Interview: Uzoma Orchingwa

Interview: Uzoma Orchingwa Connecting Incarcerated People with Their Loved Ones

Uzoma "Zo" Orchingwa

Orchingwa co-founded Ameelio, a communication and education platform for incarcerated people. The company’s first product makes it easier and cheaper to mail letters, card games and other content to friends or family in prison. https://www.ameelio.org

What led you to become involved with issues in the U.S. criminal justice system?

I’ve always had it in the back of my mind, obviously, being African American. But it crystallized my senior year in high school when one of my really close friends was incarcerated. That was really my first time losing a very close friend, trying to stay in touch with him through letters.

What was it like to launch Ameelio during the pandemic?

My co-founder and I were starting off with the first product, a letters app that allowed users to send letters, card games and other content. We were making it completely free for families at the start. Once Covid hit, prisons shut down all in-person visitation, and that really kind of scuttled our plan because we weren’t able to do in-person user testing. So we started connecting with different Facebook groups, with different forums, media, trying to get the word out. Once we were able to build this community to get the word out, things just kind of caught fire.

You’ve also had to get buy-in from corrections officials for a new real-time communication system you’re building. What was the lesson?

The standard narrative is that, you know, they’re trying to keep incarcerated people down. But really what you learn from working with these people is that the significant majority of them are wellmeaning. These are very low-paying jobs. They often come from the same community as incarcerated folks. These are public servants who are trying to do the best they can with limited resources.

One of the key ways we’ve been very successful is really listening to on-the-ground staff, because they’re the people who interact with the technologies. So we get a lot of positive reviews from those guys, and then it really helps us. And that’s how we got our first contract. We spent over four months interviewing Colorado’s correctional officers.

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