A Fair Chance Q&A
KEN OLIVER, CHECKR FOUNDATION EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR
Though several recent reports, including one from U.S. News & World Report, rank Arizona’s economy as one of the best in the nation in 2023, there remains a clear and present threat to the state’s prosperity: a labor shortage that could be disastrous for the private sector, especially small businesses. At Arouet Foundation’s upcoming Fair Chance Employment Symposium on October 5, business and justice reform leaders will meet at the Arizona Biltmore to discuss the threat and learn how successful companies have benefited from establishing more inclusive hiring practices.
Ken Oliver, a philanthropist, entrepreneur, and formerly incarcerated advocate for criminal justice reform, is one of five Fair Chance trailblazers that Arouet will honor at this year’s Symposium. Ken’s story was featured in Reuters in 2021 just after being hired as executive director for the philanthropic foundation owned by Checkr—a background check startup valued at $5 billion today.
Joe Watson, a small business owner and fellow criminal justice reform advocate, had a chance to talk with Ken about their individual experiences after prison. They also discussed what the U.S. labor force is facing today, the daunting statistics around justice-system involvement in the U.S. (1 in 3 Americans, for example, have some kind of arrest, detention, or conviction record), and the immeasurable benefits that more inclusive hiring practices can bring to businesses everywhere.
Joe Watson: Tell me about the support that you’ve received since your release. What does that structure look like, and which forms of support have helped you after getting out, especially with the hyper fast rate that everything is happening today?
Ken Oliver: My trajectory was really birthed out of what a lot of creativity and drive is birthed from: Pain. What I mean by that is there I was, in almost my ninth year of solitary confinement while serving a life prison sentence, with very little reason for hope but for a civil rights lawsuit I filed against the state of California. After years of inactivity by the courts, Stanford University and Mayer Brown, one of the biggest corporate law firms in the country, came in and helped me execute the litigation that eventually led to my release from prison in 2019.
My very first night out, I was sent to a five-bedroom house in Berkeley that had 17 people sleeping in five bedrooms. And it really was my introduction into the pay-for-play reentry system. We’ve heard about the pay-for-play prison system, but now there’s a pay-for-play reentry system where people can make money off our bodies as we attempt to reintegrate into society. We’re each worth $5,000 a month to whoever owns that real estate. I remember walking into this house and through a series of things the first night. And I was like, “This is like prison.”
After a week of that madness, my lawyer found an opportunity for me to move into a home owned by an attorney in West Oakland, where she allowed three former lifers to live. She didn’t live there. It was a four-bedroom house, and she allowed us to move in rent free and stay for up to a year. What was amazing about this was that it didn’t involve any type of compulsory programming and gave us the chance to reenter and reintegrate with dignity and on our own terms. We all became successful from there.
JW: And then you started doing reform work, right?
KO: Yeah, I was offered a job at a public interest law firm as a paralegal and really began to understand criminal justice reform. Shortly thereafter, the executive director called me into the office and said, “We knew you could write legal briefs, but we didn’t realize what a great advocate you are and we want to make you the state policy director and send you up to Sacramento to lobby for criminal justice reform with California legislators.”
So, that was how I cut my teeth in policy. I knew how to go in there and lobby and advocate for changes from the perspective of proximity. I guess that’s what they saw in me, and so that’s what I did. I formed and became a member of several big coalitions in California, where I advocated and testified for voting rights for people who were on parole, for equal pay in prison, for the minimum wage to be given to prisoners, for fines and fees reform, etc. All different pieces of legislation.
“There I was, in almost my ninth year of solitary confinement while serving a life prison sentence, with very little reason for hope…’”
Ken Oliver
JW: We’re seeing companies and corporations in Arizona implement Fair Chance programs and policies, and not just for fluffy reasons—but for their bottom line. The case is: This is profitable. People who have a conviction history are dedicated, loyal, innovative, and talented, and they make your company more successful. Should we be saying it louder?
KO: Yeah, we should. I tell Fair Chance employers all the time: There is a tremendous value proposition with this talent pool. They exhibit fierce loyalty and incredible dedication to high performance. When you open the door for people who have been historically marginalized or otherwise excluded, folks tend to be willing to go to the ends of the earth for you. That’s where the real value proposition is: investing in people and giving them space to fulfill their possibilities. It’s just providing that space and embracing someone and lifting them up and saying, “I see value in you. I see you.”
I evangelize to everyone who’s willing to listen that every single man and woman in prison has a value proposition, even if they don’t see it themselves.
