 So welcome. My name is Lucretia Murphy. I'm a vice president at Jobs for the Future and the director for the Center for Justice and Economic Advancement. We want to welcome you all. Thank you for joining this session on Fair Chance Hiring, where we talk about the strategies that are both good for justice and good for business. And we're just so glad that you all are here for this conversation. And on the panel with me, I'll just introduce them briefly here, but their bios are in the agenda and in the app. Shamiah Law, she's a fellow with the CEO for Racial Action. Mahaj Jawid, Chief Policy, Chief Strategy Officer for Responsible Business Initiatives and Justice. And Ken Oliver, who's the, I talked to Ken 100 times a week, and his title is what, Ken? I'm the VP of Checker.org. VP of Checker.org. But all their bios are in the app for you there. But we also wanted to do just a little bit to see who is in the room. And so in your app, if you have the app available, you can take a little poll that will just ask a few quick questions to let us know who's in the room if you're an employer, if you're an impact investor, just to see who's there. But we've got a nice little size, so we might be able to just shout it out in a minute. One of us is making a poll. So to get to the poll, if you go to your agenda and then click on this session. In the middle, yeah. There's a section that, there's a part that says, description, a part that says Q&A, a part that says, we have a tech guy here. He should be the one. I printed my notes. It shows I'm here. And that'll just give us a little note. But also because I don't know if everybody has the app, maybe just to show her hands, how many folks are employers in the room? And from nonprofits or intermediaries, supporting people with records. How about any impact investors in the room? Great. And then we can also do a show of hands. How many folks are moderately familiar or know what Fair Chance hiring is? And how many people? It's a totally new concept, but it looked like a great session. So we'll address all of those. That's great. We'll talk about that now. And I think to kick off the first segment of that really thinking about what Fair Chance hiring is, I'm going to direct a question to Ken. Because I think, can a lot of people come to an understanding of Fair Chance hiring? Maybe it's just about hiring. What is the relationship with justice? But I wonder if you might want to talk a little bit about, really, what Fair Chance hiring is, but what its impact can be if we think about it as actually a tool for justice? Sure. It's a great question about what Fair Chance is. Fair Chance is really providing people who have been impacted by the justice system with a fair and just opportunity to access work. The term originally started several years ago as a result of difficulties that formerly incarcerated people and people with records had in accessing employment. So several laws started to sweep the country. Things you might know as ban the box, which required employers not to ask a question about whether someone had been convicted of a crime or not or arrested for a crime. And then that has kind of advanced and gained some traction to have some sweeping laws called the Fair Chance Act, both on a federal level and 37 states, I think, across the country. This has been a very important movement and continues to be because there are 70 million people in America that have some form of arrest or conviction on their records, which is about one third of the workforce. So when you think about the current labor shortages and you think about some of the difficulties it is for major companies and smaller companies to source talent, we really have to start thinking about different ways to access talent pipelines. And people with criminal records are a great source of workers and labor pools. And the impact is very, very important as well because one of the things that drives mass incarceration and drives recidivism is poverty and lack of access to work. And a lot of people don't understand why there are all these collateral consequences after someone has been incarcerated. But there's been this policy that's followed the American social system from King's England where there was this notion of civil death, where once you were convicted or violated a law, you lost all of your civil rights. And so we've never really gotten away from that. And so now it's created this second-class citizenry in America where people have difficulties rebuilding their lives, resetting their lives to access things like housing, things we take for granted every day, things like livable wage employment, something else we take for granted every day, things like access to social services and even college and schools in many cases. So it's really important from an equity standpoint to be able to provide each and every person, whether they have a record or not, equal access to the American economy and to the middle-class economy to help fuel decarceration and stop relying so much on punishment and really invest in people. Raise your hand in the audience to say that your employers are impact investors. I wonder, Shamai, if you want to talk a little bit about, through your work, what are some of the initial challenges or concerns that employers may have as they're thinking about implementing fair chance hiring? And then what do you see as the strategies that help people really move to implement and seeing the benefits of it? Absolutely. Thank you, LaCrescia. It's a great question, and I'm so happy to be here. And before I actually talk about my work, I do just want to talk about the fellowship that I'm currently at. So CEO action for racial equity is a fellowship that was actually birthed right after the murder of George Floyd in the summer of 2020. And so it's the brainchild of the CEO and chairman of Price Waterhouse Cooper, so PWC. And it's really a spin-off to CEO action for diversity and inclusion, which has been around for about six years. And a little over 2,500 CEOs have signed the pledge to be more inclusive from a diversity perspective. And so I'm at this fellowship, and I've been at the fellowship for two years. And I just read our mission and vision statement. And so our mission is to