Bryan A. Stevenson
Founder and Executive Director
Equal Justice Initiative
Public interest attorney and best-selling author Bryan Stevenson will deliver the commencement address at The Ohio State University’s spring 2023 ceremony.
Mr. Stevenson is the founder and executive director of the Equal Justice Initiative, a human rights organization in Montgomery, Alabama. Under his leadership, the organization has won major legal challenges eliminating excessive and unfair sentencing, exonerating innocent death row prisoners, confronting abuse of the incarcerated and the mentally ill, and aiding children prosecuted as adults.
He is the author of the critically acclaimed New York Times bestseller “Just Mercy,” which was named by Time magazine as one of the 10 Best Books of Nonfiction for 2014. The memoir highlights Mr. Stevenson’s efforts to overturn the wrongful conviction and death penalty sentence of Walter McMillian and was adapted as a major motion picture in 2019.
Mr. Stevenson also led the creation of two highly acclaimed cultural sites that opened in 2018: the Legacy Museum and the National Memorial for Peace and Justice. These national institutions chronicle the legacy of slavery, lynching and racial segregation, and the connection to mass incarceration and contemporary issues of racial bias.
He is a graduate of the Harvard Law School and the Harvard School of Government. Stevenson will be honored with a Doctor of Public Service.
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