"Over the summer I worked on the Justice Through Code (JTC) program, a joint partnership between the Tamer Center for Social Enterprise and the Center for Justice. JTC works at the intersection of both the Center for Justice’s mission of ending mass incarceration and criminalization and advancing alternative approaches to justice and safety through education, research, and policy change. Additionally, the Tamer Center for Social Enterprise's ReEntry Acceleration Program (REAP) trains MBA students to deliver business training to incarcerated individuals, develops tools for potential employers, and create forums for new relationships to shape a solutions-focused dialog around post-incarceration employment.

JTC employs a multi-pronged strategic approach to achieve its mission — ending the cycle of poverty that contributes to incarceration and recidivism by providing life-changing access to the education, opportunities, and networks necessary to enter into high-wage growth careers in the tech sector — and generate large-scale systemic change to reform society’s negative perceptions of the formerly incarcerated, alter industry culture that creates barriers to entry, and drive fair-chance hiring practices. JTC integrates the mission of both centers by leveraging the resources of Columbia University and the Business School to provide an alternative approach to justice by providing equitable access to the education, resources, and networks necessary for returning citizens to enter into life-sustaining careers. Providing this access has the potential to lead to the creation of generational wealth for individuals and communities — disproportionately made up of people of color — impacted by mass incarceration and the current pandemic. Furthermore, JTC works to generate systemic change by engaging leading Business School faculty, staff, and students who will become the next generation of business leaders, alongside industry professionals who serve as teachers, advisors, and referral networks for students. Direct contact with our students equips these advisors and mentors with the knowledge to be informed change-makers and advocates in tackling biases in their companies and to make the business case for hiring formerly incarcerated employees.

I consistently applied the skills I learned in my major of psychology throughout the development of JTC. The primary focus of the field of psychology is studying and understanding mental processes, brain functions, and behavior. To effectively address labor market hiring discrimination of people with a history of incarceration requires understanding both: 1) how best to support returning citizens in overcoming the obstacles they encounter throughout the reentry process and during their transition into life-sustaining careers; and 2) how to effectively counter the negative stereotypes businesses hold of the formerly incarcerated to increase opportunities for employment.

Although each question presents unique nuances, both can be supported by an understanding of psychological mechanisms that profoundly shape all of our interactions with the world. These include mechanisms such as stereotype threat, rejection sensitivity, resilience, and self-efficacy that can significantly inhibit or increase an individual's ability to succeed in work and learning situations, especially when faced with adversity — and the heuristics that business people often rely on and the biases that are subconsciously primed when evaluating potential candidates for employment. With the understanding that my education as a psychology undergraduate at Columbia has provided me, I was able to design novel inventions to counter these psychological mechanisms for our students and galvanize the wider business community to support fair chance hiring.

Over the summer, I faced numerous challenges in my work with JTC. Most significantly were the obstacles I faced in garnering enough support from large corporations to ensure a pathway to employment for our largest cohort yet — nearly 50 students in th incoming fall 2021 cohort. Although major corporations across the globe have increasingly turned their attention to hiring from the formerly incarcerated population over the last year, many of them are doing so without a complete understanding of the crisis of mass incarceration. Nearly all of the outreach that I received during the summer from companies interested in hiring our students came from companies that were not willing to hire individuals with a history of violent crime. Given the disproportionate representation of people incarcerated for violent crimes in the United States, there is no way to effectively address this crisis without providing a pathway to individuals who have committed violent crimes. Additionally, research has shown that individuals convicted of violent crime are overwhelmingly victims of violent crime. With this understanding, I have worked directly with numerous companies to support them in gaining a clearer understanding of the causes and consequences of mass incarceration and what they must do if they truly want to contribute to meaningfully address it.

This experience furthered my drive to engage in building scalable solutions to the world’s social problems, including the crisis of mass incarceration. Furthermore, it deepened my understanding that driving change requires access to the type of resources that I have been incredibly privileged to access through the Tamer Center for Social Enterpriseover the last two years. Without the support of the center and the incredible team that works there none of this would have been possible. Without the support of the summer fellowship, I would not have had the support I required to provide me with a bridge of funding before I started in my full-time appointment at the University for JTC this fall. Thanks to this work, I have developed a deep understanding that building effective solutions to the world’s social problems requires that the people impacted by the problems participate in creating their solutions. "