Jon-Adrian “JJ” Velazquez is the co-founder and CEO of Voices From Within and a criminal legal reform activist, actor, and public speaker. Wrongfully convicted in 1998 of the murder of a retired police officer, he spent nearly 24 years in New York State maximum-security prisons, most of them at Sing Sing, before being granted clemency in 2021 and formally exonerated in 2024.

While incarcerated, JJ earned two degrees in behavioral science through Mercy College, became a certified paralegal, worked as a program assistant with Hudson Link for Higher Education in Prison, and was known as a “one-man innocence project” for mentoring others and helping fellow incarcerated people challenge wrongful convictions.

From inside Sing Sing, JJ led the creation of Voices From Within in 2013 as a multimedia initiative that confronts gun violence and mass incarceration through the voices of people living with its consequences, later expanding the work into CHOICES (Choosing Healthier Options in Confronting Every Situation) workshops and curating the first TEDx event ever held in a New York State prison.

Since coming home, he has continued to grow Voices From Within into a national platform while advocating for systemic change—appearing as himself in the film Sing Sing, collaborating on the Pulitzer-finalist podcast Letters from Sing Sing, and speaking with leaders including President Joe Biden about wrongful convictions and the need for a more humane justice system.