identify, develop, and promote scalable and sustainable public policies and corporate engagement strategies that will address systemic racism, social injustice, and improve societal well-being. While our vision is to improve the quality of life for the 47 million Black Americans through advocacy and advancement of solutions that seek to end systemic racism. So for the past two years, I have had the honor of leading our Fair Chance Hiring Solution team. And I must say the work has just been so hard. It's really so hard to go to companies and say, hire someone who has a criminal background. It's just a hard conversation to wrap our minds around. Although the movement in our country is saying we have to do more for this untapped talent. It is a hard concept to wrap our minds around. Companies oftentimes know the what. They know the why. But they're struggling to figure out the how. We actually curated a model, which it's actually impossible for companies not to lean into the approach that we created. And so we look at this four different ways. The first way is through direct hiring. And what we tell companies is, if you're in a position to hire right now, do so. But more importantly, look at your internal policies and practices and make sure it's being met from an equitable perspective. Can talk about the 70 million individuals currently with an arrest or conviction on their background. It's trending that by the year 2030, it's going to be up to 100 million. So that's a huge problem right now we have in this country. In addition to that, the reason why I wanted to read our mission and vision from a fellowship perspective is when we go to companies, we unapologetically focus on black Americans. And so the justice system and its entirety impacts black Americans, brown Americans, and poor white Americans. So it's a socioeconomic issue at its core. But make no mistake, black individuals are the most impacted by the system. And so we tell companies, if you have a diversity, equity and inclusion strategy and you're calling it robust, it's impossible for it to be robust if it doesn't impact the system. So direct hiring. Second way to engage, we say through indirect hiring. Many individuals who are impacted by the system have to go off and become entrepreneurs because our companies just won't hire them. And so what we're seeing is that when these individuals return to our companies to be vendors from a supplier diversity perspective, oftentimes they're met with another no because our contractual languages is not welcoming to this population. So we tell companies, this is an indirect approach for you to get these individuals opportunities. The third way we say to engage is through your philanthropic efforts, right? And so that's an easy approach for companies. Spend to provide and spend to workforce readiness organizations that provide these opportunities that now becomes your talent pipeline. So give to organizations that is really getting these individuals prepared for the workforce. And lastly is through advocacy. And so if you're in a position to advocate on behalf of this population, you should lean into your government relations teams, your policy teams to look at policies that can support these individuals. And additionally, advocacy can also mean once you find out about this information, it's so hard to unwind it. And so each one, teach one. So make sure you're telling your friends because if someone can hire, they will do so. And so. And after that little information of process, but I wanna jump on something that you just added to Maya about other ways. And one of the ones you mentioned is advocacy. I think after George Floyd was murdered, was murdered, there was a lot of conversation about different ways that employers could get involved and how do you make that statement? How do you do things a little differently? How do you open up beyond maybe where the traditional corporate work had gone? And so I wanna turn it over to Maya to talk a little bit from your work with Responsible Business Initiatives for Justice. How do you see corporations and how do you really help them engage? Kind of in a more broad way to really think about this population. Gaila Cretia, and I think I'm the one to use this, right? I don't wanna double up. Don't use it? I'm good. Okay. Can I give it back to you? Okay, all right. Yeah, well, thank you. Thank you for inviting me to be on this panel to be with all of you. I really have been finding this conference so interesting because it's not my home. This is all a different language for me, so this panel is my language. And I know what to share up here. And just to say, really, she might have set me up perfectly on this idea around policy. So certainly George Floyd's murder, sadly, had to create so much will that should have been there before. But I will see on the policy front with the business community, some of that had already been starting, I think for the last 10, 15 years, for a variety of reasons. And so really what we're thinking about are ways in which corporate community can lend its prestige, its voice, its leadership on issues of reform. So RBIJ is our shorthand, responsible business initiative for justice. We work with companies to champion fairness and equality in systems of incarceration and punishment, broadly speaking. But generally what that means is that we're working with campaigners in the states and sometimes at the federal level around criminal justice reform priorities. And in the space of talking about employees and employers and workforce development, it's really in this area that we sort of have framed as workforce injustice. That includes issues like clean slate. I'll come back to that, the idea of trying to help people with records have that cleaned up to the extent that they then become interesting to employers and not allow for employers just to mark them off because they have a record. It also includes bail reform because bail actually is a workforce issue when you think about it. Money bail really only impacts poor folks, people who can't post a bond. This is before they even are convicted, let alone tried. And so in our system, many states, they still have this notion of if you have enough money, you can post a bond, post bail