Christine (Shimrock) Marallen is currently the Director of Prison Ministries for the Archdiocese of Cincinnati and spends much of her week inside prisons, jails and halfway houses with men and women who have decided to do something different about their poor choices and the resulting circumstances. Christine has been working with the incarcerated since 2002.

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Born in Cincinnati, Christine lived throughout the U.S. while working with USA Today Newspaper (1988-2001) in various sales and marketing management roles. As the National Manager/Sales Development and Training for USA Today, Christine wrote and facilitated sales and personal development training throughout the world. From 2010-13, she was the Spiritual Director at The Glen at St. Joseph, a facility/program for single mothers and their children in Dayton, Ohio. 

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Since 2006, Christine has taught Criminal Justice at Xavier University and has taken hundreds of undergraduate students into the prison to learn alongside incarcerated students in the Inside-Out Prison Exchange Program (based at Temple University). There is little she likes better than to see perspectives widen.

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Christine holds a B.A. English from Miami University; an M.A. Criminal Justice and M.S. Theology from Xavier University. She is a certified prison/jail chaplain; a member of the Inside-Out Prison Exchange Steering Committee and Xavier University's Institutional Review Board; a former City Councilmember in Mason, OH; and Past President of the American Catholic Correctional Chaplains Association. She has loved all her gigs, but would trade it all for a writer's cabin, a steady supply of Orin Swift's Prisoner and the opportunity to write all day. Look for her book, Good Lookin' Out: Chapel Girl in Prison soon.

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Currently back in Cincinnati, Christine's best work is her five children, who attend various colleges, high schools and elementary schools in Ohio and have been hearing about crime, justice and prisons since they were old enough to care. Christine is available to speak and train on matters of incarceration, ministry and how to raise healthy children without having to actually cook anything.