In prison, Allison Kroboth developed a love of learning.

She was serving a 15-year sentence, and though she’d always struggled in school, she knew education could put her on a pathway to success when she got out. Kroboth began working with a GED teacher who, she says, “was one of the first people to really tell me I was smart and believed in me,” Kroboth says. “She showed me I was capable.”

Kroboth completed her GED, earned her associates degree, pursued a journeyman HVAC certification, and another certification to become a licensed optician. But something was missing. “I knew that once I got my foot in the door somewhere, I needed to understand businesses and how businesses work in order to be able to move up and excel or get promotions,” she says. “If I wanted to be stable at any point in my life, I needed to understand credit and banking and saving.”

That’s where Resilience Education came in. The nonprofit, launched in 2011, brings MBA students at some of the nation’s top business schools into prisons to teach the business, entrepreneurship and personal finance skills their students will need when they’re released.

Kroboth enrolled in the program in 2016. She studied business fundamentals, budgeting, interview etiquette and negotiation. When she was released in July of 2018, she received not one but two offers to become an optician, was able to negotiate a higher salary and, later, a promotion. Several years ago, she pivoted. She’s now a grant writer, strategic planner and budgeter for a nonprofit.

“Our neighboring areas have really suffered from mass incarceration. I think it’s important for business schools and the business community, and especially universities like Columbia and Penn, to be a part of the solution.” — Damon Phillips

Since its founding, Resilience Education has helped over 1,100 incarcerated individuals like Kroboth earn certificates through its program. More than 550 MBA students have taught courses.

Now, they’re partnering with University of Pennsylvania professor Damon Phillips to bring their courses to Philly, where it’s being called “Wharton WORKS.”

Bridging the gap between business school and the criminal justice system

Around 2011, the dean of the University of Virginia’s Darden School of Business received a letter from an incarcerated man asking for business advice. The dean passed the letter along to Greg Fairchild, a professor of entrepreneurship and strategy at UVA, who started thinking about the financial literacy, job skills and other business-y needs of people who are incarcerated. That led him and his wife, Tierney — an education leadership and policy strategist — to launch Resilience Education.

“[The letter writer] knew that his felony conviction would make it difficult for him to get employed,” says Tierney Fairchild, Resilience Education’s executive director. “I got involved and realized that this is an issue that we as business people and educators were not changing.”

At the end of the courses, students developed financial plans: for a future business; for their personal finances; or for transitioning back into their communities once their sentence was complete. Interest in the program quickly grew, and they began teaching in other facilities in Virginia and later in New York, where, in 2016, they partnered with Damon Phillips.

At the time Phillips was a professor in Columbia University’s MBA program. As a young adult, he had worked alongside people who had been impacted by the criminal justice system at his family’s technology manufacturing plant in Florida, which provided parts for companies like NASA. He found that formerly incarcerated employees were often the most dedicated workers.

As a professor, he had spent a lot of time talking with successful business leaders, one of whom asked him what he could do to help people who had spent time in prison. Historically, business leaders — and the MBA programs that produce them — have viewed themselves as separate from social problems like mass incarceration.

But younger generations of business students and business leaders have expressed a desire to drive change through their work. According to a CNBC/Momentive survey last year, 54 percent of workers said they would take a pay cut to work at a company that shares their values, and 56 percent said they wouldn’t even consider working for a business that didn’t share their values.

“We want to change the world and we want to be at least part of things that are positive. We’re not satisfied with a job that’s just a job,” he says.

Phillips led the Resilience Education program at Columbia for six years before he brought it with him to Penn.

How Wharton WORKS works

Wharton WORKS kicked off this past spring with a pilot of 16 MBA students teaching courses on credit scores, budgeting and financial literacy to 20 incarcerated people at SCI Chester, a medium-security prison for men with a documented history of substance abuse. That first group of students graduated in April. This fall, the program will expand to include Resilience Education’s full curriculum.

MBA students who want to teach in the program must first take Phillips’ “Reforming Mass Incarceration and the Role of Business,” a course about how the U.S. criminal justice system affects employment and entrepreneurship opportunities.

“I knew that once I got my foot in the door somewhere, I needed to understand businesses and how businesses work in order to be able to move up and excel or get promotions. If I wanted to be stable at any point in my life, I needed to understand credit and banking and saving.” — Allison Kroboth

The Bureau of Justice Statistics reported in 2021 that about 60 percent of formerly incarcerated people released from prison in 2010 were jobless at any given time four years post-release, with 33 percent having found no employment at all over that time. Stable employment plays a critical role in helping people succeed once they get out of prison. Multiple studies have found that access to education and employment opportunities reduce rates of recidivism.

The Wharton WORKS program and Resilience Education’s curriculum work to improve these employment figures in two ways: Equip formerly incarcerated people with business skills and certificates from major universities, and teach MBA students about the value of employing people who have been released from prison. As part of the pilot, Wharton students wrote a five-page memo explaining to a future employer how they could incorporate formerly incarcerated individuals into the workplace.

The future of Resilience Education

Once graduates of the certificate program are released, Resilience Education’s mentorship program offers career placement assistance, which can mean pairing up graduates with MBA students for help with updating resumes and practicing interviewing skills.

The Fairchilds created the post-release program about three years ago, when Allison Kroboth reached out to them for help with her professional pivot. The couple introduced her to one of their former MBA and Resilience Education students, as a mentor. From there, they formalized post-release mentorship as a part of the program. Once again, the program benefits both student and teacher.

“Not only are [these former MBA students] providing an education to incarcerated learners, but they themselves as future leaders are going to learn that intimate level of empathy,” Phillips says.

Alec Shah is a Wharton MBA student who taught courses at SCI Chester as part of the pilot. A former investment banker and high school debate teacher, Shah had always been interested in the ways business intersects with law, and he loves teaching. He taught courses on budgeting, financial planning, credit scores and how to apply for loans through the program — while working on a report on how private equity firms could help portfolio companies struggling with labor shortages by encouraging them to hire formerly incarcerated workers.

“I did an in-depth bit of research on a particular private equity team and I saw that Hey, all of this company’s portfolio companies are desperately in need of workers,” Shah says.

“Formerly incarcerated individuals are people who desperately want to get to work. If they get a good job that pays them a fair wage, they are much more likely to stay in a single position than switching from company to company. Thinking about different ways to include these individuals in a workforce was very revealing to me because not only could I get a much more reliable workforce in certain ways, I could take advantage of corporate tax breaks from the government, and also do a lot of social good.”

(Spoken like a true MBA.)

Phillips and the team at Resilience Education say they are excited to continue growing the program by partnering with more prisons and universities. The goal for Wharton WORKS: Help 3,000 formerly incarcerated people get career-track, living-wage jobs, and help another 300 start businesses by 2030.

“Our neighboring areas have really suffered from mass incarceration,” Phillips says. “I think it’s important for business schools and the business community, and especially universities like Columbia and Penn, to be a part of the solution.”

Correction: A previous version of this post said the program began in 2012 with three courses.

MORE ON RETURNING CITIZENS