Our Keynote Speaker: Dr. Sandra Joy 

Dr. Joy is a Sociology Professor who has been on the faculty at Rowan since 2002, teaching courses such as Race & Crime, Race & Social Justice, and The Sociology of Death, Dying, & Bereavement. In 2002, she received her Ph.D. in Sociology from Temple University and in 1990 she received her M.S.W. from Norfolk State University. Dr. Joy is also a Licensed Clinical Social Worker with a dozen years of experience as a mental health and substance abuse therapist. For several decades, whether Dr. Joy was working in the mental health field or within academia, she has maintained her work as a community activist. She has been an abolitionist in the anti-death penalty movement throughout this time and served for many years on the Board of the Campaign to End the Death Penalty (CEDP). She is a member of the Philadelphia Coalition Against Death by Incarceration (CADBI). She serves as a member on the Board of the Kalief Browder Foundation and is an Advisory Board member for the Petey Greene Program. 

Dr. Joy is the author of Coalition Building in the Anti-Death Penalty Movement: Privileged Morality, Race Realities (2010) and Grief, Loss, & Treatment for Death Row Families: Forgotten No More (2014). She recently co-authored the recent book (2022), titled Life Without Parole: Worse than Death? 

She serves as the coordinator of the Rowan Youth Empowerment Program, a group that offers mentoring to Rowan students who have experienced the incarceration of one or more parents. She is also an active member of the Africana Studies Council and she is on the advisory board of the Rowan Office of Social Justice, Inclusion, and Conflict Resolution.