In this episode, we will focus on the topic of entrepreneurship and reentry. As you may already know, people with a felony record often face many obstacles when seeking employment or applying for a job. This is perhaps one of the reasons why many formerly incarcerated men and women decide to start their own businesses. You will meet Kate Mereand, Program Manager for the Innovation and Equitable Development Office at the D.C. Department of Small and Local Business Development. You will also hear from a couple of Returning Citizens who are graduates of the ASPIRE program and have successfully started their own businesses.
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Hosts: Bea M. Spadacini and Tim Nicholson
Entrepreneurship and Re-Entry
Welcome to the sixth episode of the One in Four podcast, which stands for, “One in Four adult Americans has a criminal record.” This is a show that seeks to Humanize, Educate, and Elevate conversations about the re-entry process of the formerly incarcerated. My name is Bea Spadacini and I am one of your co-hosts for this podcast.
In this episode, we will focus on the topic of entrepreneurship and reentry. As you may already know, people with a felony record often face many obstacles when seeking employment or applying for a job. This is perhaps one of the reasons why many formerly incarcerated men and women decide to start their own businesses.
In addition to the standard challenges that all entrepreneurs face when starting a business from scratch, people with a criminal record have a harder time to access capital to invest in a start-up, may not have any mentors, or the contact networks necessary to scale a business. So the road to success is even harder for these individuals. When they succeed, it is because of sheer will power and programs that equip them with the skills to think like entrepreneurs. One of these programs is the ASPIRE to Entrepreneurship program in Washington D.C.
In this episode, you will meet Kate Mereand, Program Manager for the Innovation and Equitable Development Office at the D.C. Department of Small and Local Business Development. You will also hear from a couple of Returning Citizens who are graduates of this program and have successfully started their own businesses.
A very interesting podcast that we encourage you to listen to is Felony, Inc., which is co-hosted by Dave Dahl, founder of Dave’s Killer Bread, a brand of bread that you can find in major food stores across the country. Dave spent 15 years in prison but his business acumen eventually paid off. In 2015, he sold his company for 275 million dollars! Quite the story right?
One of the interviews in this episode is brought to you by my co-host Tim Nicholson. One in Four is brought to you with support from Circle Yoga and the Circle Yoga Connect initiative. This initiative seeks to work with social change organizations to offer yoga and mindfulness to people living in underserved communities. To finds out more, check out circleyoga.com and search for the Circle Yoga Connect page. Once again, we want to thank our sound engineer and audio editor Mike Balasia for his unwavering support in getting these stories out to you.
Bea: So Kate, the Department of Small and Local Business Development is a D.C. government agency whose mission is to support all small local businesses that are in the District of Columbia, as well as aspiring entrepreneurs. My understanding is that the Aspire to Entrepreneurship program is part of the division that you manage, the innovation and equitable development division. Can you tell us a how this flagship program came about and what it stands for?
Kate Mereand: For the first two years of the Aspire program we ran monthly stakeholder meetings and those stakeholder meetings helped us develop the principles and the structure around how we would pilot the Aspire to Entrepreneurship incubator that we run. We have over 600 stakeholders who engaged in that process and we developed three principles which both drive Aspire and everything else that we do through innovation and equitable development. Those principles are: meeting people where they are, building a community, and building community wealth.
Bea: So when you talk about stakeholders what does that mean?
Kate Mereand:A stakeholder can be someone who comes to a monthly meeting if we're running them a stakeholder can be someone who is willing to share the message and the idea of what a program may be or a stakeholder may be someone who chooses to interface with a program participant mentor, then support them in other ways, and are interested in advancing the idea behind Aspire and Entrepreneurship which is that business can be for everyone.
Bea: So I take it that it's also business people?
Kate Mereand: We love it when business people get involved. So you know with over sixty six thousand small businesses in the District there are a lot of small business owners and there are a lot of people who are involved in businesses in different ways whether they work for them it's a huge portion of our economy and so business owners are often leaders in our community. And so we are excited when they help lead and when we can help build new leaders.
NARRATION
The Aspire incubator started with a 6-months intensive program operated by Project Empowerment, one of many grantees supported by Kate’s department. Project Empowerment required all participants to take four weeks of job readiness training, prior to being accepted into the six month intensive. Participants received a stipend to enable them to commit to the program and not have to look for work. This initial iteration of Aspire, specifically targeted people who were unemployed and faced barriers to employment, re-entry being one of them. I asked Kate what people got out of the Aspire to Entrepreneurship Program.
