​Alison was a Catholic nun for 12 years and enjoys creating meaningful and creative rituals to help others experience the divine and sacred in their lives. Alison is an enrolled citizen of the Ani-Yun-Wiya Cherokee Nation and is active with the Bvlbancha Intertribal Community in New Orleans. She is also a long-time parishioner and active in several ministries at St. Augustine Catholic Church in New Orleans. 

Alison has taught Christian Ethics at Loyola University in New Orleans and served as the Practitioner-in-Residence for the Contemplative Ecology program at Wake Forest Divinity School in North Carolina.  She has served as a Spiritual Advisor on Louisiana’s death row visiting the men at Angola for the past 20 years. 

 

As a carceral system-impacted person, much of her past work lies in creating spiritually-grounded criminal justice reform. She formerly served as the Movement Capacity Building Strategist supporting about 50 formerly-incarcerated-people-led non-profits in the United States, the Statewide Campaign Manager for the Unanimous Jury Coalition abolishing a 138-year-old Jim Crow law in Louisiana, the founding Director of the ReEntry Mediation Institute of Louisiana, the Executive Director of the National Police Accountability Project, President of the Louisiana Chapter of the National Lawyers Guild, and Founding Director of the New Orleans Community-Police Mediation Program. 

 

As a recipient of the 2010 Soros Justice Advocacy Fellowship in New Orleans, she changed policing practices and policies to transform relationships between police officers and the bearers of New Orleans’ indigenous cultural traditions.  Prior to law school, she worked at the United Nations monitoring the implementation of U.N. Security Council Resolutions relating to women, peace, and security.  In 2009, she was an Ella Baker Fellow at the Center for Constitutional Rights working on the cases of those detained in Guantanamo Bay and international human rights accountability.  Alison has also worked on issues of environmental justice, immigrant rights, international human rights, cultural preservation, voting rights, disaster recovery, housing rights, and provides support to various social justice movements and organizations locally, nationally, and internationally. 

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Alison has been awarded the Faith in Action award from the St. Charles Center (2025), OnBeing Social Healing Fellowship (2023), a WKKF Kellogg Community Leadership Network Fellowship (2023), a a WindCall Residency Fellow (2022), an Association for Public Religion and Intellectual Life Fellow at Auburn Seminary (2022), an Encore/CoGenerate Public Voices Fellow, (2020), an Adese Spiritual Entrepreneurship Fellow (2020), a Propeller Social Entrepreneurship Accelerator Fellow (2020), a Better Selves Fellow (2018), and Soros Justice Advocacy Fellow (2010).  

Alison and her work have been featured in Harper’s Magazine, the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Huffington Post, Variety Magazine, NBC News, Essence Magazine, Nations Media, America Magazine, The Advocate, Yale Insights, and dozens of others publications and news outlets.  She was most recently featured on Netflix’s reality TV show “Queer Eye” Season 8, Episode 5. 

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Alison received her J.D. from Loyola University’s College of Law in New Orleans and her B.A. in English at Georgia State University in Atlanta. She also completed coursework and programs at Johannes Gutenburg Universität in Mainz, Germany, University of Surrey in London, Universidade do Estado do Rio de Janeiro in Brazil, Loyola University-New Orleans’ Institute for Ministry, Loyola University Chicago School of Theology, and Catholic Theological Union.  

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Alison is committed to growing the school to nurture contemplative communities, to deepen our practices of experiencing the presence of the divine, and to broaden and diversify our community of practitioners for the transformation of our lives, the lives of others, and the world.  

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