Member Story: Inspiring Change in Maryland

Zaminah Williams ’22 Founds Non-Profit To Empower Teens and Disrupt the School-to-Prison Pipeline

In 2022, Zaminah Williams ’22 stood in the Roxbury Correctional Institution (RCI), a medium-security prison that houses approximately 1,701 adult males, during her Leadership Maryland Executive Program Criminal Justice session. Inmates at this facility have an average incarceration term of seven years. 
 
“The part I think affected me the most was walking through, doing the tour, and seeing the faces of inmates,” said Zaminah as she reflected on her visit. “During one part of the tour, I saw what looked like young men who maybe just graduated high school walking into a classroom. What should have been teenagers dressed in normal clothes at school, were inmates in orange jumpsuits.”
 
According to a press release from the Maryland Equitable Justice Collaborative, African Americans constitute approximately 30% of Maryland’s population but make up 72% of the state’s prison population – the highest percentage of imprisoned African Americans in the country, data that is statistically tied to systemic poverty and resource scarcity.
 
“Their faces echoed those of my sons, and there were so many of them,” Zaminah recalls. “I couldn’t reconcile in my mind why that was the case and it didn’t feel right.”
 
Deeply moved by her visit to RCI and looking for ways to give back to the community, earlier this year Zaminah founded Onyx Cares, a non-profit organization whose mission is to empower at-risk middle and high school students through a focus on Academic Achievement, with an emphasis on academic enrichment, STEM education, health and wellness programs, and neurodiversity awareness. Through supporting at-risk youth and impoverished communities in the state, Onyx Cares hopes to reduce the disproportionate rate of incarceration among the African American community and disrupt the school-to-prison pipeline.
 
Zaminah credits her Leadership Maryland experience for providing her with the insight and inspiration to start Onyx Cares, by allowing her to see the issue firsthand.
 
“I’ve always been very people-focused,” said Williams. “When I learned [through Leadership Maryland] there was a business model where your success is measured by how many people you’ve impacted, I thought, well how did I ever start with a for-profit business? I was truly so inspired [by what I saw]. Roxbury did that. Leadership Maryland did that.”
 
To learn more about Onyx Cares, visit https://onyxcares.org/.