The Yale Prison Education Initiative (YPEI) began with a simple but radical mission: Put Yale inside the prison. Built in the model of the famed Bard Prison Initiative, which offers Bard credit-bearing, degree-granting courses in New York state prisons, YPEI offers Yale credits for liberal arts courses to students currently incarcerated in Connecticut.For Yale students on campus enrolled in a typical degree-track program, however, the university is much more than just coursework: It’s mentorship, personal growth, experimentation, career preparedness and, most importantly, a network of support for a lifetime. My project this summer was to devise a strategy that would bring more of Yale to YPEI by expanding programming into the field of community reentry.The driving question I sought to answer was how can YPEI leverage university resources to improve outcomes for students once they are released from prison.

For an education in prison program like YPEI, the goal is to provide intellectual opportunity that bears lasting impact on students’ lives.As a recent graduate of Columbia’s MBA program – as well as an instructor in the School’s ReEntry Acceleration Program (REAP) – I knew that by offering business resources (both coursework and advising), we could fulfill the educational mission of YPEI while offering something that extends and enhances it for practical application in the real world. My project, therefore, was to connect the dots between Yale as a college-in-prison resource to the University as a resource for building a successful life beyond the bars.

My project was inspired by the Tamer Center’s ReEntry Acceleration Program, an immersion course designed to introduce both business students to the complex issue of criminal justice and mass incarceration and incarcerated students to a business education. At the heart of REAP is a college-in-prison program where on-campus MBA students teach incarcerated business students case-based courses in entrepreneurship, negotiations, and Finance. For the REAP students, the goal is two-fold: dynamic career preparedness that has applications across multiple disciplines and connection with premier resources at Columbia Business School.

In order to strategize, design, and begin to implement similar reentry programming at YPEI, I built a coherent argument for expanding the programming using data sets, benchmarking resources and insights from comparable programs at peer institutions, demonstrated how YPEI’s purpose would inform the next steps, and negotiated with university faculty and administrators to see multiple points of view for how this expansion would impact existing initiatives throughout the university. My MBA informed how I not only gathered information but prioritized my activity and, in presenting my findings, was able to hone in on valuable management theories of change.

In the eyes of the administration, YPEI students are not considered Yale students; therefore, many resources are not available to them — and will not be made to them easily. Of the relevant center’s on campus (Tsai Center for Innovation, for example), most were not able to offer any tangible resources or partnerships to bolster the expansion. This is an on-going challenge. Another is funding.One of our main proposals involves developing a year-long work-study internship program for formerly incarcerated students to work at Yale while engaging in a rigorous business curriculum.An initiative like this was started at Georgetown University and is currently operated by a Yale alum, whom we connected with over the summer to discuss strategy and implementation.In the meeting, we learned that an operating budget for this program would be especially high – fundraising would require strong backing from public and private sources that we have yet to identify.The last main challenge was timing. Given that the coronavirus pandemic has halted all in-person instruction at YPEI — and as the future of college-in-prison still hangs in the balance — the potential investment in resources to expand reentry programming (coursework, internship opportunities, and entrepreneurial resources) was met with some hesitation: In the face of massive contraction in our existing offerings, how can we justify investment in new products and services?The time horizon of the investment is long — it’s easier to put things off.Developing a thoughtful, convincing narrative around the urgency of our work will continue to be a challenge at YPEI.

Three main takeaways emerged throughout my summer at YPEI.
- The significance of brands.In the field of criminal justice reform and mass incarceration, being associated with Yale and Columbia not only creates points of access, but radicalizes the role and function of university systems as institutions of reform. It broadens their sense of purpose and deepens the philosophical link between education, enfranchisement, and justice.Associations with these major brands can drive change and accelerate growth in spheres over which they do not have obvious influence.
- The resilience of teams. This summer, our team at YPEI worked entirely virtually. Though many of us were living in and around New Haven, we only once convened at the office. The distance took a toll on our ability to come together as a group but by insisting on daily check-ins and weekly discussion groups, the executive director of YPEI built intimacy into our work and fostered community in the face of adversity.
- The role of business leaders in solving the problem of mass incarceration. Business leaders command capital, and capital is power that influences individuals and society. Most of the issues facing formerly incarcerated people are about access to capital and power: No money, no job, no prospects. When business leaders understand their ability to marshal capital in the service of education, training, and employment of formerly incarcerated people, they can effectively reduce the rate at which people return to prison.Fewer people in prison means fewer resources going towards the prison-industrial complex and, ultimately, less waste and more money for progressive investment in society.More investment in society, more substantial growth.These are the conditions that make way for increased value to the shareholder by way of the stakeholder — a very compelling equation.