Jennifer Toon is the project director of Lioness: Justice Impacted Women’s Alliance, where she uses her 27 years of system involvement experience, as both a juvenile and an adult, to help end the incarceration and systematic devaluing of girls and women in the Texas criminal legal system. She also works at the Coalition of Texans with Disabilities as the Texas Council for Developmental Disabilities policy fellow, where she strives to create state policies that provide support for youth and adults with disabilities in the criminal legal system. Toon serves as the community advisor for the Texas After Violence Project and studied journalism at The University of Houston.
As a freelance writer, she has published work with The Guardian, The Marshall Project, and the Texas Observer.
Toon believes that narrative lies at the heart of effective advocacy and aspires to use her lived experience to bring attention to the often-forgotten voices of other system-impacted women, youth, and people with disabilities. She lives in Austin, Texas with her cat, Taylor, who embodies the mischievous energy of Taylor Swift.