Social justice policy & advocacy
Brooklyn, NY
Mustafa Ali-Smith (he/him) is a social justice advocate and organizer working at the intersection of community building, public safety, and transformative justice.
He is currently a Senior Program Associate at the Vera Institute of Justice, working on its Redefining Public Safety Initiative. In a prior role at Vera, he worked on the Reshaping Prosecution initiative, reducing incarceration and racial disparities by supporting community-based diversion programs and alternatives to incarceration. His other prior roles include a mayoral appointment in Knoxville's Office of Community Safety, where he helped build a violence-interruption strategy; program work at Juvenile Law Center in Philadelphia; and consulting with AHCCCS on Medicaid reentry reforms.
Alongside his policy work, Mustafa is the co-founder of Cue the Record and the founder of the Cue the Record Foundation, an organization that uses music and analog sound as a vehicle for community building, cultural education, and collective memory. Through intentional vinyl listening sessions and community programming across New York City, Cue the Record creates spaces where people slow down, listen deeply, and connect across lines of age, race, and background.
His writing on justice, race, culture, and history has appeared in The Appeal, Truthout, Black Youth Project and his Substack, Redesign America.
Mustafa holds a Master in Public Affairs from Princeton University, a Master of Liberal Arts from the University of Pennsylvania, and a Bachelor of Science in Public Administration from the University of Tennessee, Knoxville.
For all things vinyl related including upcoming DJ sets, click here.
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Full resume & CV available upon request
Princeton University
School of Public & International Affairs
Domestic Policy
Master of Liberal Arts (M.A.)
University of Pennsylvania
School of Arts & Sciences
Criminal Justice, Education & Race
Bachelor of Science (B.S.)
University of Tennessee, Knoxville, Haslam College of Business
Public Administration
2026 —
Co-founder & Executive Director, Cue the Record
2024 —
Consultant, Arizona Health Care Cost Containment System (AHCCCS),
2024—2025
ACLU-NJ Clemency Initiative
2024—2025
Fellow, City of Philadelphia Managing Director’s Office, Policy & Strategic Initiatives
2024
Program Associate, Vera Institute of Justice, Reshaping Prosecution Initiative
2021—2023
Program Specialist, City of Knoxville Office of Community Safety (Mayoral Appointment)
2022—2023
Program Assistant, Juvenile Law Center
2021—2022
Research design & evaluation
Descriptive analysis
Data manipulation & modeling
Regression techniques
R
Microsoft Excel
Redesign America: How Much More Can One Bear: Notes on the American Dream (Jan 2025)
Redesign America: Claudette Colvin Paid the Price of the Ticket. We Must Not Forget That.(Jan 2025)
Redesign America: How the U.S. Defends Its Violence (Jan 2025)
Redesign America: The Price of Freedom (Jan 2025)
Redesign America: Student Loans and the Racial Politics of Punishment (Dec 2025)
Juvenile Law Center: Meet Leadership Prize Winner, Dorothy Roberts (Apr 2022)
Juvenile Law Center: Meet Leadership Prize Winner, Cyntoia Brown Long (Mar 2022)
CNBC: This NYC-based duo created a ‘third space’ for music lovers to bond over vinyl records by Renée Onque (Oct 2025)
Citations Needed Podcast: How US Media Repackages Pro-Police Policies as “Reform” (Sept 2024)
NJ Spotlight News: Diversion Not Incarceration By Bobby Brier (Dec 2022)