Kate Mereand: What people took away from the program could be varied. Some individuals were very focused on specific business they knew they wanted to open. Other individuals were interested in exploring and thinking about whether entrepreneurship was right for them for us and what my director of my department would indicate, we were most interested in making sure that people were able to make good choices moving forward in their life about what they wanted their future to be. With entrepreneurship being about self-determination and making choices in feeling that they had the opportunity to do so.
Bea: Starting a business is challenging for anyone and I imagine that for people who have spent time in prison who may have PTSD and other issues of housing other barriers, it's even harder. So what kind of support would they get through the program to maybe also overcome some of the other barriers that they would face outside of the program?
Kate Mereand: There are a lot of barriers to starting your own business and it can be very challenging. But one of the questions becomes what does it mean to have successfully started a small business? And so some people would define success as being able to hire others. Some people would define success as being able to have the income to support yourself and not do something else. Other people see success as I am running a side business and I have a job. And so, we did not define what someone's business success would be for them. That was for someone to determine for themselves.
Kate Mereand: So some of the supports that came through the program were just really being able to think through, what are your own personal goals as you are making this determination. Do you need additional skills for the business that you have selected? Is the business that you were thinking about pursuing one that's gonna be marketable and one that's going to operate? But also the grantee partner Changing Perceptions that we worked with throughout the entire period, we have other grantees, they did a lot of wrap around support and life services supports for individuals. They did individual coaching, which is not quite the same thing as mentorship though other mentors came in. And so it was a wraparound services model including wraparound services for Project Empowerment to support individuals in stabilizing the rest of their life while they choose to do business planning and decide whether or not to pursue a business.
NARRATION
During the first three years, approximately 50 people graduated from the Aspire to Entrepreneurship program. Lorenzo Stewart is a graduate of the first cohort. He is also the founder and CEO of VOW Transportation, a shuttle service that works with people who require rides to and from critical appointments. The name VOW stands for Vision of Winning, an idea that Lorenzo got from his son: Lorenzo Stewart Jr. I interviewed Lorenzo while he was out driving one of his four vans with his mother Ms. Carol Stewart and a colleague.
Lorenzo Stewart: I wanted to start a business to help people with disabilities for job placement, job training, etcetera because that was the issue with me when I was looking for employment. I wasn't sure if it was the background or was it the disability. So I applied for so many jobs and I was never getting call backs. And I was and I thought I was a great candidate for the position because I have been doing business. I mean that business I've been doing I mean working stuff for years growing up and I just couldn't understand, so, I decided to you know some let me create my own path. I had to start my own business and work for myself. So now I don't have to worry about if you hire me because of my background.
Lorenzo Stewart: Well I'm working with seniors when I'm trying to get them out and out and about where they have fun enjoying life like such as doing Bingo. If they want to do trips stuff like that go shopping. I'm building that model as we speak now.
NARRATION
When Lorenzo was a young teen he was shot in the legs and was paralyzed from the waste-down. His condition partially explains why he cares so deeply about providing transport for both seniors and children who have mobility challenges.
Lorenzo Stewart:I was 15 years old when I was shot but by being at the wrong place at the wrong time round with a friend a friend of mine and he was involved in some things and I got caught up in his issues. So but the thing the thing that thing that helped me get over that was more of my family support and that same method is really needed for a person that's just coming home from prison to support the family support and that's help me become strong and look at life in a whole different perspective because I used to look at it as I could have died in that situation but they show me that it was more to me. I have something to live for and I have the love from you know my mom, my sister, my father, my cousins and even my friends stepped up to the plate and showed me like we're not gonna turn our back on you because of your situation. We're gonna encourage you we're going to push you a little more than let you know you got something to live for.
NARRATION
Carol Stewart, Lorenzo’s Mom, was by his side after he was shot, went to prison, and then came home. She was a fundamental part of his recovery and rehabilitation. It would have been a lot harder for Lorenzo to overcome the many challenges he faced upon re-entry without his mother’s support.
Carol Stewart: Well I'd like to say my son was really young when he went through a lot of these experiences and he did not spend any long length of time in prison. So, I was able to help him and help him to rehabilitate himself at a very young age after he was injured. I was just there. I would pick him up and take him but I would take him to school and pick him up every day. And then when he was in high school I would pick him up on my lunch break. I was teaching school at the time and take him to his job which was in Bethesda so I was very instrumental in making sure that he finished high school because that was our major concern because he was so young when he experienced his injury.
