Explore how fair-chance hiring can transform workplaces. From breaking down misconceptions about justice-impacted individuals to creating meaningful opportunities for reintegration, this conversation with Ken Oliver, CIO of The Just Trust, dives deep into how business leaders can redefine second chances at work — and why it’s a win-win for individuals, organizations, and communities. In this episode, you’ll learn: - Why stigma around justice-impacted individuals persists — and how to overcome it. - The difference between performative policies and transformative practices. - Tactical steps business leaders can take to implement responsibly second-chance hiring.
Explore how fair-chance hiring can transform workplaces. From breaking down misconceptions about justice-impacted individuals to creating meaningful opportunities for reintegration, this conversation with Ken Oliver, CIO of The Just Trust, dives deep into how business leaders can redefine second chances at work — and why it’s a win-win for individuals, organizations, and communities.
In this episode, you’ll learn:
Resources from this week’s episode -
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Jerry: I am Jerry Won. Welcome to Tomorrowist, where we explore the trend shaping the future of work. This week we're asking, what if your company's most overlooked? Talent isn't missing but simply locked out. Roughly one in three Americans has a criminal record, yet most companies still treat justice impacted individuals as liabilities.
Instead of the assets, they can be here to discuss how leaders can redefine second chances at work is Ken Oliver. Chief Innovation Officer at the Just Trust and a National Voice for Fair [00:01:00] Chance hiring. Ken, welcome to Tomorrowist.
Ken: Thank you. Glad to be here, Jerry.
Jerry: Off the top. I want to say thank you for the work that you've done. Uh, thank you for, uh, bringing awareness to this issue and continuing the conversation on, on things that, uh, frankly, most of us, um, aren't thinking about enough.
And so let, let's start off the top before we get into the systemic challenges and opportunities in Second Chance hiring. Um, share with us how your personal story shaped your mission to transform the way that we view. Formerly incarcerated individuals in the workplace and, and why you're so passionate about this.
Ken: Sure. Well, well, I'll start off by giving you the capsule form version, um, not to bore you or the audience. Um, I myself am just as impacted. I did. 24 years in a California prison. Um, almost a decade of that in solitary confinement for reading a book, a politically charged book. And in 2019 I was released here to the Bay Area of California and was really interested in hitting the ground running after being away from [00:02:00] society for that long.
Um, and there were a couple things that jumped out to me right away is that there weren't a lot of job opportunities for folks who had been just as impacted and the job opportunities that were available. To people like myself who were just as impacted outside of the nonprofit sector, typically were very low paying jobs, high labor, low pay, and when you live in a place like the San Francisco Bay Area, low pay is a recipe for homelessness.
So that's a little bit about, uh, how I got started. And so when I, when I saw what was happening out here to people not only like myself, who were really ambitious and driven and really looking to rebuild and reintegrate back into the community in a positive way, I really started thinking about how can we change the narrative around what it means to be justice impacted in America.
As you mentioned, at the top of the hour, there's 80 million people in America that have a record. Um, and the Justice Department anticipates that will be a hundred million by the year 2030. That represents 36% of the American workforce. And so when you think about the [00:03:00] fact that one third of the people in America have some type of record that oftentimes gets blocked when it goes to the HR background screening process, uh, especially with the advent of AI screening people out wholesale.
It really becomes one of the leading civil rights issue of our time when it talks about unemployment, homelessness, et cetera. Um, so it just became a passion of mine to talk to employers, to talk to policy makers, to talk to justice impacted people, and think about ways that we could reintegrate back into the community and have some access to economic mobility.
Jerry: I, I thank you for that. Again, I think, you know, we, we think about a lot of the different things that are impacting the business world. Obviously AI is hot topic. Topic. There are, you know, um, policies that, that are changing about, you know, as you mentioned, um, how we treat certain people with different backgrounds.
Um. You know, and, and so, uh, as somebody who is not just as impacted and then has not had, uh, a lot of people in my life, I appreciate this because I think it's bringing awareness, uh, particularly to people who don't think that it can impact us, but it [00:04:00] does. Right? And so, um, I'm excited to share this conversation with you and I learn for myself, but also to bring in our audience, uh, because these are key decision makers and I hope that, uh, we can.
