How can we translate life’s worst setbacks into miraculous comebacks? Can prison inmates and the formerly incarcerated be role models for those on the outside? How can we cultivate a single-pointed focus for personal growth despite the cards we have been dealt with in life, and the choices we may have made in the past? And what can someone’s twenty years in prison teach us about life’s possibilities?

Find out from Jason Bryant’s incredible story of redemption and societal transformation, as recounted in conversation with Dr. Hitendra Wadhwa on Intersections Podcast.

Jason Bryant is the Director of Programs at CROP (Creating Restorative Opportunities & Programs), a non-profit dedicated to reforming California’s criminal justice landscape. With 20 years of lived experience within the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation center, Jason has dedicated his term of incarceration to higher education and serving other people through thoughtful conversations and coaching about new possibilities for people’s lives. While incarcerated, Jason earned a master's degree, two bachelor's degrees, an associate degree, a paralegal certificate, became a certified alcohol and drug counselor and has participated in extensive self-help programming. In 2020, Jason’s sentence was commuted along with his immediate release from prison due to his remarkable contributions in transformative and rehabilitative work while incarcerated. He has also co-authored, Men Built for Others: Life Lessons from Those Serving Life Sentences, a powerful book that shows how one can transform life's worst setbacks into miraculous comebacks and be happy regardless of where they are.

In this episode, Jason reveals:

- What 20 years of prison time can teach us about life’s possibilities

- How we can translate life’s worst setbacks into miraculous comebacks

- How to create a virtuous cycle of paying our gratitude forward