By the grace of God, the skin of his teeth and lots of helping hands, Justice Castañeda is where he is today — or at least that’s how he sees it. His father wasn’t around for the early part of his life, and by the second grade, his mother walked out, too. By the age of 13, he decided that his best option was to live on his own. Despite moving more times than you could count on two hands, barely graduating from high school and beating a felony charge in his first 18 years, he managed to find a path toward redemption that would lead him across the country and the world. 

Little did he know, it would also end up leading him home.

Ignoring the clichés, Castañeda is larger than life in every sense of the phrase. With both a smile and a laugh that can fill a room, he speaks about his life experiences with such candor that one might not know how to react. Now 39, he has overcome countless obstacles. With the odds stacked against him throughout his challenging childhood, he managed to escape his troubled past and is now on a path to help others do the same.

Justice Castañeda was born in this house — the first of his many homes. (Photo by Kolin Goldschmidt)

Born and raised in Dane County, he grew up doing what he refers to as the “Low-Income Housing Tour of Madison.” To this day, he can recite all 17 of his childhood addresses — in order. But playing house roulette doesn’t lead to a stable life outside of the home, and he found himself uninterested in school and frequently acted out. 

“I was a violent kid,” Castañeda says. “I was very angry. I did horrific things as a child … in any religion, I’m a heathen. I don’t ask for admonishment, you know, I’m accountable to that.” 

Castañeda spent time in juvenile detention centers, with his first arrest coming at age 13. Eventually, he found himself paired with a young Community Adolescent Programs worker named John Bauman, who would serve as a mentor of sorts for the troubled teen. 

“I felt for him in a lot of ways,” says Bauman, who is now the Dane County Juvenile Court Administrator. “He seemed to be a young man who was really struggling to find his place in the community and the world.” 

Bauman and others working in the organization saw the potential that Castañeda had, but he just had to learn where and how to channel it. 

“Justice was one that I could tell, and others who were around him could tell, that … deep down he’s got a lot going for him,” Bauman says. “If he channeled things correctly he could achieve a lot.”

Those innate talents wouldn’t emerge until much later in young Castañeda’s life, however. At 18, Castañeda was charged with a felony — abuse of a minor — after getting in a fight with a 17-year-old at Madison East High School. Only after the twin traumas of barely graduating high school (with a 1.46 GPA to be exact) and even more narrowly beating the felony charge did he decide that something needed to change, and fast. 

“It was one of those moments where you get shook,” Castañeda says. “The universe kind of shakes you, and it shook me. It made me really think about what I was doing.”

With support from those in his community and a strong lawyer, he left high school facing freedom instead of a felony. Though he had been working construction and other jobs while going through the process of getting his charges dismissed, it wasn’t enough to end the cycle that Castañeda saw spiraling before him. 

“[One day] I looked over and saw a [Marine] force recruiting. It was not really what I wanted to do or where I saw my life going, but I just recognized [that] I needed to get out of Madison,” Castañeda says. “So I quite literally got out of the car and walked over there and asked those guys if they would please get me the hell out of here. They obliged.”

Many people grow up with regular structure and security in their everyday lives. For Castañeda, that didn’t come until after enlisting. Despite some similarity to his jail experiences, he felt his military housing was multiple steps up from the “nose hair above being homeless” basement dwelling where he had lived only months prior. With basic needs now being taken care of, Castañeda was able to focus on himself — by reading and gaining knowledge. 

“Those spaces were the first time and probably the only times that I had ever been healthy,” Castañeda says, referring to his times both in the military and nights spent in detention centers. “Most people don’t think of it as a place to find freedom, but it was the first place I ever found mine,” he says, riffing off a saying from famous black political activist Huey P. Newton.

Castañeda (first row, second from left) is pictured with his unit in the United States Marine Corps. (Photo courtesy of Justice Castañeda)

After a tour of duty in Fallujah, Iraq, Castañeda returned home. Despite following the transition program suggestions closely, adjustment back to civilian life proved more difficult than he expected. He was a Mexican-American veteran with no college degree. However, Gary Kallas of the Wil-Mar Neighborhood Center emerged as another set of helping hands. He aided Castañeda in securing a position at the center, which provides community support to the east isthmus neighborhoods in Madison.

Still struggling to find his path, he returned to the Marines for another four years. Knowing that he didn’t want to be in the military for the rest of his life, he decided to go back to school. He earned a Bachelor of Arts in urban studies and planning from the University of California, San Diego and graduated with an almost perfect 4.0 GPA — a dramatic change from his high school career.

But he didn’t stop there. Inspired by the educators that had believed in him time and time again, Castañeda continued his studies in hopes of doing the same for future generations. 

He went on to get a master’s degree in organization and leadership from Stanford University’s Graduate School of Education, and a master’s in city planning with a focus on housing policy, community and economic development from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. In 2013, he joined a fellowship program at the University of California, San Francisco, where he worked on community-level health improvement. 

After devouring as much knowledge as possible, Castañeda was approached about a position that would bring him back to where it all began. “I just had this kind of moment to pause where I felt like it was a good time to come home,” he says. It also helped that coming back to Madison would allow him to watch his little sister grow up.

In 2017, he became the executive director of Common Wealth Development, returning to help those in the same neighborhoods where he grew up. The Madison-based nonprofit builds low-income housing and affordable commercial spaces, as well as runs youth and adult workforce development and literacy programs. With the number of programs like these diminishing, the work that Castañeda and his colleagues are doing is critical. 

“He bridges a lot,” says Eileen Harrington, an adjunct professor in the political science department at UW-Madison, who also serves as the chair of the Task Force on Government Structure with Castañeda.

“Justice is a person of color, someone who is connected to low-income communities and neighborhoods in the city,” Harrington says. “At the same time, he also is very well connected to the leaders of our city. There’s nothing about him that is conventional in terms of his connections. There aren’t enough people [like him]. We would be a lot better off with more Justice Castañedas.”

The resources these organizations provide often goes unnoticed by those who don’t require their services, but for those who do interact with them, these organizations can make all the difference.

Castañeda has served as the director for Common Wealth Development since 2017 (Photo by Kolin Goldschmidt)

“Organizations like [Common Wealth Development] are critical for a healthy community because they fill in some of the gaps missed by government, schools and private businesses,” says Sam Veit, UW-Madison School of Human Ecology lecturer and president of the nonprofit Sophia’s Promise. “Organizations that can help educate people on financial awareness and better prepare them for meaningful jobs in an ever-changing workforce, in addition to championing improved living conditions, are huge assets to communities.”

Not many people actually come full circle, especially with the less-than-luxurious upbringing that Castañeda had. “It’s a lot of me being lucky, a lot of me being humbled by phenomenal people, a lot of learning and a lot of sometimes very hard and painful lessons, sometimes joy and pleasure lessons,” Castañeda says. 

He is now finishing up his Ph.D. in urban and regional planning at UW-Madison — but Castañeda says he’s only just getting started. 

“I’m from a long line of badass brown people who will stop at nothing to bring music and art to children,” he says.

Castañeda received the Sustain Dane 2019 Live Forward Award, which aims to shine a light on local activists and leaders who work toward bettering communities through sustainability and wellbeing, according to the organization. 

“I hope the story’s not done,” he says. “I think there’s a lot of work. I have a lot of people who have invested a lot in me, and I feel very fortunate for that. You always try and leave places a little better than you found them, and I hope that’s what I’m doing.”