Leave this conversation a little bit more informed and, and, and perhaps borrow a little bit of your passion and your knowledge, uh, Ken, to make sure that we can, uh, be more mindful and even more, um, become a better ally in a lot of these situations.
Ken: let's hope so. I appreciate that.
Jerry: let's do it. Um, SHRM research from 2024 uh, found that 85% of HR professionals who've hired individuals with criminal records rate their performance as equal to, or even better.
Than other employees who have not. Uh, so that's a good statistic. E equal to a better, an 85% of the, uh, the folks. Why do you think it's still so often overlooked despite the statistics that tell us that it is equal to or better in the overwhelming majority of the cases, I.
Ken: It's a really great question. Um, it's really due to the stigma. You know, way back a [00:05:00] thousand years ago in King's England, they had this thing called civil death. And that is when you broke the law, you lost all of your civil rights and civil abilities to vote, to get married, to be able to work, to do a lot of different things.
And that kind of. Problem that happens, post-incarceration as follows. Here in the American justice system, we're, we're very good at talking about prosecuting folks. And, and, and rightfully so. In many cases we're very good about sending people to prison, rightfully so in many cases. But what we're not very good at is what happens to the 96% of people go into prison who are gonna come back into our community.
And so when you think about what is the pathway, not only to public safety, but also what is the pathway to restoration? Of a citizen in the community, you really have to think about employment. Housing is closely close second, but you, you really need to be able to provide for yourself in a capitalist economy to be able to pay for things like housing, to be able to pay for food.
And when we as a society decide that we're going to block a certain segment of society out because they have a record, what we're doing is we're [00:06:00] actually perpetuating. Poverty. We're perpetuating homelessness, we're perpetuating more crime because when people can't earn a living a, a livable wage in, in many of the big metropolitan cities, they're forced to play the margins of society and it, and it shows up in different ways.
It shows up with drug abuse. That's why we're in a fentanyl crisis. It shows up with. You know, breaking into cars and breaking into houses and stealing things out of the department stores to get economic gain. Right. And so, you know, my, my theory of change, my philosophy is, is that if you give someone a lovable age job and, and restore their dignity and allow them to earn for themselves, right?
That's one less person that's gonna commit a crime, that's one less victim in society. And, and to your point, data has shown that those individuals that you give an opportunity to enter into a livable wage career or job. They're usually the most loyal. They have the least amount of attrition. They perform better because they have something to prove, and they really feel like they're part of a community for many cases, for the very first time in their [00:07:00] life.
And that means a lot to an individual who's been marginalized oftentimes.
Jerry: In your work and in your experience. I, I want to ask you about the subtle differences between, you know, when we, when we talk about the justice impacted community, um, there are different. Types of crimes that they've committed. There are different, there's a variety, right? Who you are, what you've done. And then on the other side, as we talked about the types of jobs, as you mentioned, there are many jobs, or more than not jobs in the nonprofit sector that may, that are within the justice world.
There are more labor intensive, lower wage jobs, as you mentioned. How, what, what is the data and what is your expertise in sort of the nuance of what, what were we actually trying to do? Is it a singular problem of helping all just justice impacted individuals? Or as our audience is more, you know, through the lens of corporate work, um, how can we actually ultimately at the end of our conversation, uh, [00:08:00] encourage.
Corporate folks encourage people in larger organizations to, uh, redefine or change the ways that we view just impacted individuals. Um, take us through sort of what that actual community looks like and the opportunities that different types of folks are given through your work.
Ken: Well, there's a couple different pieces that I'd like to touch on that you talked about, and I think the first one is this mystification around people who've committed acts of violence in their life. And I think, you know, most of your listeners, at least if you're a guy at some point in time, had some type of violent incident in your life where you had a fight at on a school yard or in a bar or somewhere else, uh, in college or somewhere like that.
