Who leads the work
The model in a single person.
Leading an organization like Amparo takes a rare pairing: someone who has lived what the people we serve are living, and someone with the discipline to build an accountable institution. Most people bring one or the other.
Founder & Executive Director
Robert “Atma” Meek
More than twenty-two years at the intersection of reentry, homelessness, behavioral health, and recovery — paired with lived experience returning from incarceration, and a documented record of turning that combination into measurable results.
- Peer educator inside Texas state prisons for over a decade
- Certified Reentry Specialist · Harm Reduction Specialist
- Justice-Involved, Mental Health & Recovery Peer Support Specialist
- Trained Peer Support Supervisor
- Author of the Master Reentry Specialist Training
Atma’s credibility is not theoretical. He returned from incarceration and has spent the two decades since working inside and alongside the very systems Amparo addresses — lived and living experience, the engine of the credible-messenger model. He can also run an institution, not only inspire one: rebuilding and leading departments, overseeing a high-volume community center, and reducing departmental spending by half while holding service quality.
A personal note from Atma, in his own words, will live here.
The record behind the work
The rare both/and the work requires.
Accountable to data
Designed KPIs, logic models, and evaluation tools; maintained 98% average monthly engagement across peer-led programs. Built to be accountable to “both dignity and data.”
Experience inside TDCJ
Reentry support with Project RIO, over a decade as a peer educator inside state facilities, and volunteer work through Conviction Yoga — the access, protocols, and relationships Amparo’s hardest frontier requires.
Governance & field standing
Leadership and steering roles across ECHO, Convene Travis County, and the National Reentry Workforce Collaborative; guest presenter at the UT School of Law and Forensic Social Work Program.
A founder already
Founded Impact Reentry and authored the Master Reentry Specialist Training through Reentry & Beyond — codifying the work into something teachable, not only performing it.
A safeguard, not a redemption story
Governance built so this is never one person’s project.
The risk this model raises is that an organization becomes one person’s redemption story. That is exactly why Amparo builds in independent governance in phases — an advisory committee first, carrying expertise, community credibility, and survivor, lived, and living experience; a lean founding board holding fiduciary authority at incorporation; and, over time, a matured governing body that seats survivors and people with lived and living experience in real decision-making roles.
Alongside it: a research function that measures outcomes honestly, and a commitment that leadership tells its own story plainly, and first.