The Hustler Files with Lisa Reilly - Stories That Challenge What You Thought You Knew

Imagine spending a full day, as a volunteer, sitting right next to, or across from, a justice impacted person, except you're behind the wall with them! You're shaking their hand, sharing ideas, their ideas to transform their lives, maybe start a business when they get released, and at the end of the day, watching them put on a cap and gown, maybe the first they ever had, and walk across a stage to accept a graduation certificate for participating in a program that brings leadership, empowerment, self-care, healing, and entrepreneurial ideas to paper. Well at Defy Ventures, you don't have to imagine it. Since its beginnings over a decade ago, Defy Ventures has connected 7,200 volunteers with almost as many justice impacted individuals behind the wall. They've also connected many of those same individuals once they are released and have met reentry stability goals, with people and programs to move them forward with their business ideas. None of what Defy Ventures accomplishes is easy, but with Executive Directors, like Melissa O'Dell of Defy Ventures Illinois, even providing opportunities to ONE individual, like Cordelia Spivey, is life changing!

Here in the U.S., there is a belief that the education and workforce systems are broken. At Jobs for the Future (JFF), a national non-profit, they believe it's time to tap the full potential, skills, and aspirations of more than 70 million people with records, living in the U.S. As part of JFF's commitment to that effort, they created the JFF Center for Justice & Economic Advancement. Under the guidance of VP Lucretia Murphy, she and her team are focused on providing a road map for federal, state, and local leaders, so they can fine tune and apply their efforts to 'normalize opportunity' for people with records.

No one could ever accuse Liz Buxton, Director of Operations at the Western MA Food Processing Center, of having a small heart, especially when it comes to Fair Chance Hiring. Even her wife wrote about her on LinkedIn after this episode aired on @WHMP Radio. 'My wife constantly amazes me. She's an incredible human and inspirational leader. She leads with her heart. It's what makes her, and her impact, so special.' And her impact is special. Just ask her Floor Supervisor, Scott Savoie, who served five years behind the wall before finding work at the Food Processing Center. As he puts it, he wasn't sure that he'd ever find a job once he returned to the community. In his former life he was a mechanic, but years of bending over an engine had taken its toll. With Liz and the Food Processing Center, Scott is able to take his mechanical skills and transfer them to the upkeep of the processing equipment. He'll be the first one to tell you that having the opportunity to start a new career and work with Liz has been two of his greatest blessings.

Sheriff Patrick Cahillane will tell you that as an elected official of the people, his first responsibility is to the community. But as part of that citizen responsibility, Sheriff Cahillane is also progressive in his thought processes and actions, and as such implements programs and opportunities that will not only help those in his charge, behind the wall, but also those who are released and are in the process of re-entering the community, and like on part of this day, it's all about creating a human connection between the incarcerated men and a handful of floppy eared Nubian goats.

Kristy Norbert may look like a typical soccer Mom, but ask her about her non-profit organization the Empower HER Network, it's 11 locations across the U.S. and how every day, she and her team which includes trauma-informed Advocates and former Survivors (the name given to those who have found their way out of a human trafficking situation), are operating from the exit ramp for those who are still caught in the web of human or even labor trafficking. Luckily for some, the Empower HER Network has been able to provide programming, housing, job opportunities and most of all a place of trust for those who have experienced this horrific way of life.

It's hard to imagine someone spending 24 years in prison, let alone 10 of those in solitary confinement, but 5 years after his release, he's the Vice President of Social Responsibility at tech innovator CHECKR, and Executive Director of their corporate foundation, Checkr.org. This is the journey of Ken Oliver. In the broad landscape of fair chance hiring, Ken knows firsthand the barriers that face anyone who has been justice impacted. As Ken says, 'it's not just someone's criminal record, but there are 44,000 other collateral consequences that can prevent a justice impacted person from finding a job'. Ken has chosen to take up the flaming sword and use his powerful and passionate voice to educate corporate America, one company at a time, about the fair hiring practices associated with assessing justice impacted individuals when they are applying for a job.

Take a moment and think about that time when someone accused you of saying or doing something that you did not do AND no one will believe you! For those who have been wrongfully convicted and locked up behind the wall the emotional torture of knowing you are innocent is unimaginable. But if you are fortunate to connect with Mike Semanchik, Executive Director of the San Diego, California, Innocence Center, and he and his team research your case and confirm that you were in fact wrongly convicted, well then, you're in great luck that you might finally be exonerated. Visit the Innocence Center dot org to learn more!

To be a paid journalist writing about prison life and the barriers of justice impacted individuals is one of the two pillars that Ryan Moser represents. The other pillar is that Ryan also has the lived experience of incarceration. After 8 years in prison for a property crime due to his addiction, Ryan has emerged from behind the wall to use his lived experience and unique writing skills to advocate for all aspects of prison reform, including the needs of so many, post incarceration. It was while incarcerated that Ryan attended a writing class with Exchange for Change, a prison writing program. That program and its mentors led Ryan to his journalistic path and appearances on NPR's All Things Considered, News Nation and CNN. As Ryan himself says, "I'm fighting for social justice through the medium of writing for changes."

For three decades, Jean Trounstine has dedicated her life to being a storyteller, activist, educator, and theatre Director in the criminal legal system. She came upon her calling while working as an educator at the Women's Prison in Framingham, Mass, where over the course of a decade she directed eight plays for the incarcerated women, groundbreaking work that resulted in her highly praised book, Shakespeare Behind Bars: The Power of Drama in a Women's Prison. From her next non-fiction, Boy with a Knife: A Story of Murder, Remorse, and a Prisoner's Fight for Justice to her first foray into the fictionalized book, Motherlove, just released by the Concord Free Press dot com, (check out for a free copy!), Jean brings to life and light stories that will leave you spellbound while acknowledging that the U.S. criminal justice system is not, and never has been, black and white.

Rewind 25 years, and for most men, their parenting role was that of bread winner and disciplinarian, like their father before them, and so on. Mark Perlman, a licensed social worker and councilor saw an opportunity to change that dynamic while the Executive Director of his wife's counseling center. As Mark so aptly puts it, "I started writing a program that would offer fathers a workbook guide, but as I wrote the program, I felt as if the subject matter was coming through me, rather than from me'. Mark's program, and soon to be passed on to one of Mark's sons, Corey, is being facilitated through counseling agencies, the military, social work curriculums and behind the walls of minimum, medium or maximum prisons, across the United States. Mark's program takes the voluntary participants on a journey from understanding the roots of their own upbringing to developing attitudes and skills that will ultimately, over the course of the program's 13 weeks, heal their father wound and change the trajectory of their relationship with their children.