Dr. Divine Pryor

Divine Pryor is currently the Chief Executive Officer of the People’s Police Academy located in the City University of New York at Medgar Evers College. In this role, he works closely with community leaders, system stakeholders, institution heads and others to facilitate the integration of solution oriented, outcome-based efforts that minimize risks and maximize positive results. He has spent the past four years building the infrastructure of the People’s Police Academy and preparing to take the city, state and nation by storm in the up-coming year. Stay tuned!

Divine Pryor is a social scientist who has extensive knowledge and experience in the criminal justice field having spent over half his career administrating HIV/AIDS, youth development, juvenile justice, and community-based reentry, substance abuse and addiction organizations. He has been particularly interested in the issues related to mass incarceration and social concerns that are addressed by both social service non-profit organizations and governmental agencies. He has traveled extensively providing expertise and counsel on criminal justice issues to academicians, activists and advocates, judges, defense attorneys, prosecutors and others, for the purpose of influencing policy decisions. In addition, he has developed trainings and workshops for professionals that have produced initiatives such as Operation S.N.U.G., PPA for community policing, School to Prison analysis, and Building Bridges creating employment opportunities for people with convictions. He has influenced alternatives to incarceration programming, resulting in the reduction of collateral consequences associated with people who have had criminal justice involvement.

In 2003 he was appointed by the Council of State Governors to the National Re-entry Policy Council, where he and over 100 national experts produced the most voluminous work in re-entry in the nation. In 2012, Dr. Pryor was appointed by the Minority Leader of the New York State Senate to Co-Chair the New York State Anti-Gang Violence Reduction Commission. In addition to his leadership roles on local and national boards, he is a member of the NYC Mayors Sub-Committee on Arrest Diversion. He is currently the Chair of the NYC Criminal Justice Clergy Task Force and a graduate of the NYPD Citizens Police Academy. He is often called to provide consultation and advice to Supreme Court Justices, District Attorneys’ Offices, members of city, state and federal government and others in the criminal justice field. The Center for Nuleadership on Urban solutions, which he co-founded serves as a national model for formerly incarcerated professionals who have devoted their lives and careers to use their personal experience to offer innovative solutions to social ills. It is the first of its kind in the nation, as a leading public policy, research, advocacy and training center founded by formerly incarcerated professionals who represent every discipline from law to medicine.

Divine Pryor, and all that he has accomplished in his lifetime, presents us with a “living example” of how someone can recover from the failing public school system in America’s urban cities. His story is one of an African-American male who was raised in a middle class, two parent household by parents who worked hard and wanted nothing but the best for him and his six Brothers and Sisters. During his public-school years, it was determined that his inattentive and disruptive behavior was a distraction to the other students, and he was defined as unruly, troublesome, incorrigible etc. Needless to say his teachers didn’t know that he was an extremely bright and intelligent young man who loved to read, write and escape to faraway places through his imagination. Their inability to realize that his intellectual growth, was occurring much faster than his social maturity could handle, led them to their faulty conclusions, thereby pushing him into the streets and, ultimately into the prison pipeline.

So, before ever attending a formal institution, Divine Pryor acquired his very first degree from the “school of hard knocks” with a Ph.D. from UCLA. That is the “University on the Corner of Lenox Avenue” in New York City. While incarcerated, he would rediscover his love for learning and resume his educational journey, obtaining both a B.A. and M.A. in Sociology from S.U.N.Y. New Paltz After his release in 1991 he would go on to complete his graduate studies at both Kennedy Western & Suffield University and would continue to build his exceptional career in the Criminal Justice.

Linda Bailey

Linda is currently the Chief of Staff to Dr. Divine Pryor and the People’s Police Academy. She graduated from the Herbert H. Lehman College, Bronx, NY with a Masters Degree in Business Education. Her goal at the time was to become a high school teacher but decided to take her knowledge and experiences to the non-profit sector working in the fields of substance use, HIV/AIDS, mental health and now public safety. She has an undying commitment to working with any disadvantaged population and has always been attracted to working with those agencies whose mission is to have a positive impact on people’s lives.

K. Bain

Emerging as one of the world’s leading experts in the field of community led public safety, K Bain is a socialpreneur, public speaker and activist for human rights, human development and human justice. Bain is a nationally recognized thought leader and strategists in the areas of conflict resolution and mediation, intergenerational wealth building, and youth development. Bain’s demonstrated track record spans two decades with accomplishments in government, education, entertainment, philanthropy and business and now the non-profit sector He has been an unparalleled and incomparable voice in promoting violence as a public health issue, structural and systemic racial discrimination, personal and professional development through sustainable growth planning on the local, national and international stage. As the founder and principle of Globan Bain, he has successfully brought together leading experts to address and elevate the skill sets, capacity and scalability of for profit and nonprofit organizations dedicated to uplifting marginalized communities.

He also serves as the Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Community Capacity Development (CCD), a Human Justice organization dedicated to community renewal, community led public safety and grass roots driven economic and social development. In spring of 2021, Bain was sworn in as a Commissioner to New York City’s Racial Justice Commission. As one of 11 appointed commissioner’s, Bain is charged with examining the City’s foundations to identify structures and systems that by design, implementation, or impact enable and perpetuate inequitable power, access, and opportunity. Bain has presented nationally as a guest lecturer and keynote speaker in colleges and universities such as UCLA, NYU, Princeton and Columbia University and has provide guidance on human justice solutions for multilateral systems of inequity to cities including but not limited to; Baltimore, Newark, Miami, Durham, Newburgh, Chicago and countries such as Ghana, Dominican Republic, Trinidad and Tobago and the commonwealth of Puerto Rico.

Bain is a graduate of Brooklyn College, where he earned his B.A. in African Studies and Sociology, and a M.A. in Urban Policy and Public Administration. He has completed post graduate, executive leadership trainings and certification at Harvard University, New York University’s Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human Development and Columbia University’s Center for Justice and has earned a Congressional Achievement Award from the 5th Congressional District, and multiple citations from elected officials across the United States.