- Season 2 | Episode 11
Beauty Beyond Bars | SDG 3,10 & 16
Lea Nepomuceno is turning small acts of care into a movement for justice. As founder of Beauty Beyond Bars, she brings hygiene, personal care, and visibility to people behind bars, fights for policy change, and sparks public conversation. Her work transforms what it means to be seen, valued, and human inside a system built to erase both.
Episode Introduction
Credo Voices, the podcast where we bring you inspiring stories of ordinary people doing extraordinary things. I’m your host, Awele Okigbo, the CEO of Credo Advisory.
Across the US, over 1.9 million people are incarcerated, including approximately 190,600 women and girls,
according to a 2024 report by the Prison Policy Initiative. In many correctional facilities, essential hygiene items like deodorant, soap, and menstrual products are either unaffordable or inaccessible, leaving many without the means to maintain basic personal care. Despite hygiene being a fundamental human right, systemic neglect continues to dehumanize people behind bars and deepen existing cycles of inequality.
In this episode of Credo Voices, we talk to Lea Nepomuceno, founder of Beauty Beyond Bars, an
initiative committed to ensuring that incarcerated women have access to essential hygiene and beauty products while advocating for systemic change. Lea’s work advances SDG 3, good health and well-being, SDG 10, gender equality, and SDG 16, Peace, justice and Strong institutions, promoting a more equitable and humane correctional system.
Join us as Lea shares how Beauty Beyond Bars is transforming hygiene access, shifting policy, and challenging the way we see incarceration.
Justice Reform Advocate | Storyteller
Lea Nepomuceno is a 19-year-old Filipina American visionary at the forefront of criminal justice reform. She is the Executive Director and founder of Beauty Beyond Bars, the United States’ leading initiative empowering incarcerated people with beauty and hygiene. Since its launch in 2023, the organisation has raised over $230,000 in in-kind donations, passed legislation to improve living conditions behind bars, and delivered programming in juvenile detention centers, providing access to basic care and dignity to those often overlooked.
Nepomuceno’s work has earned national recognition. She was named a Teen Vogue 21 Under 21 Recipient in 2022 and has been featured by Teen Vogue, Allure, The Associated Press, GW Today, the Taco Bell Foundation, and The San Diego Union-Tribune. In 2024, she was selected as an Estée Lauder Emerging Leaders x Vital Voices Visionaries Fellow and in 2025 represented the United States as one of 20 finalists at the Visionaries Summit.
Currently based in Washington, D.C., Nepomuceno is pursuing a Bachelor of Science in Public Health at George Washington University as a Presidential Scholar. She envisions transforming the U.S. criminal justice system at the intersection of law, business, and storytelling, using her platform to restore dignity, amplify voices, and create meaningful change
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