Amika Mota is the Senior Vice President of Strategy & Policy at Young Women’s Freedom Center (YWFC), where she leads strategy, vision, and movement-building rooted in the leadership of formerly incarcerated women and trans people. A nationally respected movement strategist and formerly incarcerated leader, Amika has spent more than two decades turning lived experience into policy change, coalition power, and community-led solutions.
Amika began organizing as a teen mother and midwife, and during her own incarceration, advocated alongside women inside as a jailhouse lawyer, paralegal, firefighter, and mentor. She previously served as Policy Director at YWFC and Executive Director of Sister Warriors, helping advance major legislative campaigns, grassroots organizing, political education, and electoral power for incarcerated and formerly incarcerated women and gender-expansive people.
As Senior Vice President, Amika continues to oversee Sister Warriors and its C4 work, strengthening the connection between YWFC’s site-based leadership development and Sister Warriors’ chapter-based organizing, policy advocacy, and electoral strategy. She is a 2026 Galaxy Leader Fellow and an active public voice on incarceration, gender justice, reproductive justice, and youth justice.