Mount Tamalpais College

Faculty

MTC Celebrates Growth and Impact at 30th Anniversary Gala

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On Saturday, April 18, 2026, Mount Tamalpais College (MTC) celebrated three decades of teaching, learning, and transformation at San Quentin at the College’s 30th Anniversary Gala, Together We Climb. Held  at The Conservatory at One Sansome in San Francisco, the evening brought together formerly incarcerated alumni, current and former volunteer faculty members, staff, donors, partners, and friends, to reflect on the College’s history, honor its impact, and support its future.

Founded in 1996, MTC launched at a time when access to higher education in prison was extremely limited. Despite political and financial barriers, the college gradually gained trust from prison officials and a reputation for rigor and compassion among the prison population. For its first two decades, it was the only on-site, degree-granting college program in a California prison. Today, Mount Tamalpais College is an accredited, independent liberal arts college — the first in the nation dedicated exclusively to serving incarcerated students. The College provides a tuition-free Associate of Arts degree in Liberal Arts, along with college preparatory coursework in math and writing, serving approximately 300 students each term.

The gala marked an important milestone not only for the institution, but for the broader field of higher education in prison. Over three decades, the College has helped define what rigorous, student-centered higher education in prison can look like, building a model grounded in academic rigor, deep investment in students, and its long history of faculty engagement. MTC’s faculty are all volunteers, including professors, graduate students, and industry professionals from universities and institutions in the Bay Area and beyond.

MTC President Jody Lewen addresses the audience at the Together We Climb gala.
Mount Tamalpais College alumni reconnect during the celebration.

“What began in 1996 under extremely difficult circumstances has grown into an institution shaped by trust, academic rigor, and a deep commitment to human possibility,” said Dr. Jody Lewen, President of Mount Tamalpais College. “As we look to the future, our goal is not only to expand access to high-quality higher education in prison, but to affirm the humanity of incarcerated people and advance the contributions they are uniquely positioned to make to the world.”

The program featured a cocktail reception, a seated dinner, multimedia storytelling, art installations, and remarks highlighting the history of the College, its impact, and its vision for the future. The evening marked the largest gathering of MTC alumni in the institution’s history; some alumni reconnected with former classmates and teachers they had not seen since they were incarcerated at San Quentin years before–a powerful reflection of the relationships, community, and impact MTC has built over 30 years.

“The most powerful aspect is that MTC created a space inside the prison where people could  come together to think critically,” said Sha Stepter, an MTC alumnus and member of the Board of Trustees, whose sentence was commuted by Governor Jerry Brown in 2018. “Having the space and support to think critically empowers people to work towards their own liberation, in every sense of the word.” Stepter is now a San Francisco-based filmmaker and will graduate with a BA from San Francisco State in May.

MTC alumnus and trustee Sha Stepter shares his remarks at the gala.
MTC President Jody Lewen and trustee Zachary Bookman at Together We Climb.

As MTC enters its next chapter, the College is focused on expanding its impact by strengthening student and alumni support, investing in faculty development, increasing access to technology and library resources, and documenting its work to support and inform the broader field of higher education.

To learn more about Mount Tamalpais College’s impact or make a gift in support of its work, visit mttamcollege.edu/gala.

Faculty Spotlight: Omair Akhtar

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Omair Akhtar has built a career as a leader in the consumer insights industry, studying what earns people’s attention in a crowded media landscape. In recent years, as a volunteer faculty member at Mount Tamalpais College, he has brought that expertise into an educational environment  with profoundly limited access to media, helping students sharpen their voices, think critically about influence, and tell their stories with intention.

Before entering the corporate world, Akhtar’s first professional home was the classroom. He taught his first public speaking course as a graduate student at the University of Illinois—an experience that fueled his love of teaching. Later, while studying consumer psychology at Stanford’s Graduate School of Business, he learned about the opportunity to teach in prison as a volunteer faculty member with MTC.

Upon completing his doctorate, Akhtar began working as a consumer researcher at Apple and later joined Netflix, where he has spent the past eight years. In his current role as Head of Member Consumer Insights, his team leads research on the Netflix member experience—studying how people interact with the streaming platform and make decisions about entertainment.

As his career progressed, Akhtar found himself missing the classroom—eager to teach again and to provide access to education for those who would value it most. He thought back to MTC and decided to reach out.

“I’ve loved my career in industry, but one thing that I missed about academia is teaching,” Akhtar shared. “I get joy and energy from it. I’ve gained so much from my time engaging with students. I also come from a background, both in my personal life and in my church world, where we take social justice very seriously. I thought I could bring all those values to my teaching at MTC—and thankfully, MTC felt the same way.”

Akhtar joined Mount Tamalpais College as a faculty member in Fall 2023, teaching a public speaking course. In class, he was struck by the level of commitment students brought to their studies.

“The energy was different than when I taught college students on the outside,” he reflected. “They went through a lot to be in that class—it was not a passive set of circumstances that caused them to be there. They were bought in and committed.”

Teaching communication, in particular, allowed Akhtar to engage deeply with students’ perspectives and experiences. Through speeches, debates, and discussion-based coursework, students explored how they see the world and their place within it.

“Students give speeches from their own unique vantage points,” he said. “It allows for us, as a class, to have really constructive, healthy discussions about why we see the world the way that we do, and what it means to advocate for your beliefs, and yourself, in an effective way.”

Over the course of the semester, Akhtar watched students develop not only technical communication skills, but also a stronger sense of agency over their own narratives—an outcome he sees as central to the course.

“The way we talk about it in class is either you control what your story is and how it is communicated, or someone will control that story for you,” he said. “I think we’re able to really help them communicate the principles that they choose to carry with them for the rest of their lives.”

At the end of the semester, Akhtar and the students reflected on their time together in class. “One student expressed that whenever we were all in class together, he ‘felt free, like he wasn’t even in prison,’” Akhtar recalled. “I almost cried. It was palpable in that room how education is freedom.”

Another meaningful moment came at an MTC Holiday Celebration held outside the prison, when Akhtar ran into a former student who had recently been released.

“When I had been in the prison about a year earlier, I saw him and he told me, ‘Omair, you’re going to see me on the outside.’ Then a year passes, and I see him at this party. It was like an out-of-body experience—he did it, he’s here,” Akhtar recalled. “In class, he had shared with me his vision of what his life would be like on the outside, and now he’s doing the things he said he would. It was just so great to catch up with him.”

In 2025, Akhtar also took part in the College’s ongoing Guest Lecture Series—an extracurricular opportunity available to all MTC students—where he drew from his experience at Netflix to explore the attention economy and consumer decision-making. He noted that many MTC students have a fundamentally different relationship to the attention economy, shaped by their lived experiences inside San Quentin—perspectives that added depth and nuance to the discussion.

“Students reflected on the negatives that come with being restricted from access to social media, but also some of the positives,” Akhtar explained. “I’ve learned so much from hearing their perspectives and how they’ve experienced the world from the inside.”