president/owner of Statera Coaching and Leadership Consulting, LLC. Statera Coaching is a private company that focuses on conflict resolution, leadership development, workforce training and development, professional & conflict coaching and organizational development. He is a certified Conflict Resolution in Education trainer, certified coach, Positive Discipline Educator and a trained mediator in the area of Transformative Mediation, with a focus on family, divorce and custody mediation. Quaiser is also a graduate of the Goldman Sachs 10KSB and SBA T.H.R.I.V.E business development programs.

Dr. Damone B. Jones, Sr. answered the call to the Gospel Ministry at eighteen years of age. On November 5, 1986, Dr. Jones was licensed to the ministry by his beloved father in the ministry, the late Reverend Hiawatha Coleman, former Pastor of the Mount Zion Baptist Church in Philadelphia. Dr. Jones graduated from the Lamberton High School in June of 1984.  His early theological training includes Manna Bible Institute and The Center for Urban Theological Studies.  Dr. Jones holds a B.S and M.S. from Philadelphia Biblical University (now Cairn University) in Langhorne, Pennsylvania.  Dr. Jones also holds a D.M. from the Palmer Theological Seminary, the Seminary of Eastern University.

Dr. Jones served at the Philadelphia Youth (Detention) Center as Coordinating Chaplain.  Dr. Jones also served as a panelist for the District Attorney's Youth Aid Panel and as President of the Police Clergy Program in the 19th Police District.  Dr. Jones has also served his community as a member of the Board of Directors for the Carroll Park Community Council.

In 2001, Dr. Jones was appointed by Mayor John F. Street to the City of Philadelphia Board of Ethics and in 2006 appointed to a Blue Ribbon Commission on Children's Behavioral Health in the City of Philadelphia.  In 2008, Dr. Jones was appointed by Mayor Michael Nutter to the Advisory Board of the Mayor's Office of Community Services and appointed to the Philadelphia Board of Ethics in 2009.  In 2011, Mayor Michael Nutter appointed Dr. Jones to the Board of Trustees of the Philadelphia Prison System and in 2015 appointed him Chairman of the Board.  At the state level, Dr. Jones was appointed to serve on Pennsylvania Governor Tom Wolf's transition team, co-chairing the Review Committee on the PA Department of Corrections. Governor Wolf then appointed Dr. Jones to the Governor's Advisory Commission on African American Affairs for the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania.

Michael Moreland was appointed University Professor of Law and Religion and director of the Eleanor H. McCullen Center for Law, Religion and Public Policy in 2017. Moreland joined the Villanova faculty in 2006 and served as Vice Dean from 2012 to 2015. At Villanova, he has taught Torts, Evidence, Bioethics and the Law, Advanced Torts, Constitutional Law II (First Amendment and Equal Protection), Justice and Rights (1L elective), and seminars in law and religion.

A renowned scholar of constitutional law, torts, bioethics and religious freedom, Moreland has published articles in leading legal, public policy and medical journals, including Notre Dame Law Review, Journal of Intensive Care Medicine, Georgetown Journal of Law & Public Policy and Law and Contemporary Problems. His chapters on law, ethics and religion have been featured in numerous books, including titles published by Cambridge University Press and Oxford University Press.

Moreland received his B.A. in philosophy from the University of Notre Dame, his M.A. and Ph.D. in theological ethics from Boston College, and his J.D. from the University of Michigan Law School. Following law school, Professor Moreland clerked for the Honorable Paul J. Kelly Jr., of the United States Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit and was an associate at Williams & Connolly LLP in Washington, DC, where he represented clients in First Amendment, professional liability, and products liability matters. Before coming to Villanova, he served as Associate Director for Domestic Policy at the White House under President George W. Bush, where he worked on a range of legal policy issues, including criminal justice, immigration, civil rights, and liability reform.

After serving 16 years incarcerated for a non-violent robbery he was arrested for as a teenager. While incarcerated, he helped design and facilitate personal development curriculum for his fellow incarcerated community members. Since his release from prison on October 22, 2018, he finished his Bachelor of Arts in Sociology with an emphasis in social welfare; he graduated with his Master in Social Work degree from the University of Southern California (USC), where he was the chair of the student caucus group Unchained Scholars; and he completed his Doctorate in Social Work degree, in which his capstone project was “Person-centered Smart Decarceration: an MSW course centered on community members with a lived experience of incarceration.” He has experience working as an Intensive Case Management Services (ICMS) program manager for a South Los Angeles population that was chronically homeless with high acuity mental health challenges. He also volunteered for years as a psychotherapist at a residential addiction treatment center in Los Angeles that has an alternative sentencing department and has Lifers paroling directly there. In addition to his full-time job at Defy Ventures as the Senior Director of National Mental Health and Well-Being Programs, which involves working with community members who are incarcerated in prison and community members navigating reentry from prisons, he also works as a psychotherapist to incarcerated community members preparing for the parole board, and as a clinical social worker for the Orangewood Foundation Young Adult Court program (where he work collaboratively with justice-impacted transitional age youth, the presiding judge, district attorney, probation officer and public defender). Yehudah currently resides in Irvine, CA with his wife and three children. 

As AFSC’s U.S. peacebuilding director, Lewis is responsible for leading AFSC’s work towards a future free of militarism and violence. Lewis previously led AFSC’s New York-based healing justice work for over 12 years and since 2017 has been the coordinator of the organization’s national healing justice network. Since joining AFSC, Lewis has built an advocacy program that focuses on sentencing and the school-to-prison pipeline, established a growing youth advocacy training program, and guided the collective development and eventual organizational endorsement of “Our North Star: A Vision for Community Safety Beyond Prisons and Policing.” Lewis holds degrees in philosophy and law and has many years of experience as an educator.