By Marta Vallejo, Newswire Intern 

Starting in January 2026, Xavier University’s very own professor, Dr. Tom Hayes will be taking over as the new Chair of the Board of Advocates, determined to bring forth support to this vital program. For the last three decades, The Ohio Innocence Project (OIP) and their board of directors has fiercely advocated for and helped free wrongfully convicted individuals— a mission that now continues under new leadership. 

OIP was founded back in 2003 by Mark Godsey and John Cranley by attorneys Peter Neufeld and Barry Scheck. Over the years, it has helped free 43 innocent men and women, with sentences adding up to 800 years combined.

“The program has been at the forefront of criminal justice reform, using DNA and other scientific advancements to prove wrongful conviction,” according to OIP. 

OIP provides people various ways to donate in order to help their cause— with direct donations for cases, support for exonerees post-release and transference of gifts of stock, people have many ways to assist the program’s mission. 

Hayes started out as a student at Xavier University and has been teaching here for 49 years now. He is currently a professor of marketing and has previously served as Dean of the Williams College of Business, chair of the marketing department and Director of Institutional Advancement. With a vast level of experience and a growing interest in social justice, Hayes found himself wanting to help those incarcerated unjustly, which led him to OIP. 

“You know, because a lot of felons have very difficult times getting jobs. And I thought, okay, that’s a very interesting topic. It’s something I started to get involved with, and then it sort of grew from there in the sense that, you know, helping felons get jobs, I thought was important, but I thought even more important would be to help people get out of jail that shouldn’t have been there to begin with,” Hayes said.

Hayes is currently the Vice Chair in the Board of Advocates in OIP and is set to take up the role of Chair at the start of the next calendar year. He is looking forward to working on expanding the base of supporters that the program has. 

“We’re working on what’s called an ambassador’s program, so that we’d have a separate board that’s called the ambassadors, people that are in the community, that are interested in supporting and helping us,”  Hayes said. “So the idea is to act as a multiplier in some way, shape or form, so that as we recruit more people with varied backgrounds. We should be able to expand the base of not only our supporters, but also our donors.”

In addition to the creation and development of the Ambassador’s program, Hayes also hopes his involvement in OIP will have a positive impact on the young minds of students here at Xavier. 

“We’d like to expose inequities to college students so that they understand there are things that they might also have an impact on or be involved in,” Hayes said. “The more people that are aware of the inequities and the injustice that happens to individuals, I think the more people are going to be there to try to right the wrong.”