And so there's this notion that we've kind of told ourselves that if people have committed a violent felony, that they're the most dangerous people. When in fact, there's literally troves of data that shows the people who go to prison for homicide. Are the safest people when they return to the community, and there's several different factors that account for that.
Number one, most of the violent crimes happen before somebody's age, 26. So when you think about youthful indiscretions, 15 to [00:09:00] 26 years old, you have this kind of growing from male adolescence into male adulthood. I call it the young lion phase, where you do all kind of brazen and crazy stuff like break windows and vandalize and do things like that.
Get be a gang member. And to most of the time people grow out of that or what they call age. Out of that process. So when you've had a 10 or 15 or 20 year time out, and by the time you're 40, you've now matured. You're no longer thinking impulsively. And so your inclinations to do a crime of passion is a lot less.
And so to give you an example of that, in California, for people who have paroled from serving a life sentence for homicide, they have a recidivism rate of 4%
Jerry: Hmm.
Ken: for people who've gone for things like robbery and stealing. Liquor out of a liquor store, they have a 60% recidivism rate. So people who have done less violent crimes actually have a higher recidivism rate exponentially than people who have committed violent crimes.
As a matter of fact, in the last company that I worked for, they had several employees that had done 20 [00:10:00] years and more for homicide, uh, and they had been promoted more than any other person. Whether they were just as impacted or not, they were do. Best behaved, the attrition rate was in the single digits.
Um, so we really have to wrap our mind around what we're told by watching shows like Cops and America's Most Wanted and Snapped and all these things that come on cable tv, which is where most of us get our images and news and narrative, um, into one of really understanding who the person is and looking behind the black and white kind of binary thing that happens during a background check process that may, uh, exit a candidate.
In addition to that, uh, I know that most sho members wanna follow the law and in 37 states, they have ban what they call ban the box laws and ban the box laws were originally started by the EEOC that basically said that you can't discriminate or shouldn't discriminate against a candidate just because they have a record.
And what I tell people is behind every single background check that you see, or that comes through to one of your adjudicators is actually a human story. And the federal government and most state governments implore us and, and ask us to [00:11:00] actually look behind the story to see if that's relevant to the particular job or not.
And, and many companies, you know, most companies are, are, are doing that very, very well. Um, especially states that have banned the box. But if we understand the story, it changes the nuance. So it's really about proximity and getting proximity to understanding the candidate who's in front of you, what they did, what were the circumstances, what are the job skills that they bring to the table that may offer a value proposition for your particular position.
Um, that's really what we're encouraging companies to do. It doesn't mean that you hire everybody, just like you don't hire everybody who comes outta Stanford. Like some people are right fits and some people aren't right. But if you've never had the conversation, then you're never going to find the right fit when it comes to a justice impacted candidate.
Jerry: There is a growing awareness around second chance hiring due to the work that you and, and your peers are doing, which is a good thing. Um, but there's a, is a nuance difference between just checking a box and changing the culture and a mindset. Um, what, what are some of the differences that you've seen between a performative policy and something that actually truly [00:12:00] makes a transformative difference?
Ken: Sure. Like I, I'll be the first person to say that there are companies out there that wanna check the box, right? And then there are companies who are doing amazing things. So when you look at like major corporations in America, JP Morgan Chase has hired 21,000 people. I. With records. In the last five years, 10% of their new hires every single year have been just as impacted people who have a record.
The reason they've been able to do that is because they have a CEO who is very adamant about Second Chance, which is Jamie Diamond, and he has instilled that culture into the entire company. And so now you have thousands of employees at JP Morgan Chase who now have become Second Chance Champions because of the work that they've done there at JP Morgan Chase.
Another huge company that's invested heavily in Second Chance is Lowe's. Lowe's has hired since 20 21, 50 4,000. Justice impacted people all across the country. Three out of their last five years, employee of the year, cashiers of the year were justice impacted people. They talk about the low attrition that they have, they talk about the great employees that they [00:13:00] are and how they show up because they're grateful for a job.
And how I was told by one executive, um, at the company that we tell folks that are just as impacted, if you wanna make a million dollars over the course of, of. Your career, come with lows and do a good job and live up to our values, and we'll make sure that you're a, uh, a valued employee for the rest of your time, your working time.
