Theme: Change

There's a tree within the perimeter of the Nebraska Correctional Center for Women that serves to show the residents and staff that "change" is possible, even within confinement. Each day the sun rises bringing light as night changes to day and the tree embraces the sun. Each season the tree changes from dormancy in winter to budding in spring and from full foliage in summer to beautiful colors in the fall. And, each year the tree grows, illustrating that change comes over time.

Nebraska Correctional Center for Women
1107 Recharge Road
York, Nebraska, 68467
United States

Chantal Randall

Resident of NCCW

Jessica Reid

Resident of NCCW

Jewel Rodgers

Urban Strategist In Lincoln, Nebraska

Jewel is a North Omaha native. She begs the notion that circumstances are ambiguous. As a scholar, speaker, designer, and urban strategist, she discovers and implements ways to use collective economics as means to discover how we can determine our own version of what we call, reality. Through research, civic engagement, and design theories, she works toward humanizing the power of collaboration to address economic problems that affect millions of people on a daily basis. Her talk is titled "Movement." There are moments of constant epiphany that occur within your mind every time you learn something. One can describe this, as an act of changing location or position. These lessons learned are a culmination of events that have lead to your present state and are products of your movement. But - have you decided if you are moving forward?

Lora McKinney

Resident of NCCW

Lucy Wallace

Founder of Dance to be Free

Lucy bought Alchemy of Movement (AOM) in 2010, a dance studio in Boulder, CO, after receiving her master’s degree in Psychology. Her psychology background led to the birth of Dance To Be Free due to the therapeutic and cathartic quality of her teaching style.In March of 2015, Lucy founded Dance To Be Free along with her Board of Directors. Dance To Be Free’s mission is to share the healing power of dance with women in prison nationwide. The cathartic choreography and passionate music leads to physical, spiritual and emotional healing without the burden of talk therapy. Changing the lives of incarcerated women through the healing power of collective dance, DTBF uses cathartic choreography and emotional music as the healing vehicles for addressing Post Traumatic Stress Disorder symptoms.

Niccole Wetherell

Resident of NCCW

Sarah Cullen

Resident of NCCW

Scott Frakes

Director of Nebraska Department of Corrections

Scott is Director of the Nebraska Department of Corrections. His idea for change is "Rewriting the Social Contract." He will share the story of a journey from rule enforcer to opportunity creator, embracing the notion that by agreeing to use incarceration society has an obligation to help those people help themselves. And to do this we must provide prison environments that give people hope.

Sharla Hennecke

Resident of NCCW