Richard Wallace is an author, artist, and founding Executive Director of Equity and Transformation (EAT), an initiative to radically advance economic access for formerly incarcerated Black informal workers in Chicago. As an author, he has over a dozen published writings on local and national outlets, including The Chicago Tribune and The Washington Post. As an artist, he earned independent album of the year and performed before thousands of listeners worldwide. Wallace graduated from Roosevelt University and won several fellowships and awards including the Atlantic Fellows for Racial Equity, Soros Justice Fellowship, Voqal Fellows, and Margaret Burroughs Fellowship of the Social Justice Initiative at the University of Illinois Chicago. As a formerly incarcerated person living in the U.S., Wallace has fought immense odds to be recognized as an innovator and a thought leader in his field.