Jilisa Renee Milton, JD, MSW

Jilisa Milton is an Alabama based civil rights attorney, policy analyst, social worker, racial justice activist, community organizer, and relational strategist. She has nearly a decade of experience working at the intersection of racial equity, critical race & feminist theory, poverty, criminal justice reform, mental health, and reproductive justice. Her work is rooted in the message that people do not fit in boxes or labels, inspired by Ms. Milton’s own personal story and the barriers she has broken to create a uniquely multi-sector career.

Ms. Milton was born in New York City during the so-called Wars on Drugs and Poverty – racist policies that blatantly targeted and harmed families of color. After being removed from her mother’s custody at a young age, Ms. Milton and her four siblings were placed with her grandparents, who adopted them and then moved the family to their hometown of Birmingham, Alabama. Her experience as a southern woman is important to her as she works to break barriers of opportunity for marginalized people.

Ms. Milton graduated from the University of Alabama with a bachelor’s degree in social work, later becoming the first person to graduate from its JD/MSW joint degree program. She currently serves a president of the Board of Directors for Yellowhammer Fund, a 501(c)3 abortion fund and reproductive justice organization serving Alabama and the Deep South, and Vice President of National Lawyers Guild, a progressive public interest association of lawyers, law students, paralegals, jailhouse lawyers, law collective members, and other activist legal workers, in the United States.

Ms. Milton is currently a budget and tax policy analyst and advocate at Alabama Arise, a statewide, member-led organization advancing public policies to improve the lives of Alabamians who are marginalized by poverty. She practices law in Alabama, and is a former Equal Justice Works Fellow, while previously implementing a project in Alabama’s Black Belt region that protects the rights of children with disabilities from entering the school to prison pipeline. She continues work on police reform and economic justice. During her professional development has participated in various legal projects such as the remedial process for Floyd v. New York, the groundbreaking Stop and Frisk case brought to action by the Center for Constitutional Rights, and rights on issues related to racial justice and policing.

Ms. Milton is a leader in major social justice initiatives and organizations demanding transformative change on a local and regional level. She became one of the founders of Black Lives Matter Birmingham Chapter, namely as a survivor of police violence. She is a media expert on racial justice, police reform, social policy, intercultural communications, and social movement strategy. She has spoken at events and been interviewed by media sources in the South, nationally, and internationally in countries such as Indonesia, Mexico, and the United Kingdom. She recently created Mindful Interference, a business dedicated to developing strategies that repair relationships between individuals, families, systems, and organizations and facilitates progressive changes in various spaces.