Unlocked Labs

UnlockEd (the solution) is the first prison education platform created by incarcerated students for incarcerated students.

Jessica Hicklin and Chris Santillan, spent 26 and 28 years incarcerated respectively, both originally sentenced to life without parole as juveniles. Desperate to improve their minds and opportunities for successful return to society, in a facility with no access to formal education, they taught themselves how to code, without the internet. Teaming up with outside partners, they went on to use these skills to develop UnlockED, a learning management system to make digital educational content more accessible for themselves and their incarcerated peers.

Since then, Unlocked Labs has evolved to empower others to walk in Jessica & Chris’s footsteps, building the skills needed to succeed in the world, while building solutions to solve the problems they live every day.