and you can get out. Doesn't account for public safety risk. It doesn't account for risk of flight. So you're saying that someone with money who might be a safety risk and someone with money who might be a flight risk can still get out and the poor person has to stay in and what does that mean they'll lose their job, possibly their children. It also impacts areas around driver's license issues. You know, in this country, we take away your driver's license for anything. That includes not being able to pay a court debt. So when you can't pay a court debt, you lose your license, how do you get to work? So there's a whole bunch of issues where the justice system intersects with people's daily lives and really then impacts their ability to have a fair chance at being able to be supporting their families and their communities. So I'll just stay a little longer on Clean Slate. Clean Slate is this growing movement across the country around ways in which you can automate sealing criminal records. And it's important to know that it's about automation. It's not about creating new opportunities for people to then have their records hidden. The idea is that generally, legislatures in many states have determined that for certain offenses, if you stay crime-free for a set period of time, it is appropriate to let those offenses be pushed down. Law enforcement can still take a look, but in terms of every other sort of service that requires people to have background checks, it won't be surfaced immediately so that they can then be kicked out from the very start. For many employers, they still can ask those questions and find out, but it's the idea that over time, it allows for more fairness in being able to at least have people have opportunity. And so this Clean Slate push is around automating that process. And the reason why automation is important is because for 95% of the people who are entitled to this relief, they are not getting it. Partly it's because they don't know about it or they do and it's really complicated. It's also expensive. It can be upwards of thousands of dollars to work with a lawyer to try to get this opportunity to have your records then be sealed. So increasingly, we've been working with the business community in different states. Colorado is a good example. In June of this year, Colorado passed Clean Slate and RBIJ worked with over 30 businesses to lend their voice again. They've invested through op-eds, private and public conversations with legislators, public opinion pieces that were more broadly shared, getting on podcasts on the radio, et cetera. So the idea is again, being able to strategically work with the business voice when we know that legislators care their employers and their investors in their communities. And the last thing I'll just say is that that Clean Slate reality in Colorado, 1.3 million people were able to have their records automatically sealed. That's a remarkable reality that then these individuals are more employable, more easily employable in their homes and in their communities. I'll pause there. I'll just say one more thing. The death penalty is just one more thing to share. It's a little bit out of this space, but just to also say, we also work with businesses around narrative change. So just to put in your mind again, for those employers, investors, the business minded in the room who are maybe interested in these ideas, ultimately changing the narrative around what the death penalty is has allowed for more space for others to then say, well, maybe I also disagree with the death penalty. So in 2021 at South by Southwest, Richard Branson with RBIJ launched this business leaders against the death penalty. We have upwards of 250 business leaders who have signed on to this effort. And again, it creates space where in Utah, in Ohio, real efforts are underway to eliminate, to abolish the death penalty. And that's really thanks to again, having the very strong business voice in the room. And so what I'll do really is kind of summarize is we wanna get at that same idea that when businesses get involved in justice and when justice initiatives partner with business, they're not two separate arms coming together. It's really everybody going in the same direction. As Ken mentioned, when fair chance hiring is implemented and implemented well, people are not only brought into a company, but a company is accessing an enormous talent pool that otherwise is kept out. And that talent rises to the top. The talent can be at all levels of an organization. And then as Shamaya mentioned, that what the CEOs are coming to understand is that there are multiple lanes that they can get in. They can think about hiring and as they're thinking about hiring, they can also be investing in talent development opportunities, partner community-based organizations or community colleges or starting apprenticeships. They can also be investing in entrepreneur and impact and social ventures that are investing in entrepreneurs who have records. They can be thinking really about policy and advocacy. And as Maha mentioned, there are organizations that can help them do that in a streamlined way because what we see is that there are a number of ways that the legal system impacts whether or not people can access work. It's not only whether or not you can get a job, but it's whether or not you spend three nights in jail while your family struggles very hard to get enough money together to postpone during which time you've lost your job, you're not gonna be able to pay rent, you're not gonna be able to pay your car, parking tickets, all of these things that if you have the means to kind of take for granted can really impact whether or not people can get access to work. And at a time when employers really need talent, which is all the time, for employers to be more aware of that and understand that those issues that may seemingly be justice issues outside of their purview really do creep in in significant ways to how much talent they're gonna have access to and how people who already work with them are going to be impacted by these issues, it just gives us an opportunity, I think, to talk a different language and to learn from each sector what are the strengths we have to kind of move to a