Bryan Stevenson is the founder and executive director of the Equal Justice Initiative, fighting poverty and challenging racial discrimination in the criminal justice system.

Why you should listen

Bryan Stevenson is a public interest lawyer who has dedicated his career to helping the poor, the incarcerated and the condemned. He's the founder and executive director of the Equal Justice Initiative (EJI), an Alabama-based group that has won major legal challenges eliminating excessive and unfair sentencing, exonerating innocent prisoners on death row, confronting abuse of the incarcerated and the mentally ill, and aiding children prosecuted as adults.

In 2012, EJI won an historic ruling in the US Supreme Court holding that mandatory life-without-parole sentences for all children 17 or younger are unconstitutional. Stevenson's work fighting poverty and challenging racial discrimination in the criminal justice system has won him numerous awards. He is a graduate of the Harvard Law School and the Harvard School of Government, and he has been awarded 14 honorary doctorate degrees. Stevenson is the author of Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption.

Bryan Stevenson’s TED talks

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Live from TED2020

Ways of seeing: Notes from Session 3 of TED2020

June 4, 2020

Session 3 of TED2020, hosted by TED’s head of curation Helen Walters and writer, activist and comedian Baratunde Thurston, was a night of something different — a night of camaraderie, cleverness and, as Baratunde put it, “a night of just some dope content.” Below, a recap of the night’s talks and performances. In a heartfelt […]

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