JW: Companies can do charity, as our friend Jeff Korzenik likes to say. They can hire one or two folks a year who have a conviction history. But to your point, this has got to be systemic change, right?
KO: Yes, it does. Now, Checkr has been a Fair Chance employer before there was such a thing as “Fair Chance.” They’ve been hiring formerly incarcerated people since 2015, which is counterintuitive because Checkr is a background check company. But to their credit, they paid attention to the fact that background checks were having a negative and disparate effect on people who had arrest or conviction records.
So, Checkr has really been the torch bearer for Fair Chance. We have a full system and process in place for Fair Chance implementation within the company. We did it by trial and error in the beginning; there was no real precedent to model or scale for a tech company. There were no manuals. We had to build a change management model because there were blind spots in our thinking about the way we evaluate and source talent—not only for talent with records but people with degrees versus no degrees, etc.
Instead of solely concentrating on transitioning someone from their present state to fulfilling a job role, we started to iterate with different approaches with our HR and talent recruitment teams. We now source talent from non-traditional routes like nonprofit organizations, boot camps, skill-enhancement programs, or opportunities rooted in the lived experiences of people with records.
The evolution in our thinking reflects the reality that we refused to remain complacent in our mission to provide opportunities to Fair Chance talent. There’s also been this tremendous war for talent. So, we are always trying to innovate and be creative and think about other ways that we can source and grow talent. So, we’ve found tremendous value in leveraging the untapped talent pool that exists within the 80 million people who have arrest or conviction records.
JW: So, what does the future of Fair Chance employment look like to you?
KO: Most of us who have a conviction history get ushered into low-wage jobs. Many folks have low expectations of us and want us to put on an orange vest and pick up stuff on the side of the freeway, or they want us to throw mailbags in the back of a UPS truck at two in the morning, or stack boxes in the back of Walmart. And there’s nothing wrong with those jobs, but it becomes a different type of equation when we talk about access to livable wages and economic mobility. The number one driver of mass incarceration and recidivism is poverty. When people live in functional poverty without meaningful access, there are identifiable symptoms that tend to grow from that circumstance: people abuse substances, people medicate with alcohol, and people carry extraordinary stressors that can manifest in acts of violence. These are all symptoms of poverty anywhere in the world. However, if we can do a better job for folks and give them just an opportunity to work—livable wage work—it will go a long way in bringing down the tremendous burden and cost of mass incarceration and recidivism in this country.
For companies who want to be innovative and at the forefront of tomorrow, when it comes to the future of work and building the future of work, we must acknowledge that the future of work is today and looks like LGBTQ Talent. It looks like Veteran Talent. It looks like Black and Brown Talent. And the future of work, believe it or not, involves the 80 million people who have criminal records. It looks like talent that reflects the fabric of American society. The future of work is going to include all these people because businesses and the American economy won’t be able to grow at the level and pace we need to scale and grow.
“I evangelize to everyone who’s willing to listen that every single man and woman in prison has a value proposition, even if they don't see it themselves.”
Ken Oliver
JW: Tell us about some companies out there that are models for implementing Fair Chance policies.
KO: Let’s start with Slack. Checkr has several engineers that went through Slack’s Next Chapter program. So, they’re a model in the way that they’ve marketed. They’ve been deliberate in training people, building relationships with high-end companies like Dropbox, Zoom, PayPal, and other high-growth companies.
Nehemiah Manufacturing is a great company that’s built a whole ecosystem and culture. People with conviction histories represent 70% of their workforce. They’ve developed an amazing program, HR system, and a culture within the company where everyone has each other’s backs and holds each other accountable to create a high-performance culture.
JP Morgan Chase & Co. signed the Second Chance initiative and have hired 4,000 people with conviction histories each year for the past three years. They have a whole program and ecosystem around how to implement Fair Chance practices, how to bring in Fair Chance talent into the financial space, and how to do it responsibly.
And Checkr, of course, is dedicated to sharing the value proposition of Fair Chance hiring with other businesses. Six percent of Checkr employees are formerly incarcerated, and we’re a $5 billion company.
So, you’re seeing a wide variety and cross-section within all these different industries of companies really taking advantage of this untapped talent pool. That’s why Fair Chance is important.
We currently have a deficit of about 10 million open jobs. And that’s a recipe for stunning growth because you can’t grow at the level that you want to grow from a business standpoint, from an economic standpoint, unless you have labor to actually fill the positions.
Ken Oliver is one of five Fair Chance honorees at the 2023 Fair Chance Employment Symposium on October 5 at the Arizona Biltmore. Reserve your table here.
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