place where there's more equitable economic participation by what's really not a small segment of the population. This isn't a small side conversation when there are 77 million adults upwards of 100 million in a few years that are impacted by this. It means someone you know, the father or the parent of someone you know, the child of someone you know is impacted by this. And so what we wanted to do for just a few minutes, and we maybe have nine minutes if you have questions for Ken who's gonna be headlining a conference tomorrow morning in DC and has to rest to the airport, but if anybody wanted to just share before we give you time to talk at the tables, any questions or comments, aha moments that anybody wanted to share and ask any questions of the panelists before we go to some tabletop conversation. We've convinced them all, okay. Oh, yes, in the back. Was that Shamiah's comp? There were, yep. Absolutely, so do I use this mic? I think so, yeah. Oh, okay, great. So yeah, so what we designed at CO Action for Racial Equity because I should probably tell you that we're made up of a bunch of fellows from various companies. I think I'm too loud. Am I too loud? Can you all hear me? I feel like I'm double speaking, but okay. So we're from the corporate sector and so we literally said, what do we need to take back to our companies to kind of lower the risk, right? And so we know that day one, companies are just saying, I'm from the financial sector. You all know the name of that game. And so, but I still needed my company and other companies from that sector to lean in. We don't want them to say that they cannot do it because we absolutely know they can be supporting. So the four ways are direct hiring, which is the conversation we're having. Indirect hiring, so think about your entrepreneurs who want to become vendors at our companies. And then it's philanthropy, right? And so philanthropic dollars to workforce readiness organizations that are non-profit, sewing into those individuals, their skill sets, they now become our talent pipeline. And then the fourth is through advocacy. Can I add to it? I was going to take your mic, but I don't need it. You know, for the philanthropy, I think it's wonderful, but I think she might as also an example of what that is in terms of in-kind donations. Not to say that, but your time is money too. So also not simply money. Money is important. I come from a nonprofit. We need money, but also to think about pro bono legal services, but not just pro bono legal services. Other services that she can provide in-kind to nonprofits, accounting, marketing, communications, that could be super impactful, especially in local communities where smaller nonprofits need the support. And I will say one more thing, because again, I'm loving this conference for making me learn so much more, but I would also link it back to ESG in the sense of not only hiring, hiring is definitely there. It's a part of the S, it's also part of the G, but also to think about how your businesses are impacting justice outcomes for folks. There's a lot of problems with technology, sorry. Like there's a lot of problems with facial recognition software potentially having algorithmic bias, and what does that mean when you sell it to law enforcement? Or even bail bondsman advertising and knowing that they're focusing on communities of color. So thinking about the ways that your stakeholders are also impacted by your business and going through all of those different communities that you serve, doing that real deep dive into thinking through how are your products or services, your engagement with your employees, your communities are also contributing to the disparities in our system and also the outcomes that individuals are then suffering from. And Maha raises a good point because I think that also goes to how you can get broad engagement of members of your organization, community-based organizations, because people can be thinking about it from their individual places in the company. The social responsibility can think of strategies, your accounting folks can think about who we use as vendors, how we think about audits. Like there are different ways that people can contribute to that conversation. Can have conversation here about what people can do. And there's a lot of external things we can do, but we haven't talked a little about the internal things we can do, like when we look in the mirror and change our own implicit bias about the way that we look at people with records. I mean, records have been formed in this country as a result of the war on drugs, racism, over-policing in black and brown communities. And so it's really important for us to check ourselves first and understand how we're viewing people who may have a criminal record and then checking some of those biases we may bring into the conversation. My friends here are familiar with me saying this will might be tried, but I'll share it with you all. The conversations that I have around the country, I don't ask people to lower the bar for being an employee at their company. We ask to lower the barrier. And really what that means is just giving people a fair opportunity to be the best person for the job despite what they may have done when they were 17 or 22 or 25 or whatever. And that really requires a lot of courage for us to be able to do that because this country has been brilliant, maybe the best in the world at othering people. And we've been doing it ever since this country's inception. So I think that if we can remove some of our own implicit bias and explicit bias in the process and really focus on the candidate and what they bring to the table and then offering support, whether that person is a veteran or from the LGBTQ community or someone who may have suffered a criminal conviction for something that is stereotypical and heinous in many people's minds has committed a gang murder in their life. 95% of the people that have been incarcerated are coming home. And so we as a community, a broader community, have to ask ourselves what type of supports in community members do we want, right? And if we're practicing this bias and we're exiling people and marginalizing people, I'm not for sure that we can expect anything but a