I'm the manager of Campus Services at RocketSpace, a technology campus in San Francisco. Along with my team, I help manage the environment and experience for tech entrepreneurs trying to create the next big thing to hit the market.
In 1994, I was sentenced to life in prison, and up until 20 months ago, I was known as inmate H10983. In some ways, my journey from a young kid living the street life to a tax-paying citizen invested in his community is a miraculous one. In other ways, it is a path taken by countless people before me, whose footsteps I followed to find freedom. It is the path of self-reflection, hard work, and hope.
Every day, men and women are released from prisons and jails across the U.S. after taking this same journey. Most incarcerated settings do not provide programs that teach relevant job skills for reentry to society. As a result, recidivism -- the rate at which people return to incarceration -- is enormous. Society blames these individuals for their failure. Had I not been fortunate enough to be a founding member of a program called The Last Mile, I too could have ended up back in prison.
[For more of this story, written by Christifino Kenyatta Leal, go to http://www.huffingtonpost.com/...-tech_b_6962088.html]
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