Christine Marallen

Christine Marallen currently spends much of her week inside prisons, jails, and halfway houses throughout Ohio and is certain she has the best job in the world.

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Working with the incarcerated since 2002, Christine is the former Director of Prison Ministries for the Archdiocese of Cincinnati, a position she left in 2019 to continue changing the reentry narrative in Ohio and the country. As the Chief Strategy Officer for Damascus, Christine facilitates the Damascus Trauma Reentry Class inside numerous correctional facilities around Ohio, and manages the talent staff that provides reentry curriculum employment opportunities and social support for those returning home from incarceration.

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Christine speaks on the innovative Damascus Reentry Model both locally and nationally at Workforce Development symposiums, Reentry Conferences, Prison Ministry events, and other gatherings where people seek clarity and solutions in areas of justice and the fiscal implications of incarceration.

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Born in Cincinnati, Christine lived throughout the U.S. while working with USA Today Newspaper in various sales and marketing management roles from 1988 to 2002. As the National Manager/Sales Development and Training for USA Today, Christine wrote sales and personal development training and facilitated throughout the globe. From 2010-13, she was the Spiritual Director at The Glen at St. Joseph, a facility/program for single mothers and their children in Dayton, Ohio.

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From 2006-2018, Christine taught Criminal Justice at Xavier University and has taken hundreds of undergraduate students into Ohio prisons to learn alongside incarcerated students in the Inside-Out Prison Exchange Program (based at Temple University in Philadelphia). There is little that Christine likes better than to see perspectives widen.

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Christine holds a B.A. in English from Miami University, an M.S. in Criminal Justice, and an M.A. in Theology from Xavier University. She is a trauma-informed professional from the NARM Training Institute, a certified prison/jail chaplain, a former member of the Cincinnati Enquirer Editorial Board, the Inside-Out Prison Exchange Steering Committee, and the Xavier University's Institutional Review Board. Christine was a City Councilmember in Mason, Ohio, past President of the American Catholic Correctional Chaplains Association, and in 2020, Christine was awarded the Anna E. and Williams F. Madges Alumni Award from Xavier University for Outstanding Contribution to Church and Society. Christine has loved all her gigs but would trade it all for a writer's cabin, a steady supply of Orin Swift's Prisoner, and the opportunity to write all day. 

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Currently living in Cincinnati, Christine's best work is her five children, who have been hearing about crime, justice, and prisons since they were old enough to care. Christine is available to speak and train on matters of incarceration, ministry, and how to raise healthy children without having to actually cook anything.

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Contact Christine Marallen at christine.marallen@teamdamascus.com.

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