negative result, you know? But I also think that if we foster opportunity and provide space for people to rebuild and to reset their lives, that we can find wonderful talent which has been spoken about on this panel. So I just wanted to flag that, you know, it starts in the mirror first and then we do the external work of actually creating programs and all that kind of stuff. And this young lady here had a question. I have a question for you Ken and for you as well. Wow, I forgot to pick, great. My first question is related to advocacy and if you could just describe, when I think about fair chance hiring, it seems like many other systems you need to create a pipeline. Are there any specific parts of the criminal justice system before folks who are formerly incarcerated are no longer incarcerated? That can be changed, that companies can advocate for specifically like around, maybe around rehabilitation programs that should exist while incarcerated that can kind of build a pipeline towards fair chance hiring. Can you say a little bit about some of those opportunities for advocacy? And then the question from us around automation and implicit bias, when you said the word automated clearance, my mind went to AI and some of the biases that are inherent there. So if you could say more about how is this automated process mitigating against potential bias. Sure, I'll take a first stab at that. I think that the criminal justice system in America has really focused on punishment in the last 150 years versus transformation. I mean, in my mind, when someone is given a timeout in a prison system, it really should focus on transforming the individual, right? Some people call it rehabilitation, which is returning to the state that you were before you got in prison, but many people haven't had a good state to begin with, which is how they ended prison. So I really think of it as transformation and an opportunity to play in different spaces and to learn different things. The prison system hasn't been great at it, much like the police force in America, much like the military in America, like they're very punishment oriented that we're gonna squash you and punish you and do things to you. And that's probably the wrong approach. Norway has shown that it's the wrong approach. And usually when you embrace people and let people up and provide space and opportunity, you get a better outcome. I mean, who would ever thought that if you treat a human well, you get a good result. And so in reference to your question about policy and advocacy, I'll just share as briefly as I can something that happened to me because I'm just as impacted. I served 24 years in prison. And during those 24 years, I wasn't given access to a single vocational program. So I actually walked out of prison in the same state, by the state, of course I did my own learning, by the state in the same way that I went in. And I thought that that was unfortunate, not just for myself, because I knew I was gonna make it, but for other people that are like me. And so when I came home, I also saw that the reentry system that was set up didn't create space for reskilling programs, upskilling programs. And then the expectation was that, hey, you probably need to go put on an orange vest and pick up trash on the side of the freeway for 14 bucks an hour. And I live in the Bay Area. So like 14 bucks an hour is about enough for me to get a tent and sleep on some street in Berkeley somewhere, right? So I started to advocate for reskilling programs that mirrored the first year of a college campus. How could we provide space for housing and wrap around services and a universal basic income while giving people space and opportunity to learn and to reskill and to pathway into the middle class economy in a meaningful way. That idea picked up some traction from an advocacy standpoint in the California legislature. And I happen to be part of an effort and lead an effort to be written into the budget for $28.5 million in last year's California budget and work with Governor Newsom's team to build out this kind of reskilling first year college campus type of program to provide justice impacted men and women the skills necessary to access livable wage in a meaningful way. Because it's one thing that we're talking to employers and impact investors, but it's also important that justice impacted people provide their own value proposition in this conversation. It's not just on impact investors or employers. It's also the responsibility of us as a community to make sure when we're provided opportunity we can step into it. That's how we paved the way for others behind us who are still sitting in prison cells across this country. So advocacy and policy work plays a very, very crucial role in being able to provide resources to pass legislation, things like clean slate, but also things that can incentivize employers to open up their hiring funnels to provide training programs for people just like the federal government did with Job Corps. They funded that for 60 years for underserved youth. So for me, I'm very passionate about policy and advocacy and I do that regularly with companies across the country and teach them how they can be involved with policy and advocacy and then also create reskilling and training programs within their company for justice impacted people. So that way we're just not relying on the government sector or relying on nonprofits or other different types of groups. And just one I'll mention, because hopefully we'll hear a lot more about this, also is how programs can start behind the walls that we already know are effective. So there's more opportunities now for people to think about apprenticeships that start behind the walls with the reauthorization of Pell. Pell used to be eligible to anyone going to post-secondary education. So when post-secondary education was offered in correctional facilities, people could access Pell grants. That was taken away in 96, not surprisingly. Very little post-secondary education going on. It's being restored effective July 2023. So again, now people will be able to access post-secondary education in the facilities. So hopefully in most facilities, there won't be brilliant people like Ken sitting there doing nothing. They'll