So it's, it really starts from the top, usually, right? Uh, instilling the wheel, usually from the C-suite. You have an executive that wants to do it. It's very hard to do it bottoms up, right when you, when you're trying to convince the C-suite, um, to do it. But when you find a company that is willing to do it, I've seen it happen at scale and work very, very well.
Jerry: What are some of the big misperceptions? Uh, we, we talked about the data, right? Um, most of the folks are at or better, um, as, as you mentioned, there's research that, that shares, that continues to share, um, the, the data back evidence that this is a good bet. Um, but what. Misperceptions and misunderstandings are still, uh, plaguing that gap between [00:14:00] what is data backed as a good idea and the hesitancy for more organizations to adopt the mindset.
Ken: it, it's really just misperceptions about who is involved with the justice system. And a lot of those times those things are tied to class and race, and they don't always mean what we think that they necessarily mean. Most employers think initially without a lot of background knowledge that justice impacted people are lazy or that they don't have talent or that they went to prison because they can't add value to a particular company's culture.
Um, some of 'em think that they're dangerous. Some of them think that if they leave them in their place of employment, that they'll steal the computers and you know, have all their friends and they're having a party. None of those things have borne out to be true. In fact, it's been the exact opposite.
Usually when someone is integrated into the fold of a company culture, they're so grateful that they've been given an opportunity to earn a living to support their kids. To support their significant other, to be a contributing member to society where they can actually pay [00:15:00] rent and pay the bills and do all the things that we in middle class America like to do on a regular basis.
That that's why the data shows they're the best behaved. They're the most loyal employees. They usually are the first ones there and the last ones to leave. They promote faster exponentially, not just one time faster, two times faster, exponentially faster in many cases than regular employees who have never been justice impacted.
Jerry: You, me and everybody watching or listening, we are a combination and a result of our multitudes of identities, our experiences, and even identities that we are born with and we pick up and, and in this conversation, you know, the, the sense that I'm getting and, and the reality is that for justice impacted folks, that becomes not only their primary, but sometimes their sole identity, right?
We, we put them in a box and saying, because you've done this, then. Other things about your identity that make you who you are aren't gonna get as highlighted and we're gonna, um, stigmatize you or, or make assumptions about you. Um, [00:16:00] how can we change that narrative? How do we continue, right? Because you, you've spoken about the narratives around public safety and liability, often sort of becoming the primary, you know, narrative, uh, driver.
Um, but if we're gonna think about inclusion, if we're gonna think about how leaders can begin to shift. That story so that that's not, you know, so we see somebody who works at Lowe's and saying, oh, you know, she must be that, or he must be that. How do we make sure that we begin this sort of whole person or their, uh, 360 person and everything that makes that person awesome becomes a part of their story, both at work and in society.
Ken: It's a great question, Jerry. I'll answer in two pieces. The first thing I tell people, 'cause I get asked that question a lot, is I tell executives and people listening that the first thing you gotta do is look in the mirror. We can't look at things externally. We have to check our own bias at the door, and we carry a lot of biases about what people look like, what heritage they are.
America is really, really great at creating these buckets of [00:17:00] othering, and we've been fighting it for 400 years with all classes of people. We do it with people who are poor. We do it with people who look different than us to speak a different language. And we're still fighting that in many different, different areas.
And this is just one other status based area where we tend to judge people and and other people. So that's the first thing I tell people is like. Question yourself and why are you having these conversations? Or why are you having these judgements that you're pushing on someone else? The second thing is we have to do is we have to continue to tell stories.
So I, in my work at the Just Trust, I happen to be privileged to work with Larry Miller at Nike. Now, for those of your audience members who don't know who Larry Miller is, he did 10 years in prison, grew up in the hood as a young black male, and committed a Hom, a gang homicide when he was young. It just so happened that while he was in prison.
He got a college degree from Temple University in accounting. Not only did he do that, he went on to become the founder, basically, of the Jordan brand, where he was the president for several years and did some [00:18:00] amazing things at Nike. He's still at Nike. He was so successful and all this. People never knew he was in prison.
