Kenyetta Snapp

Eastern Michigan University, USA

Title: From Principal to Prisoner to Professor: Lived Experience as Transformational Leadership in Education and Justice Reform

---

Biography

K.C. Wilbourn Snapp is an educator, justice reform advocate, and scholar-practitioner whose work bridges education, leadership, and lived experience research. Once one of Detroit’s youngest high school principals, her career evolved through personal adversity into a mission centered on redemption, systemic reform, and community empowerment. She now serves as a doctoral scholar at Eastern Michigan University, focusing on critical autobiography, leadership identity, and justice-involved populations. Dr. Snapp works extensively with reentry initiatives, incarcerated individuals, and underserved communities, translating lived experience into policy-informed practice. Her scholarship and community leadership emphasize resilience, restorative pathways, and the transformative potential of narrative as both research and reform tool.

Abstract

This presentation explores the transformative power of lived experience as a framework for leadership, educational reform, and justice system advocacy. Grounded in a critical autobiographical methodology, this work examines the journey of a former urban school principal whose career trajectory shifted dramatically through incarceration and subsequent reentry into academia and community leadership. The study investigates how personal narrative, when critically analyzed, becomes a legitimate scholarly lens for understanding systemic inequities in education, criminal justice, and community reentry structures.

The objectives of this work are threefold: (1) to examine the intersection of race, gender, leadership, and punishment; (2) to analyze how carceral experiences reshape professional identity and public service; and (3) to propose a lived-experience leadership model that bridges schools, correctional systems, and community-based organizations. Methods include critical autobiography, narrative inquiry, and policy reflection grounded in educational leadership and justice reform scholarship.

Findings suggest that individuals with justice-involved backgrounds possess unique leadership competencies, including crisis navigation, relational resilience, and culturally grounded advocacy. These competencies challenge traditional deficit narratives and instead position returning citizens as credible system reform partners. The study concludes that integrating lived experience into institutional leadership pipelines—particularly in education and reentry programming—can improve equity-driven outcomes, reduce recidivism, and strengthen community trust.

This work contributes to interdisciplinary dialogue across education, criminology, and public leadership while advocating for structural shifts that recognize experiential knowledge as expertise.