have access to the post-secondary education they need so when they come out there further ahead, in a talent pipeline and able to move forward. So I think all of those, and all of that required large national collaboratives to be pushing for policy change and employers were part of that in order to make that happen. And then we can let Mahat answer your question and then. Yeah, I'll just, one quick thing to add to that is also occupational licensing. So again, thinking about all of these barriers in terms of policy fronts, just to say again, the work that RBIJ does, and I think all of our organizations, we're doing it with the reformers on the ground. We're not leading RBIJ, that is. We're leading with those, we are following where the campaigners working on those issues tell us, which also means that for the business community who comes in, we're protecting also, ensuring that they're coming in at the right moment. So I say that to say, it's strategically different in each state under each circumstance, but quickly then on occupational licensing, there are collateral consequences for any involvement with the justice system. I mean, tens of thousands of collateral consequences. And then at the state level, whether you can get your license to do be a beautician, be a taxi driver, be a truck driver or whatever, there are so many restrictions on that based on your involvement in the system, but it also differs from state to state. And of course there's federal regulations for certain professions putting that aside. So just to say again, if you're in a community where you learn of these, that might be another place to put some pressure. And then on the question about automation, you're right, there can be of course, disparate impact, but it's gonna be from what the legislature has said, this deserving of getting sealed. So what I mean to say is that, when we talk about clean slate, a big distinction is in each state, they're choosing which offenses in their criminal code is worthy of being sealed and not seen. So it's true, if you peel it back, it could very well be in some states, it's like a token effort in other states, it's more robust, but they're all good. Cause in the end, what it's saying is that it's like a math formula. For these offenses, if you don't have a record, if you haven't a second conviction or even just a rest, and then it's this length of time, it is then, you can then apply for, automatically apply for it to being sealed. So you're right, there's an issue there, but it's not in the process of automation. It's in the decision being made as to what offenses deserve being sealed. We'll do one more, two more questions. I saw one here and one here. And then I just wanna turn it over to folks to get together at their tables to talk a little bit about it. We'll give you some tabletop questions, yes. Hi, so I work at a venture capital fund and we have already implemented a fair chance hiring program for all of our portfolio companies. We asked them to sign this pledge to revisit their hiring practices to be more inclusive of the formerly incarcerated population. And so far, everyone signed. Great. But I'm really more interested in the data that comes afterwards, which has been challenging even on our end how to measure that. Obviously every industry has different stipulations and different companies have different stipulations and that's fine, but I don't know if you have any recommendations around tools that may already exist so that we can measure this, both hard data numbers as well as the more qualifiable data. I'll take a little stab at that. What company did you say you work for? Lockstep Ventures. Oh, Lockstep Ventures, okay. Marcus, exactly. Yeah, that's a great question. You know, I can tell you what we're doing at Checker. We started last year a pilot program in Denver where we started doing one day accelerators for companies who wanted to participate in fair chance hiring, become fair chance employers. And we just started to gather that data and we're gonna be holding these accelerators monthly starting in November. And we really focused on gathering the data of the amount of hires, the salaries that come in, the retention, how long they're staying, et cetera, so that we could create a body of work with people like Lucretia, JFF, who's also doing something similar on a national scale. But the industry is in its infancy in reference to data calculation. There was a report of the Harvard Business Review of Nehemiah Manufacturing, looking at some of the stuff that they did that came out in the summertime that has some pretty good data from a manufacturing standpoint, but from a cross sector standpoint, it's new. And so we're just now out there doing the work and gathering the data with employers. So I think that over the course of the next year, you'll see more data gathering. And we'll be able to share information with you at Lockstep and my friend Marcus there. And the only other thing I will say really quickly is that we're starting to see that companies adding this data to a line item under their DE&I measures. And so that might be, because HR, we hold this data close to our chest, as you know. And so you might just want to make sure you push your individuals that you work with to add that as a line item. It's the safer approach until Ken, Ken, roll out his system and meet with your CEO. We had one more and then I want y'all to talk on tables, yeah. These are great questions, thank you. Hi, I'd love to hear more about effective strategies you all have found with helping employers provide supportive services to people once they are hired and how to actually build inclusive workspaces to retain talent. Because we're finding, you know, there's a lot of energy around the training partners and upskilling and access, which is great. And then there's also work to do, there's continued work to do once folks are hired and just would love to learn more from you of what you have found actually effective to help employers take action on that. I don't know if it's been effective, but what I can tell you is that some companies are starting to look at their benefit package differently. And so Ken talked about the wraparound services that's provided and needed. But