Ryan P. Haygood is a nationally respected civil rights lawyer and the President & CEO of the New Jersey Institute for Social Justice, a leading state-based racial justice organization.
The Institute exists to empower Black, Brown and other people of color by building reparative systems that create wealth, transform justice and harness democratic power from the ground up.
Under Ryan’s leadership, the Institute’s racial justice work—driven by a dynamic team and stellar Board of Trustees—has become a national model for states as places to build community power.
Through an integrated strategy that weaves together community organizing, research, public education, narrative change, advocacy and litigation, the Institute turns people power into durable change.
Ryan has helped lead some of the most significant democracy-expanding victories in New Jersey’s modern history. The Institute led historic campaigns to restore the right to vote to 83,000 people on probation and parole—a right denied since 1844, secured online voter registration and early voting, ended prison-based gerrymandering, lowered the voting age to 16 for Newark school board elections, and most recently restored jury service to more than 350,000 people who have completed their sentences.
These victories are not simply policy changes; they are intentional shifts in power, rooted in organizing, coalition-building and leadership development.
Under Ryan’s leadership, the Institute has also become the leading voice on New Jersey’s staggering $600,000-plus racial wealth gap. The organization produces original research and advocates for bold, reparative solutions—including the $15 minimum wage, universal basic income and baby bonds—while working to expand homeownership and end racially biased appraisal practices.
Central to this work, the Institute convened the first-of-its-kind New Jersey Reparations Council, which released a landmark 2025 report laying the foundation for a multi-year, state-level reparations campaign with national significance.
Ryan has also helped move New Jersey to the forefront of reimagining public safety. The Institute championed protection of the right to record police, an independent prosecutor policy, and a historic announcement closing two of New Jersey’s youth prisons. This work contributed to dramatically reducing the state’s youth prison population and a nearly $10 million investment in community-based restorative justice hubs.
As a member of the Independent Monitoring Team overseeing the Newark Police Division’s federal consent decree with the United States Department of Justice, the Institute led efforts to center community engagement in the development of 16 new policing policies urged by Newark residents since the 1967 Newark Rebellion.
Before leading the Institute, Ryan served as Deputy Director of Litigation at the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, where he litigated some of the most consequential civil rights cases of our time, including twice defending the Voting Rights Act before the Supreme Court of the United States and successfully challenging Texas’s racially discriminatory photo ID law.
Ryan speaks and writes widely on race, law, democracy and power. He earned his J.D. from the University of Colorado Law School and his B.A., cum laude, from Colorado College, where he was nominated for a Rhodes Scholarship and earned academic and athletic All-American and Hall of Fame honors as a football player.
Ryan serves as Vice Chair of the Board of Trustees of Colorado College, and is on the board of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the New Jersey Performing Arts Center.
