Shaka Senghor is a writer, mentor, and motivational speaker whose story of redemption has inspired young adults at high schools and universities across the nation. He is founder of the Live In Peace Digital and Literary Arts Project, a recipient of the 2012 Black Male Engagement (BMe) Leadership Award, and a 2013 MIT Media Lab Director’s Fellow.

Shaka was once an angry and bitter teen who, like many other youth, kept his emotions bottled up and often lashed out in violence towards others. At the age of nineteen, he shot and killed a man during a drug-related argument and ultimately served nineteen years in prison. While he was incarcerated, Shaka transformed his life and discovered his love for writing. He has written a memoir about his life in the streets and in prison entitled Writing My Wrongs and recently published a book of his writings entitled Live in Peace: A Youth Guide to Turning Hurt into Hope, a companion piece to his mentoring program. Shaka is passionate about mentoring youth and hopes that by sharing his experiences, they will avoid the path that led him to prison. In his work with youth, he uses his experiences as a launching pad for discussing issues of abuse, abandonment, addiction, consequences, accountability and personal transformation.