So it was literally like, you know, a, a trading places type of story. Um, he was. Interviewed by Paul Allen, the co-founder of Microsoft, who asked him to become the president of the Portland Trailblazers, which he did for several years. And so what, what I love about Larry's story is, is here you have this kind of unusual suspect of somebody who has amazing business acumen, took herself through school, had amazing success by any standard, whether you graduated from Harvard or Stanford or wherever.
Yet no one knew that he was just as impacted. And it just so turns out that when he was able to have the opportunity to fly. When he was able to have the opportunity to step into his own potential, into his own possibilities, he became one of the most successful businessmen in America, um, which is a, which is a primary case study, is that when you support people, I.
You give people opportunity who have made the transformation, are willing to change. And that's not everybody, but for most of the people that have, they do amazing things in their career if they're provided the [00:19:00] opportunity. And so we're actually, as a society, spending a lot of time boxing out untapped talent and in a time where there's a labor shortage, in a time where the economy sometimes is iffy around employment and labor.
Um, it's important that we give people opportunity to be able to work and support. Their family and take care of themselves in a meaningful way and become contributing members to society. And, and I'll close with the fact that we, we should all think about how we build stronger and safer communities. It, it's impossible to build a safer community if you, we are marginalizing people wholesale by the thousands and not giving them an opportunity to earn a living.
That's just a recipe for disaster. It's, it's, it's a, it is a rich soil for disaster to happen in the form of substance abuse, violence, mental health problems, et cetera and so forth. So it pays a lot more to invest in people and, and, and getting them on the right track than it does to alienate people.
Jerry: Ken, I, I'm loving this conversation because [00:20:00] it's forcing me as, as you're speaking, to think about my own assumptions, my own biases that I, uh, have overcome some ones that I continue to work on. Um, and, and so one question I want to ask is, as, as I asked a version of this earlier, but. What can, so you, you've been impacted, Larry was, and oftentimes you see those who've been a part of that process become the biggest advocates.
But you also mentioned folks like Jamie Diamond at JP Morgan Chase and other leaders. And, and you don't need to be the CEO of a big bank to do this, but how can folks begin to be more educated? Obviously listening to this episode is a great start. Um, what can we continue to do? To make sure that we minimize our biases, we unlearn some of the things that we were taught and continue to be taught and to become champions alongside you to amplify, uh, the, the experiences and the stories of those who are good bets to make in business.
But beyond just talking about business, as you mentioned, it's, it's a community issue. [00:21:00] It is a safety issue for all of us. It's a, it's an economic justice issue in some senses. Uh, what, what are some things that you can advise our audiences, our audience, who is, uh, moved by the conversation that we've had so far and wants to take that next step in education?
I.
Ken: Sure. Thanks Jerry. I think, I think the most important thing is don't be afraid of the conversation. Right. I, I teach corporate trainings all across the country to small, medium and large businesses, fortune 100 businesses, around this very issue about how to create change management, how to implement it, how to talk about stakeholder engagement, to hire people who've actually gotten outta prison for felonies and, and those types of things.
And, and I never, when I'm doing teaching, share the fact that I've been just as impacted myself. Because what I like to do is I like to show executives and, and the people that I'm teaching about their own. Built in bias. And usually by the time we go through a 12 week course, you know, I drop the bomb on 'em.
Like, you know, you're looking at someone who did 24 years in prison. Um, everyone's flabbergasted because all those assumptions that they had weren't there because of the way I showed [00:22:00] up in a button down shirt. Not I got a VP title working at a corporation. That's the last thing they think. But on, on the flip side of that, had I.
I told 'em in the very beginning, they may very well may have built up biases upfront, um, and not listened to the education and the things that I was teaching. And so I think not being afraid of the conversation, being open to understanding the human story is the most important piece. I'm not suggesting that companies lower the bar for their talent.
