What Justice Looks Like When You Start With People feat. Bianca Van Heydoorn

Kyla Denanyoh
19 hours ago
3 min read

Bianca Van Heydoorn is the Executive Director of the Youth Sentencing and Reentry Project in Philadelphia. In this episode, Bianca shares how criminal sociology, reentry work, and lived experience shaped her leadership, and why meaningful justice work starts with proximity, dignity, and seeing young people as children first.

About This Episode

Background

Bianca Van Heydoorn grew up in New York City in the 1980s and 1990s, coming of age during a period when incarceration deeply shaped her community. Many of her friends and family members were incarcerated, and although Bianca herself was not, she speaks candidly about how close she came and how access to time, resources, and supportive adults made a decisive difference in her life.

“I have not had the experience of incarceration and I often say that is not for lack of effort," shares Bianca Van Heydoorn on You Are A Lawyer.

As a teenager, Bianca stayed closely connected to a friend who was incarcerated when she was sixteen, maintaining contact for nearly two decades. Combined with her father’s incarceration and the rise of movements challenging mass incarceration, these experiences led her to understand what she calls hyper incarceration as one of the defining social justice issues of her lifetime.

Why This Work

Rather than pursuing law school, Bianca chose to study criminal sociology, driven by a deep curiosity about how people build community, culture, and meaning inside correctional settings. She rejected the idea that incarceration erases humanity, drawing instead from lived experience and observation to understand the social worlds that exist behind prison walls.

“Popular notions would have us believe that people inside are disappeared there, and nothing human is happening behind those walls," explains Bianca Van Heydoorn on Episode 229 of You Are a Lawyer.

Through the City University of New York, Bianca designed her own interdisciplinary degree, combining sociology, criminology, and correctional studies. This intentional path allowed her to approach incarceration through a human and systems-based lens long before organizations like YSRP existed to do this work in a formalized way.

What Can You Do with a Law Adjacent Career

Bianca’s career demonstrates that impactful justice work does not require being a lawyer. Before joining YSRP, she led Philadelphia’s Office of Reentry Partnerships out of the Mayor’s Office, coordinating services for people returning home from incarceration and learning how policy, systems, and lived experience intersect.

“We recognize that children are children and we want the legal system to do a better job of recognizing that," shares Bianca Van Heydoorn on Episode 229 of You Are a Lawyer.

As Executive Director of YSRP, Bianca works alongside lawyers, formerly incarcerated leaders, and community advocates to support young people charged as adults and adults sentenced to die in prison as children. Her role shows how leadership, policy, and operational strategy are critical to justice, even outside the courtroom.

Lawyer Side Hustles and Parallel Work

While Bianca is not a lawyer, her work runs parallel to legal advocacy. She leads an organization committed to holistic legal support, positive youth development, and adolescent brain science, while also building sustainable infrastructure so the work can continue long term

“We should not be living to work but work should be an adjunct to our life,” Bianca Van Heydoorn expresses in Episode 229 of You Are a Lawyer.

Bianca is also deeply intentional about leadership succession. She is actively working to prepare YSRP for a future executive director with lived experience of incarceration, reflecting her commitment to stewardship, shared power, and building institutions that last beyond any one leader.