Carol Stewart:And now today to see him own his own company is nothing better that I could have dreamed. In my mind it when, when we went to all the different things that he was going through as a young African-American male in the city to see him to grow and become so successful and owning his own business completing high school attending some college and being a person that I now look at who is really making a difference in the world is the best thing that a mother could have asked for from our children to see your children making a difference in the world. I'm very proud today.
NARRATION
Carol continues to be by Lorenzo’s side as he expands his business model. When he transports children, she is often the Chief Chaperon in Charge.
Carol Stewart: I have been working with him from I guess the first group of children. The first contract that he was assigned and it is a joy to transport the kids even the kids with disabilities or learning. All the kids we transport don't have disabilities. So we have some that have disabilities and we have some that may have behavior issues. So transporting them and being an asset and them calling me mom or you know just being like a grandmother on the bus or on the balance with the kids is really very rewarding.
NARRATION
Lorenzo is in the process of starting his own non-profit, also called Vision of Winning. He wants to continue to provide services for senior citizens because he firmly believes they should stay active and not isolate themselves. He also wants to help people who come out of the prison system because he knows first-hand how hard that transition is and how lost people can sometimes feel, especially if they do not have strong family support – like he had - or a network to rely on.But Lorenzo believes that success ultimately has a lot to do with maintaining a positive attitude.
Lorenzo Stewart: People that just coming at home from prison. I think it starts with the mindset first. And the reason why I say that because you can't come out with the same mindset and the thought that you had when you went in. Because now you've got to look at it the world changed. You have to be able to adapt to what's going on in the community was going on around it in your area. So, if you come out with a negative mindset you're going to resort back to doing negative. But if you come out with a positive mindset now and it's only your mind is thinking how to succeed being positive.
NARRATION
Lorenzo says that being shot gave him the strength to turn his life around. He is not bitter about it. On the contrary...
Lorenzo Stewart:It probably was a blessing for me because it kinda calmed me down and changed my mindset as I got older but the type of people that I was running with and hanging with you know was negative people when you know we indulged in a lot of negative things but. It stopped me from being involved in a whole lot of stuff that could have even cost me my life or even put me in jail for several years because of the activity that my friends was involved in.
Lorenzo Stewart:I try to win in everything I'm doing because I think because of my life I've been challenging and that what feel me even more to prove a point that I can accomplish that goal in my situation.
NARRATION
I asked Kate if Aspire helps graduates like Lorenzo market their businesses and she said that because they are a government agency of the District of Columbia, they cannot support individual businesses but they can support the space and create connections among businesses. I also asked her about the issue of stigma around businesses owned by Returning Citizens and whether or not Aspire graduates mention their life experience in their marketing pitches.
Kate Mereand:When we first started the Aspire program, many of the individuals in the first cohort were unsure if they wanted to market their business as a returning citizen owned business. And we said that is entirely your discretion. That is your, that is your identity. However you would like to market and sort of structure the story of your business is your story. And so what we found over the course of the other cohorts is that naturally people decided they wanted.
Kate Mereand:Many people decided that they did want to self-identify as a returning citizen and self-identify their business is being run by a returning citizen. So we did not want to direct that but there may be a space for being able to create more support in a marketing sense across the board for any returning citizen business that is yet to be fully developed. But there is I think an opportunity for that.
NARRATION
Maurice Dixon, better known as Chef Reese in the Washington D.C. metro area, is a business owner and a graduate of the ASPIRE program who does not hide the fact that he is also a Returning Citizen. Tim and I met Chef Reese multiple times at Pancake Breakfast, a community-based event that brings together Returning Citizens and anyone interested in supporting their re-entry process. We often run into Chef Reese at various justice-related events where he shares his experience of being inside the prison system, coming home, and starting his own business. My co-host Tim interviewed him for this episode.
Tim: Can you start off by telling us why you decided to go into the catering business and how you got started?
Chef Reese:My cooking passion comes from a childhood from my mom. And we also believe that a great meal is made with love. And if I feed you, you are family or a close friend so therefore no event is complete without Resse’s tasty treats.
Chef Reese:My passion has always been humanity service I've always did something that dealt with people working with mentally challenged senior citizens or whatever. I have always done something and the humane field I did not know that I was going to choose food as my industry. However I've always cooked and I've always experimented and how I really got into it was in 96 I took a job at Marriott that was my very first professional job and working there in 96, I fell in love and so after years of honing my skills and trying to find different avenues, accounting, substance abuse counselor… Different kinds of jobs I can't remember all the rest of because cheffing and that's taken over right. I always found myself coming back to this and after a stint of incarceration which I spent like eleven years when I came home because my skill set was in culinary because I took culinary arts while I was incarcerated and I. When I came home it was like the number one skill set and so it was like what was thrust upon me and I fell in love and now I am more into the artistic stuff you know just like making food look pretty as well as taste good.
