Bianca Tylek is the Founder and Executive Director of Worth Rises and one of the nation’s leading experts on the prison industry. As a leader in the national prison phone justice movement, Bianca has passed numerous pieces of federal, state, and local legislation to make prison and jail communication free and increased the regulation of the prison telecom industry. She has also blocked corporate mergers, influenced investor divestment, and forced the resignation of predatory corporate executives from the boards of cultural institutions. Collectively her work has revolutionized the prison telecom market and brough the industry to its knees. And that’s just her work in prison telecom. Bianca has also blocked financing for prison construction, challenged the malicious bankruptcies of prison healthcare providers, and pressured corporations to stop facilitating death penalty executions. Her novel strategies have wreaked havoc on the prison industry, and her work has been covered on the TED stage as well as by the New York Times, Washington Post, Atlantic, CNN, NPR, Bloomberg, and more. Bianca lives in New York City.

Worth Rises is a national non-profit organization working to dismantle the prison industry and end the exploitation of incarcerated people and their loved ones. We envision a society in which no entity or individual relies on human caging or control for their wealth, operation, or livelihood. Our strategies fit into three main verticals: Our narrative work sets the foundation for all our work by revealing the prison industry’s influence over our carceral system. Our policy work then undermines the prison industry’s business model by changing the policy landscape within which it operates. Finally, our corporate accountability work brings it home by attacking the prison industry’s viability.