Ladji Ruffin strives to be a servant within the community and support others in their goals. The Mercer University criminal justice leadership major owns his own braille transcription business and runs a program that supports people who are reintegrating into the community after incarceration.

Ruffin, who grew up and lived in Macon before moving to Atlanta in 2015, said he was looking for a new career path and was inspired to learn braille after visiting with students at the Georgia Academy for the Blind in Macon. He earned his basic braille certification online, followed by an advanced certification in braille for mathematics. From there, he learned how to create tactile graphics and got to work creating his own business.

Eight years ago, Ruffin started Authentic Braille Masters. His company now transcribes more than 70 books a year into braille and has contracts across the United States, Canada and United Kingdom. Most of the titles are K-12 and college textbooks, many of them for math subjects, but the company also works often on children’s books. 

Among the most recent projects, Ruffin’s company transcribed former Georgia Gov. Nathan Deal’s children’s book, Veto the Cat, which came out this fall. 

Ruffin said he met and got to know Deal around 2015 when he was working at the Governor’s Mansion as an event host, and Deal shared the Veto the Cat story with him prior to its publication. Ruffin attended one of Deal’s book-signings when the book came out, and Deal gave his blessing for Authentic Braille Masters to translate the story to braille.

Ruffin has a staff of remote contract workers for his company, and many of them have recently re-entered society after being in prison, jail or correctional facilities. This is an aspect of the business that is important to Ruffin. 

“Within my family, we have been touched within the incarceration system,” he said. “I felt it was necessary to help individuals transition. I go into the prison system and offer support to individuals coming out. People who have criminal backgrounds struggle to get jobs. I felt the need to do that and teach individuals to become their own business owner. It’s a labor of love.”

Ruffin also provides re-entry support through volunteer work with several local organizations and through his role as a forensic peer mentor, trainer and liaison for the Georgia Department of Behavioral Health and Developmental Disability’s Forensic Peer Mentor Program. The program helps adults with behavioral health diagnoses to navigate the challenges of returning to the community following incarceration.

“I look at people who are visually impaired and blind, I look at people who are integrating back into the community, and I want to give them the support they need, so they can have the same opportunities as people who don’t have that challenge,” he said. “It’s just empowering people to be able to do the work. You create a different atmosphere.”

Once he completes the criminal justice leadership program at Mercer, Ruffin hopes to be able to provide support in even more ways. He wants to use his degree to establish his own consulting business where he can be a criminal justice expert and create specialized re-entry programs. 

“I felt that taking these particular courses at Mercer would help me to be able to create the programs better, and to be able to communicate with different systems that people enter, and work with stakeholders and the community to better aid individuals coming out,” he said. 

Ruffin chose Mercer for his education for multiple reasons. His niece helped him research criminal justice programs and came across the program in Mercer’s College of Professional Advancement, which contained the leadership component that Ruffin was seeking. In addition, Deal was a Mercer alumnus, and beloved Mercer faculty member Dr. Joseph “Papa Joe” Hendricks was a mentor to Ruffin in the 1990s. 

“He supported me when I was young. I got in a little trouble, and he supported me in Macon. He was also a big influence on why I chose Mercer,” said Ruffin, adding that he wished he could show Dr. Hendricks, who passed in 2015, his Mercer diploma after he graduates this December.

As a Mercer student, Ruffin participated in a study abroad trip to Guatemala, an experience that changed his life and his mindset and helped him understand a new culture. Dr. Melanie Pavich’s “History of African Americans in Coastal Georgia” special topics course this semester has also opened his eyes. 

Dr. Pavich, associate professor of history and interdisciplinary studies, has been working to preserve Gullah Geechee and African American heritage and heritage sites in Coastal Georgia, and Ruffin and other College of Professional Advancement students have had the opportunity to interview community members and create digital stories to archive through the course.

“(Mercer students) are not only able to give back to the community but get the community involved, and that’s a beautiful thing,” Ruffin said.