people are, again, right, how, what do you mean wraparound services? Like, make it make sense, right? And so what we're telling companies, just like you increase your employee assistance program to have more opportunities for folks from a mental health perspective, you're going to have to get creative with this population. I think the major misconception here when bringing these individuals in houses, companies are looking at this as a charity opportunity. They're looking at it as a handout. This is not a handout, it's really a hand up. It's you are still responsible for hiring top talent. That's never gonna not be a thing, but what we are saying is, is you're going to need to start to think of unconventional ways to bring in talent because the war on talent is real. And so again, companies are leaning into this wraparound services concept. So for an example, if individuals do not have transportation, they're building that into their package for six months at a time. You get bus passes or will allow you to come into the office. They're being very flexible, but there's no standard motto out there right now. So if you find one, you have to be sure to share it with us. I'll just piggyback a little bit on what Shamiah said. Thanks for that Shamiah. I think the motto that we preach at Checker, to other companies is kind of what we do at Checker. Checker employees more formerly incarcerated people in California than any company in California. We ended our fiscal year with 6% of a 1400 employee group that were formerly incarcerated people that came from prison all up and down the sectors. And we have people that are in customer service, candidate experience. We have software engineers. We have eight software engineers, full stack software engineers at Checker. We have a VP, which is me, at Checker. So we're really up and down the career ladder. And one of the things that we really started to look at is how can we during the onboarding process create digital literacy programs for people that are coming out of prison within Checker as part of the onboarding process. So we just recently created a whole program to teach people the Google suite, which is what we use at Checker, and a few selected apps based on the job department that they would be going into. We also have brought in some restorative justice people to help work through communication gaps between managers and justice-impacted people. And this actually emanated from a gentleman, who's the CEO at Redfin, who heard a restorative justice conversation and contacted someone in our C-suite. And then the C staff went through six months of restorative justice conversations amongst themselves and thought it was the most transformative thing that they had ever went through just in reference to team building. And so they were able to cascade that down and allow us to actually create these small restorative justice circles between managers and employees, right? And then we found that employees outside of the justice-impacted people also want to use these as ways to communicate and kind of unpack and build team membership. So we do that. We've also started to use peer-to-peer coaching, where we've actually sought out coaching services that had justice-impacted people to be able to do career coaching for our justice-impacted population. The reason we did that is because the coaching service that we do use, which is kind of high-brow in the tech space, wasn't resonating and landing with some of the justice-impacted. And we're fearful of having transparent and truthful conversations with people who weren't like them. There's a lot of, what do they call it? Impostor syndrome that happens, especially in tech, because you have people that come in and they've never been on the Apple MacBook Pro. And so they're scared to tell their manager they don't really know how to do it. So they spend hours and hours and hours on Google trying to learn how to work their machine and other things too, right? So being able to provide space to be coached by people who have lived your experience or have some type of touch point with a family member where you could actually have transparent conversations is very, very important. So those are some of the wraparound things that we do internally, in addition to the things that Shamai mentioned, like people who have housing issues or, and we use those situations, we don't offer bank policy for housing or transportation. But when someone comes to us and says they have a problem with remote work, for example, because their space isn't safe, then we provide offices that work day for them in their local community all across the country, wherever they're located. So there's a wide variety of things and to Shamai's point, there's no one size fits all, but there are things you can do internally. And for those who are impact investors, you can also do things with your companies that you fund or your foundations to help support some of those programs. And I think underneath it all, thank you so much. We do wanna identify that there are unique circumstances and then there are general circumstances. In any company that's looking to improve inclusion and equity, you need to work on communication strategies. You need to be thinking about what do people need in order to effectively do their jobs. Some of those are gonna be the same things in our current economies. People in your organizations are, some people have two homes and some people are praying every night to make the rent. So those kinds of supports are increasingly necessary to help people robust workforce. Transportation, daycare, elder care, more flexible PTO, our organization, JFF, during the pandemic went to full-time, all full-time employees and part-time employees have flexible PTO. No more grieving, whether or not it's for grieving, whether or not it's for vacation, whether or not it's for illness. Because the idea was that everybody's lives are changing and so we need to be able to make sure that you can manage your life. That helps tremendously for people who are directly impacted. You don't have to get special permission and lose days if you have to meet with a probation officer if you have to continue treatment. But it helps the whole organization to think about it. And