What I'm suggesting and advocating for is for them to lower the barrier that when you find the best candidate for the role and that person fits. You don't exclude them because they have a record 15 years ago, or 20 years ago, or 10 years ago even. Um, I, I, I, the law calls for, and I invite people to actually get to understand who that person is and what the circumstances were.
And oftentimes you'll find that the person was just like your cousin Jim. Or your brother or your father-in-law, or your aunt or whoever, right? Just like your next door neighbor. So you know, that's what we have to do is we have to do more storytelling, more narrative [00:23:00] building, and we have to have more empathy in the way that we engage in these conversations and understand why am I like being judge and jury on this person who already served their debt to society?
And, and it's important that we understand that because we've all invested in a system, each and every one of us with our tax dollars that says 95% of people who go into prison are gonna come out. So the next logical question is, is what type of people do we want coming out? Back into our communities, we can say we don't want the people in those people in our communities, and we can push them to the sides.
And then you look at what's in LA in the Bay Area with homelessness and the fentanyl pen, we can have all those things or we can say, Hey, why don't we give a person a six month short duration certification program or put them through a one year apprenticeship program and get them on their pathway to livable wage in, in, into the economy As a taxpayer, it's a win-win for business.
It's a win-win for policy makers. It's a win-win for our communities, most importantly, and win-win for that person's family.
Jerry: Let's talk about company culture a little bit, and maybe not even company culture, but industry culture. Um, the, [00:24:00] what you're advocating for, um, if you agree with Ken, is long-term solutions, right? We need to invest in people when they come out and maybe even perhaps to prevent somebody from being just impacted in the first place.
Uh, o oftentimes businesses are pressured to make short-term decisions, right? We need to make labors, uh, labor decisions or strategic investments based on. Criteria that is a little bit shorter than somebody's lifetime or a significant tectonic cultural change. How do you advise and your, your, your clients, the people that you work with on balancing, uh, the investment that they can make in their businesses for short-term priorities?
And what is the right decision for long-term societal benefits?
Ken: Well, one of the things I love about working with big business, medium business too, is to be able to talk about the business benefit. Like there's a huge business case to be made for hiring justice impacted people, and so if you find the right justice impacted person to employ, it's a win-win for the business.
The cost of attrition and tech, where I came from and, and where I ran corporate [00:25:00] social responsibility is three times an individual salary.
And so in tech where you have turnover and attrition, that happens every two or three years in most cases with people, right? Attrition becomes a very expensive proposition.
A person who has pathway themselves into a tech company who's just as impacted, they just don't leave. They don't leave because they understand that out there on the streets it's cold and that there aren't a lot of people who give opportunity. I worked for one of the biggest background check companies in America, and they invested heavily.
I. And Second Chance, all the way up and down the corporate ladder. They had engineers, senior engineers, HR professionals, people and legal and policy all justice impacted, most of whom it served significant periods of time in prison. And as I mentioned, some of the statistics I gave you were our own data points, um, around the fair chance talent that they had invested in this tech company and it just ended up being great for company culture.
Once the CEO made the decision that, hey, we're gonna embrace this marginalized population and give them opportunities, the storytelling, the employee engagement, it was [00:26:00] opposite to what most people think. Most people think. Like, oh, if I bring someone in who just got outta prison, my employees are gonna rebel and say they don't.
That actually wasn't the case. Um, and it's not the case. Most of the time when I go in and work with companies, it's usually the opposite. Most employees, and I know SHRM has done a lot of data on, uh, produce a lot of data on this, want a purpose-driven company. They wanna work for somebody who's giving back to the community.
And there, there's no better way to give back to a community than take someone who's been marginalized and been boxed out and given them an opportunity and give them a chance to share their story if they choose, um, with other employees and have, take employees into prison, take employees, do volunteer events, like I've just seen an amazing effect on what it has on company culture.
Jerry: Let's bring this down to more of a practical level with, um, things that leaders can do, uh, what kind of support infrastructure, whether it is bringing folks like you in for training at both the executive and then the company wide level mentorship, um, you know, [00:27:00] courses or, or. Things to, uh, both help those once they come in, the companies to, uh, feel supported and then also for broad cultural change to make sure that there's education around it and to de-stigmatize, uh, the community once they do come into these companies.
