There are 2.3 million people in prison in the United States. Each year, 700,000 are released, but 83% will return within 9 years. The #1 predictor of recidivism? Joblessness.

Yet over the past 25 years, Televerde has hired over 3,000 women while they're still in prison, given them training in business and in life skills and just 7% have returned to prison upon their release.

As a demand generation company with clients including Microsoft, SAP and Adobe, it's not enough to just have a social mission. Over the past 25 years, they've generated $8 Billion in revenue for clients and the 30,000 sales opportunities that they generated for one of their clients resulted in $825 Million in revenue, which represented a 14:1 return on their investment.

30% of the Televerde leadership team was hired the traditional Televerde way...from prison. That includes Chief Social Responsibility Officer Michelle Cirocco, who sat down to talk about the evolution of the Televerde model over the past 25 years, their plans to scale up to impact 10,000 women, and why businesses should make employment for the formerly incarcerated part of their diversity and inclusion efforts.