so we do call it wraparound services and in some ways you would really need that. But I think not to make it seem as though it's really outside the norm for businesses in a lot of diversity equity work, you develop affinity groups, right? This is another affinity group. You go externally for coaching and support so that people don't feel like they're really vulnerable to their supervisor. Similar strategy to what Ken said. So I do think that as employers think about what are we doing to improve diversity, equity and inclusion. Thinking about fair chance hiring is kind of the tip of the spear. And not necessarily something that's totally different is really helpful in that as well. We're gonna let Ken rush off so that he can make it to the airport. But I did want, and if people are sitting at separate tables, you may wanna come together. We just wanted to give a little bit of time for people to process what they've heard, identify with one another, any aha moments that you heard, any best practices that you know of. And really what we wanted is if people could identify kind of what's my call to action from this. And it might be, let me go to my state and see if we're a clean slate state. Let me check with my employer to see if we hire with people with records. Let me find out how we can help our portfolios really implement fair chance hiring. So we wanted to give just a little bit of time. I think we've got about 20 minutes in your tables to talk and then we'll give people an opportunity to share. So kind of what's any aha moment you had, any comments or things you wanna share, but then kind of a call to action that you might wanna leave with. So we'll let people talk amongst themselves. We're here if you have any questions as well. So if you're sitting by yourself, find a friend for this portion. Bring folks back. I hate to tell you to tear you apart because it sounds like there's still a little bit of conversation going on, but in our last five minutes, I should probably go up because I'm so short, I can barely see over the tables. In the last five minutes, do you folks wanna, anybody wanna share a little bit about what you talked about at your tables? Yes. I can use this. We were thinking about our own biases as it relates to hiring people who are formerly incarcerated, stuff like that. And like, yes, it sounds like there's great idea, but then you start thinking about like, oh, what about certain crimes that you're uncomfortable with? And then it's like, is that even our job to say? Cause it's like, there's tons of people I'm uncomfortable working with, work with them every day. But anyway, is this, it's like these things, like certain crimes, it's like, you know, I think that's where like this fear lies and I just don't know where to put that energy. Well, you know, one thing I would say and definitely turn it over to you all is, is deal with it. I mean, I do think that that's, it's a fair question, right? Because we can watch Law and Order SVU on television 24 hours a day and that does something, right? It creates fear, concern, what are some safety issues? And so when we work with employers, we say surface all of that, let people talk about their fears, let people talk about their concerns. And then there is some data that starts to deal with that. You know, most people, when there are criminal infractions or public safety infractions that happen in the office, it's less likely that it's someone who actually has a record than someone who's never been incarcerated before. I think there are different companies that have different comfort levels with who they have in. Some people, it's, you know, only non-violence. Some, it's all felonies. At JFF, we don't even do background screens. So anybody can have, like you said, be the most annoying person on the planet or have a criminal background, right? And you just learn to work with everybody because you don't know. And so I think that the most important thing is though, is to deal with it, to make sure that these are parts of the conversation, that there's a conversation about how it works. There's a conversation about what it means. There's enough data and real information so people can go from myth-making and fear to actual data and understanding experiences. And I'm gonna ask Shamai to talk a little bit about that because one of the things she noted is for employers to talk to other employers. And then that's also, I think, a good way to address concerns. You're right, and this trips me up so much. We put so much energy and effort into trying to figure out how to give people opportunity to your point. It is bias, it's us, it's not them. No one until Ken shared his story would have ever thought he served 24 years in prison. Just think about that, right? Think about how talented he was and he would have missed the opportunity to share his story if his organization entered in the room with their bias. Just like the workforce got ready to welcome people who wanna love whoever they decide to love, just like the workforce has gotten prepared to hear more from women, just like the workforce is trying to figure out how to treat people from an equity perspective, we have got to do our part to knit bias where it belongs when it comes to this population. We have to. And the only other thing I'll say is that our systems over-incarcerate. So by not accounting for that reality that there's disparities, there's discrimination, there's so many things that push people to have a record, then we're just perpetuating all of those harms already put on those people. But you're right, I mean, this is all personal. It's hard. Great questions. One minute, any last, anybody wanna have the last word to send us off on the rest of the day? We should have the last word. You should. Well, I think from the panel, we just wanna thank you all, one for your attention, for your engagement, I hope you got something out of it. All of our information is in the app, you can find us all on LinkedIn or at our respective organizations. We would love to hear from you, love to stay connected, and we'll be around, I know I'll be around for the rest of the day and please seek us out and we'd love to continue the conversation. Thank you so much for joining us. Thank you.