Colette Payne

Director, Reclamation Project, Women's Justice Institute

Colette is an organizer, leader, student, mother, and grandmother. Her passion is to educate families to build healthier communities. She is the Director of the Women’s Justice Institute (WJI) Reclamation Project, the first initiative of its kind in Illinois to be led by-and-for system-impacted women. Colette worked to design and launch the Reclamation Center in the Pilsen Arts Corridor, which serves as the Reclamation Project’s home for arts and advocacy, mutual support, healing and connection, community building and leadership development among women with lived experience. She engages women directly impacted by the criminal legal system to become agents of change and create solutions to end the incarceration of women and girls. She is frequently featured as a speaker and moderator on topics ranging from the reunification of children and mothers, reproductive justice, mental health care, the need for increased programming in prisons, and barriers to employment for people with criminal records. She also provides expert testimony before legislative committees and has received several awards for her leadership, including Claim’s JoAnn Archibald award (2013), the Jane Adams Center for Social Policy and Research Community Leadership Award (2015), Safer Foundation’s Carre Visionary Award (2018) and the Chicago Foundation for Women (CFW) 2020 Impact award for her dedication to improving the lives of women and girls in the Chicago area.