Alexander McLean

Alexander is the Founder and CEO of Justice Defenders. He is passionate about justice, having trained as a barrister and magistrate. During gap year travels to East Africa, McLean fundraised to provide better health facilities and educate Ugandan incarcerated people about the law. After graduating from the University of Nottingham in 2007, he moved to Kampala, where he created a team of local and international staff and volunteers to develop the work of the African Prisons Project.

Now known as Justice Defenders, the organisation trains incarcerated men and women, alongside prison officers, to become paralegals. Equipped with the law, paralegals work in legal offices in 35 prisons across Kenya, Uganda and The Gambia. They've provided more than 100,000 free legal services to incarcerated people, seeing the release of 30,500 clients.
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Alexander is a Senior TED Fellow, Ashoka Fellow and UK Young Philanthropist of the Year. He appears in TIME’s 30 Under 30 Changing the World and ‘The Power List’, featuring Britain's most influential people of African and African-Caribbean heritage.