Fritzi Horstman is the Founder and Executive Director of Compassion Prison Project (CPP), an organization committed to transforming prisons through compassion, trauma awareness, principles of nonviolence and systemic healing. CPP’s groundbreaking curriculum, Trauma Talks, is currently being implemented in prisons across California, throughout the United States, and internationally, reaching thousands of incarcerated individuals in Colombia, Northern Ireland, New Zealand (and soon Mexico, Australia, Argentina, the UK and Ireland), often with minimal funding but maximum impact.
With over 30 years in the film industry, Fritzi is a Grammy-winning producer for HBO’s The Defiant Ones. She also directed the viral short film Step Inside the Circle and the documentary short Veterans Behind Bars. Her deep understanding of childhood trauma, shaped by her own experiences, is at the core of her work. Through film, curriculum, and conversation, Fritzi helps others see that trauma often lies at the heart of incarceration — but healing is possible.
Fritzi is also the host of the Compassion in Action podcast, where she has powerful conversations with trauma experts like Gabor Maté, Bruce Perry, Bessel van der Kolk and thought leaders including Joe Dispenza and Michael Singer. The podcast is now reaching over 1 million incarcerated people across the U.S.
Her work is guided by a rare combination of strategic vision and deep compassion. Fritzi doesn’t just imagine a better world — she takes action to build it, inside the very systems that have caused the most harm. By bringing trauma awareness, emotional healing, and practical tools for transformation into prisons (and communities), she is helping to reimagine what justice can look like: not as punishment, but as possibility. Her mission is not just about reform, it’s about awakening the human spirit in places where it has long been forgotten.