Joel Castón is the first person in the history of Washington, D.C. to be elected to public office while incarcerated. In 2020, he won a ground breaking election garnering local and nationwide attention. Drawing on the wisdom of 27 years of direct involvement with the criminal justice system, Commissioner Castón works closely with DC government, policy makers, advocacy groups and organizations to change the culture of mass incarceration. Before assuming his role as commissioner, Castón was the co-founding mentor of the Young Men Emerging (YME) community at the DC Jail. A politician by default, Castón maintains his true passion is finance. He asserts, "True freedom can never be achieved until one is financially free." This attitude was the impetus behind the successful launch of the Currency Catchers investment series. An avid watcher of CNBC and Bloomberg, Castón has more than a decade of market experience. His work has been published in the Business Insider and he has been featured on ABC, BNC, Oxygen, and Vice News. A hyper-polyglot, Castón is fluent in English and Spanish, speaks conversational French, and introductory Arabic and Mandarin Chinese, and basic phrases in Italian and Hindi. He is also a yoga enthusiast.