Meet Jamie Maleszka-Tate

Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Jamie Maleszka-Tate. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Jamie , we’re thrilled to have you on our platform and we think there is so much folks can learn from you and your story. Something that matters deeply to us is living a life and leading a career filled with purpose and so let’s start by chatting about how you found your purpose.

I arrived at purpose well into adulthood. I didn’t discover it overnight, in one singular “aha” moment. There was no sudden thunderbolt of knowing. Nope. It was more cumulative than that, quiet even. A layering of experiences over years and years that slowly began to reveal a path beneath my feet. The road to purpose would rise to meet me.

I started as a writer. I grew up in Queens, New York, and began writing about graffiti and the artists who, against all odds, were using subway trains as canvases to declare, “I am here.” Over time, my writing quite organically grew toward the intersection of art and advocacy—toward amplifying artists who were harnessing the capacities of creativity and imagination to demand a more just world. Through that work, I began interviewing people who had been directly impacted by policing, state violence, and incarceration. I became a student of the movement, listening and learning from people who had survived these systems. I learned about Angela Davis, Assata Shakur, the 1971 uprising at Attica, the Green Haven Think Tank, the humanitarian crisis that is Rikers Island, the story of Kalief Browder, and so much more. And I was forever changed.

The Arts have always been my true north. I grew up in a household pockmarked by domestic violence and mental health challenges, and creativity had long been a place where I could make sense of things—a means by which to orient myself in the world. I knew something about the refuge, possibility, and freedom that could exist in making something where there had previously been nothing.

Eventually, those two parts of my life—the Arts and this growing commitment to justice and liberation—would merge. In 2016, I walked into The Fortune Society, an NYC-based nonprofit dedicated to building people, not prisons, as a volunteer writing workshop facilitator. I didn’t know it then, but the road had risen to meet me again.

I began facilitating creative writing workshops with people participating in Fortune’s Alternatives to Incarceration program. I was a novice, totally green and had much more to learn than I had to teach. The writers welcomed me with extraordinary grace and generosity; and week after week, year after year, they taught me about creativity, community, healing and what it means to truly hold space for one another. What began as a weekly writing workshop would eventually become my life’s work. In 2021, I was lucky enough to be named the Director of the Creative Arts program at Fortune, a capacity in which I still serve today.

More recently, my path has led me back to school to pursue my MSW at the Silberman School of Social Work at Hunter College-CUNY, building towards a future where support systems are as creative and resilient as the communities they serve. In many ways, social work has given me language and frameworks for work I had already been moving toward instinctively for years. It has also challenged me to think more deeply about healing, relationships, power, systems, and what it means to practice in ways that honor people’s dignity and self-determination. I see social work as another way of deepening my understanding of what becomes possible through the Arts.

So, purpose, for me, isn’t a fixed destination at all. I think it is something we continue to grow into. Looking back, I can see the Arts was always going to be woven into my day to day. What has changed is my understanding of what is truly possible through the Arts and how I want to be of service to others. I am still becoming.

Appreciate the insights and wisdom. Before we dig deeper and ask you about the skills that matter and more, maybe you can tell our readers about yourself?

At The Fortune Society, I am honored to collaborate with an extraordinary intergenerational community of artists who have been impacted by incarceration and the criminal legal system. Together, we have built a community rooted in radical joy, wholeness, mutuality, and the belief that creativity is a human right.

Our programming spans visual art, expressive writing, music, songwriting, theater, performance, exhibitions, and community events. The art itself is only part of what makes this work so dynamic and necessary. I am equally interested in what happens around the art—the relationships that form, the risks that people take, the confidence that grows, the stories that get told and those that get left out, and the opportunity for people to define themselves on their own terms rather than through the limited identities that systems or circumstances try to imposed on them.

I believe deeply in the Arts as a space for abolitionist practice. Abolition, to me, is not only about dismantling harmful systems. As Ruth Wilson Gilmore reminds us: abolition is not about absence. It is presence. It always asks us to imagine—and actively practice—what we want to build in place of prisons and jails. What’s lifegiving. Art gives us room to imagine what comes next. We can practice mutual care, possibility, radical joy, and radical love every day. We can make something where there was nothing before. There is something incredibly hopeful about that.

There is so much advice out there about all the different skills and qualities folks need to develop in order to succeed in today’s highly competitive environment and often it can feel overwhelming. So, if we had to break it down to just the three that matter most, which three skills or qualities would you focus on?

I am endlessly curious. I ask a lot of questions. I mean a lot. I read. I listen. I work on listening more. I get lost in learning. So much of my journey began simply because I wanted to understand more—about people, about systems, about history, and about the stories we tell and the ones we leave out. I think curiosity keeps us open. My advice? Always listen to poet Mary Oliver: Pay attention. Be astonished. Tell about it.

Humility has been just as super important. Some of my greatest teachers have been people whose knowledge wasn’t acquired in a formal classroom or with a degree, but from lived experience. A PhD in life. I have learned to get more comfortable with saying, “I don’t know.” To be teachable. For real. To get things wrong, receive feedback, take the note and try it all over again.

Get a mentor!

And, finally, show up. Show. Up. I walked into my first writing workshop at Fortune totally green. I didn’t have some grand plan for where it would lead. I just kept showing up, listening, building relationships, and learning. I think sometimes we wait to feel ready before we begin. I’m not sure ready ever really arrives. I’m not sure I am even ready to this day. Take the first step. Walk into the room. Make the thing. Write it. Get out of your own way.

Awesome, really appreciate you opening up with us today and before we close maybe you can share a book recommendation with us. Has there been a book that’s been impactful in your growth and development?

One book that has stayed with me is bell hooks’ All About Love. I return to it often, for her insight into love not just simply as a feeling or emotion, but as an actual practice. Love as a verb. As something we have to actively choose each day. This has profoundly shaped how I think about community and the work we do. Radical love isn’t passive and certainly not sentimental. It asks something of us. It requires accountability and reciprocity. bell hooks’ work also feels so deeply connected to the practice of abolition. If we are going to imagine a world beyond punishment and cages, we have to be equally committed to imagining what we are growing in their place — love, community, creativity, care, accountability. Those aren’t secondary to that work. They are the absolute spine of the work.