What are, what are some of the tactical things that particularly HR leaders can think about implementing to help drive the cultural change?
Ken: sure. I think, I think each company is at its own place on the continuum. Some companies I've worked with, they don't wanna share company wide. They engage in hiring people that are formerly incarcerated. And so it stops at the HR department. It's usually a C-suite person in the HR department that know and see the background check that someone has, um, a record and they choose to hire 'em anyway.
Um, and they're protecting privacy. We, we advise everybody to protect the privacy anyway, um, and we really leave it up to the candidate if they wanna share their particular story. And then there's other companies who, like the company I came from. It's part of the company culture. Like [00:28:00] it's, it's something that they share.
They have webinars, they go on field trips. It's really embedded into the culture, and that's really up to the leadership, right, of how far they want to go. And JP Morgan Chase, Jamie Diamond wants to do it. He's gotten everybody on board. The last several years, everybody is, is into it. Um, other companies, it's, it's very private.
And so what I share with HR leaders is first of all, get buy-in, have a champion and get buy-in from an executive. Educate them. Which means that the HR leader has to educate themselves first about a particular topic before they submit a proposal, try things out on a pilot basis. You know, I ask every company, I said, I, I don't, I'm not asking you to make 50% of your staff formerly incarcerated people.
What I'm asking you to do is just hire one person, and if you create one opportunity for your community. I, promise you, every single time you're gonna fall in love with the individual if you do it responsibly and you do it right. Right. And you'll wanna scale it yourself because of the impact that that individual will have and the way that person performs and the way that person shows up on a regular basis.
So, you know, for, for HR leaders, [00:29:00] it's, it's, it's, I. It's a both and A, you have to educate yourself about it first. B, if you're gonna submit a proposal up the line, you need a champion at the executive level to talk about that. And we teach that. Um, in our courses that we teach, we teach HR leaders how to go ahead and implement a program like that, usually in the form of an internship and apprenticeship program.
One of those types of things, oftentimes as A FTE, but in other cases as a trial basis, um, to see how things get. So you see how things go so you can continue to get buy-in. So. Those are some of the practical steps that HR leaders can take. And there's several organizations, not just mine, that invest in teaching around Second Chance hiring.
It's, it's involved in a lot of diversity and inclusion trainings around the country. It's involved in a lot of major companies who teach second Chance hiring and nonprofit organizations. And I, I can refer people to those in their region, um, if they're interested in getting in contact and learning more about it.
Jerry: You, you mentioned the, um, the, the, uh, inclusion, not to use the term, but the inclusion of, you [00:30:00] know, um,
uh, fair, fair. Yeah, fair, fair chance hiring. Um, um, but, but that conversation's changing, right? It, it's evolving, you know, the, the dynamics of what we used to call broadly DE&I or it's, it's evolving and, and so how does this, which is a form of equity and inclusion play into, or could play into a company's not both, not only strategy, but also tactical efforts in making sure that their base of, uh, employees.
Is, you know, uh, is inclusive of different, uh, experiences.
Ken: Right. No, I, I, I think that's a, a great point. I mean, you know, it's, it's become so politicized over the last eight, eight to nine months, right. usually the things that I talk about in the way that I frame it away from politically charged words is just really framing it in terms of giving people opportunity and focusing on education, which is reskilling and upskilling in the corporate.
Environment, we call it L and D, [00:31:00] um, and getting people livable wage employment, which all of us expect to get when we go off our labor. And then really economic mobility. And so every person, no matter where you come from, no matter who you are, if you live in America, you need to do those things if you wanna be successful and if you wanna survive in a capitalist economy.
So I think talking about it in terms of re-skilling and up-skilling and working with folks to meet community members where they're at. And I think talking about it in terms of giving people opportunity to access employment, whoever you are, it doesn't matter who you are, what race you are, what ethnicity or what, you know, what your status based deprivation is.
