Hakim Crampton is national education and criminal justice consultant and certified Leadership Challenge™️coach. He is a Healing Centered Engagement practitioner, restorative justice circle facilitator and youth leadership specialist.  Hakim brings nearly two decades of experience in youth development, programming and juvenile justice advocacy and is noted for being the creator of S.L.A.M. Lyrical Education, an English Language Arts Hip Hop Based curriculum series of six workbooks for grades 4-12.

Hakim comes to this work after being wrongly convicted of 1st degree murder at the age of 18. After fifteen years wrongly imprisoned, Hakim was supported by the Wisconsin Innocence Project who helped win his freedom in 2006. As a result of experiencing such injustice, Hakim was passionately driven to mentor youth, support grassroots community organizations fighting to disrupt structurally biased systems, while using his voice and experience in social, criminal and education justice advocacy. 

Hakim is a noted author with 9 books currently available in print and has been published in journals and periodicals over a dozen times. As a community organizer and education advocate, Hakim has received over two dozen local, state and national awards for his service to schools, communities and organizations.

In 2019 Governor Gretchen Whitmer appointed Hakim to a 4-year term on the Michigan Indigent Defense Commission, making him the first formerly incarcerated person appointed by a governor to serve a term on a State Commission. While a Commissioner, Hakim served as Chair of the DEI Committee while also sitting on two other committees of the Commission. Hakim’s term expired in April of 2023.