Tim: You're also a graduate of the Aspire program which helped you start your business. Can you elaborate about this program and how it has helped you?
Chef Reese:Absolutely Tim. Aspire to Entrepreneurship program, it's a program for returning citizens, which I am, and how I got involved with ASPIRE is that when I came home I had several jobs and working for a large company for almost five years. I was unjustly terminated because of my criminal record and I can't say the company because I have a gag order. At that time I said that I never ever wanted to have anyone have control over my financial security. And I knew I had a skill set. So I looked at what could I do to start my own business. And through Project Empowerment, which is a D.C. Department of Employment Service program for returning citizens, they had and Aspire entrepreneurship program and which is ran by Changing Perceptions. And so I got into those ASPIRE entrepreneurship program and we learnt how to properly do business plans. We learn how to pitch. We learned the confidence of being in business in a classroom setting. And then we went out and we began to just hone our skill you know as far as being an owner.
NARRATION
I met Chef Reese for the first time at Pancake Breakfast, which is a community event organized by Changing Perceptions, a non-profit started by Will Avila, a returning citizen and the CEO of company called Clean Decisions. Pancake Breakfast is hosted in the home of Graham McLaughlin, a young man who has mentored Will Avila and other Returning Citizens in the District of Columbia. We are dedicating a side-cast to this episode based on a one-on-one conversation with Graham. In the meantime, let’s hear what Chef Reese has to say about this community gathering.
Chef Reese: Changing Perceptions, along with ASPIRE, we have a wonderful wonderful platform called Pancake Saturday right. And it is a it is a networking an avenue for all of us to come together just as people. You don't know who's in there a Returning Citizen. You don't know who's in there American citizen. We're just people and we get a chance to interact with one another and then you find out oh, Hey Chef Reese was incarcerated but that never you never knew it. Right. So that is one of the things that ASPIRE does is that it bridges the gap it knocks down the barrier it kills the stigma and it humanizes us as people we are citizens forget the American Citizen, forget returning citizen. We're citizens, right? So pancake Saturday is one of the ways that aspire does Grace that gap and it's an absolute wonderful, wonderful opportunity for all to come out and just engage in networking and conversation.
Bea What are you making?
Right now, I am making buckwheat blueberry pancakes. And I have made some chicken, potato hash. I have also made regular hash, egg while frittata, regular eggs with cheese, and regular scrambled eggs.
Bea: YUM!
Chef Reese: Yeah! Yes, this is the joy of cooking. The fun is making it but the joy is having the people quietly eat it. The conversations of a Chef is the plates and the forks having a conversation while you eat.
Bea: do you know how many people to cook for, on this breakfast?
Chef Reese: uhm, normally, around 40 to 50 people.
Bea: It’s a lot
Chef Reese: Well, I have experience cooking for 1800 so, 40 to 50 its like…a drop in the bucket…
Bea: Can you tell me a little bit about what was it, What was it like cooking in prison?
Chef Reese: It was a challenge. (laughs) It's a challenge because the people that are over you can care less about what the prisoners eat. Me personally I take pride in it so I would always make sure that us not ingredients in it to make it taste good but cooking for eighteen hundred people became a norm because it makes you have the one the equipment to do it but it makes like it's just cooking like for one person. Right? Though there are more ingredients involved just being able to produce that volume but the most important part and what I learnt was how to be able to flavor you know so that people would be satisfied because I don't believe in giving you something that I wouldn't eat it you know so it's, again, we speak on prison. It's a traumatic experience because people can care less. The people that run the industry can care less how it comes out. Just give them something to eat, that's their mentality and my mentality was that as soon as you turn your head I'm going to give them something to eat but it's gonna taste great.
Tim: Did you receive any type of mentorship when you came out of prison
Chef Reese: Mentorship did not come for me till I got into ASPIRE. When I got into ASPIRE then I got a chance to have some business mentors, who helped me, who are still helping me in my business venture. But I did find (CUT: a light) a lot of mentors out here because that is the way I wanted to change. I didn't want to be the same individual so I began to look for other people who are doing positive things, who were, who had a think tank, who had a thought process of being in a certain mindset in which I wanted to gravitate towards.