Um, everyone deserves a right to access employment. I. Right. And then giving people access to economic mobility, which is the ability to go through l and d to, to get raises and to upskill and get promoted. So that's kind of the way that I talk about it politically. Now, I used to talk about it in terms of diversity inclusion, um, but when things started getting hectic for us several months ago, I, I, I said, why are we mystifying a lot [00:32:00] of this stuff?
If we just focus on getting everyday people opportunity and access, then we don't even have to talk about. Diversity, like diversity and inclusion came as a result of us being discriminatory in the market, in the workplace, right? It was an extension of the civil rights era and affirmative action and all those types of things.
But if, if, if we're just practicing these things every day, we don't have to call them out as blatantly and upfront as possible. We just need to be intentional about what we do.
Jerry: I've thoroughly enjoyed this conversation. Ken and I and I, um, know we'll continue to have these conversations. And again, what we said at the top of the show is what I want our audience to take away with. I want folks to have more questions, more curiosity to continue these conversations, whether it is within your organizations or not.
As you mentioned, the numbers speak for themselves. Currently, 80 million trending up towards a hundred million, which means somebody in your life today, whether it's a colleague or a neighbor or somebody that you went to school with, it's not as. [00:33:00] You know, as you said, binary, black or white, as we've sometimes been taught to think.
And so it, if it hasn't already, it will impact you or somebody that you know. And so we all have to be champions of this or at least be in conversation so that we can be, I think you've illustrated enough, uh, cases or at least stories to. Uh, be mindful of the fact that this is actually not only the right human thing to do, but a smart business thing to do, to be, uh, in conversation, uh, for, for somebody who is, you know, one degree more inspired to be curious or to take action, but is looking for that one next practical step can, uh, what is that one thing that a business leader can do today to help reframe formally incarcerated justice impacted individuals and to see them as assets, not risks for the benefit of both society and business?
Ken: The, the first thing that I ask everybody to do is understand. We shouldn't define anybody by the worst moment. Or mistake in their life. And I think we all want that grace. Every single one of us who've gone through the human [00:34:00] experience have failed at something and probably failed miserably. Whether it was in our personal life or our professional life or educational life, we've all blundered and made terrible mistakes that we don't wanna talk about.
We try to put that in the rear view and move forward. And so giving everyone that same grace, regardless of what narrative we hear on television or whatever we've been told from wherever we heard it from, is. Getting proximate to people when every single time I've taken an executive into prison or brought a justice impacted community into corporate America.
The walls come down, people are at exchanging phone numbers. They all wanna talk about how they can support one another and how they can give each other opportunities. So that, that's the, the most practical step that I could ask a company to do. And then the second thing is you gotta contact someone like me who understands the process, who understands which nonprofit organizations to partner with.
Where can you source talent? Where can you create programmatic things inside your organization, whether it's through apprenticeship or internship program, to support communities who are typically boxed out. [00:35:00] Of, uh, employment, uh, in a major way. So I think those are two good steps that they can take. And, you know, if you're willing to give out my email, I, I'm more than willing to pass people on to and point 'em in the right direction and, and help them get on their journey for either learning more, actually implementing, um, a second chance hiring program.
I.
Jerry: Yeah, I think, you know, uh, you, you can look up the just trust or, um, I believe we can have it in the, the links of whether it's the video or the audio, uh, method that you're consuming this, uh, conversation. I, I think, you know, as you mentioned many times, uh, it is to have the conversation, it is to be curious.
Um, it is to continue to learn, um, and to not be afraid to talk about it. Um. I, I've learned a lot, uh, Ken Oliver of, of the just trust, uh, thank you primarily for the work that you're doing and to bringing that conversation to us and to, uh, to have educated us and to inspire us. Um, you know, it, our show is called Tomorrowist, and as you mentioned, we can't let somebody's entire identity or future, I.
Be judged by something that happened in the past. And so a wonderful conversation. I hope we get to talk more often, uh, not just me and you, but all of [00:36:00] us, uh, to continue to bring this to light. Uh, thanks so much for joining us on Tomorrowist Ken, and we'll see you tomorrow. Thanks again.
Ken: Thank. Thank you, Jerry, and thank you to the audience.