Jaclyn Cirinna

State: Florida

Jaclyn Cirinna is excited to be working alongside members of the council to develop and review resources for practitioners, policy makers, advocates, youth, families, and other partners in youth legal spaces. Jaclyn is the CEO of BreakFree LLC, a consulting company established to demolish the barriers set up against young people and adults impacted negatively by systems including but not limited to Childwelfare, Juvenile Justice, Jail, and Prison systems in the United States.

Jaclyn is also Executive Director of Young Leaders Network, a charitable project hosted under the fiscal sponsorship of Center for Improving Youth Justice. Young Leaders Network’s (Y.L.N.) mission is to create safe spaces between both young people and juvenile justice practitioners and Nonprofits in the field, in order for the parties to further innovate and assist affected persons better through programming. She is also a mentor for two girls actively incarcerated through Russell Jennings scholarship.

Massachusetts systems experience is as follows. System involved by age 13. Incarcerated by age 14. Committed to the Department of Youth Services until age 18 after being placed in 14 different out of home placements dictated by the State. Voluntarily a Youth Engaged in Services (YES) until age 22. Graduate of State University at age 20. Law student at age 23. Jaclyn Cirinna has both benefitted and been traumatized by systems in the State of Massachusetts. She has utilized those experiences to become someone who evokes real change in communities along the side of many other formerly systems-impacted people and non-system-impacted partners. She actively resides in Florida as of October 2024.