Chef Reese: I knew that I no longer wanted to place myself in the same environment in which I was living and prior to prison and I knew that I wanted to change not just the way that I think but the way that society sees me and not just me. But I knew that wanting to be a part of not just changing Maurice but changing the thought process of everyone who see a Returning citizen. At that time, we were called inmates you know. I didn't want you to look at me like that. And I also wanted to change the stigma for other people and I wanted to create an opportunity so with the (CUT: Mint) mentality or the thought process that that's not the way I wanted to go I begin to look for avenues and ways to do something different.
Tim: Can you expand a little bit on some of the barriers to Reentry and Employment that you experienced coming out of prison?
Chef Reese: There are a lot of barriers for the returning citizens. Washington D.C. is a place that just not too long ago within the last year and a half or so that just eradicated Check the box about filling out a job application. Because when you check the box. Are you or are you a felon? Are you a convicted felon? Have You Have you ever been arrested? When you check that box that kind of like put you you in file, or whatever they call that trash can file.
Chef Reese: And so what happens is is that when they remove that that now at least get you an interview after the background check. That's where things kind of get sticky. So what happens is is that the return of citizen. Did I get a level playing field no matter what his skill set is.
Chef Reese: He has to have a mentality that he's not going to fail or he or she is not going to fail and have to definitely have their mind made up that no matter what if I have to just eat bologna sandwiches for the next five months or whatever then that's what I'm going to do but I am determined not to fall back into the recidivism rate.
Chef Reese: This was what I stood on I stood on if I knocked on a hundred doors and all 100 of them told me No. I'm going to knock on a hundred more you know. And that's what I mean because when one says YES, that one door that opened up is going to be the luckiest door in the world because they're going to get everything that I got to give and not only am I going to walk through that door but I'm gonna expand that door so others can come through. So that's how I believe and that's what I believe. That's the same way that it has to be taught to every person that had that is a returning citizen because we can't give up. It's a battle. It is.
Tim: Since you've started your business what is the future projection for Chef Reese catering?
Chef Reese: So what Reese catering service envisions is is that we're getting ready to move into a restaurant. Reeses Catering service actually went into full-fledged business September of last year having the opportunity to hire returning citizen through D.C. Health Link campaign Reeses catering, chef Reese was campaigned all over the metro buses all over the metro stops where you would ride all through Washington D.C. and see this handsome smiling face right? Laughs... Because of what I said about when I walked to the door I walked through the door. I'm now going to expand that door you know so when you give me the opportunity the opportunity is not just for me it's my opportunity is to create an opportunity for others.
Chef Reese: I'm moving towards expanding not just Reeses Catering but there's a venture that I will be involved with called Aint Bees. Aint Bees is a project that is up on Georgia Avenue through emory board project, Changing Perceptions, order gentleman and Chef Reese Reeses Catering and it's going to be a culinary school. And I will have the restaurant space on the retail level of the apartment complex that emory board project built for affordable housing. So so things are moving and up so things are moving in a positive direction.
NARRATION
In early 2019, the Aspire to Entrepreneurship program went through another iteration and adapted its model. The program is now called Aspire Side Hustle.
Kate Mereand: One of the reasons that we are building out Aspire Side Hustle is both to support alumni who came through the Aspire incubator but also to support those who come through other DSL BD programs that support workforce or those who approach us and would like to be part of Aspire but already have a job.
Kate Mereand: So, as we build out Aspire Side Hustle one of the things that we are looking to be responsive to is the entire ecosystem that is in D.C. since we started Aspire, many other reentry entrepreneurship programs have started. I don't think any of them are quite like the Aspire incubator but they are becoming more and more options and so as we develop programming from DSL BD We are looking to meet people where they are. Think about what the needs are and make sure that we are specifically supporting the individuals who are Aspire alumni as well as anyone else who might reach out and ask for support.
Chef Reese:So ASPIRE 2.0 it's absolutely a wonderful thing because you can have a job where before you had to just concentrate 100 percent on the business aspect through ASPIRE. Now you can work and you can also side hustle because that's what they're calling it. You can ask. You can work side hustle entrepreneurship because if you are, Entrepreneurship is not for the faint at heart. If you are wanting to be an entrepreneur or business owner it doesn't happen overnight. You probably have to work a job and begin your entrepreneurship venture, along with working. So that is the reason for Aspire 2.0.
NARRATION
We want to end this episode by emphasizing that entrepreneurship can be supported in many different ways. If you are a business owner, you can consider hiring formerly incarcerated people and giving them a second chance. If you are an employee, perhaps you can patronize businesses that intentionally hire Returning Citizens or you can hire companies like VOW Transportation, Chef Reese’s Catering Business, or Clean Decisions when you need specific services. In other words, YOU have the power to be a change agent! Thanks for listening.