Professionals Highlight Grit and Resilience in Formerly Incarcerated Community
Anthony Gomez and Elizabeth Shatswell want employers to consider skills achieved from lived experience, second chances and grit when making hiring decisions. When organizations do, they end up with exceptional team members who are ready to roll up their sleeves and contribute to the business mission.
Gomez and Shatswell know the power of these attributes firsthand. Both have been incarcerated but work in fulfilling professional careers today because someone gave them a chance, in addition to having demonstrated determination and capacity to succeed well before.
These justice-impacted advocates joined author Jeff Korzenik onstage at “Building Consensus” to talk about the benefits of Second Chance Hiring and prison higher education programs.
Pictured from left to right: Allison Kroboth, Moderator; Anthony Gomez, Panelist; Elizabeth Shatswell, Panelist'; Jeff Korzenik, Panelist
When People are Given Opportunities, Second Chances Work
Anthony Gomez, Co-Founder, PATH Reentry
Gomez was sentenced at age 17 to life without parole. In prison, his past weighed heavily on him, and he resolved that if he was going to die in prison, he wanted to leave a legacy that spoke to transformation. “I just wanted to be the best version I could be knowing that I had forfeited my life out here,” explained Gomez. “I didn't want to forfeit it in there as well.”
He committed to making the best decisions he could inside and taking advantage of any opportunity to improve himself. He completed his GED, read books and enrolled in VDOC programs and classes.
Gomez eventually obtained a position in the prison law library, where he worked for 16 years. In this setting, he helped peers research legal questions and develop various filings and applications. He learned essential computer skills and eventually drew the attention of an outside attorney, with whom he worked for years both before and after release with a pardon in 2021.
Shatswell was also sentenced to life in prison as a juvenile. Because of a lack of resources for a minor girl in an adult system, she spent the first two years of her term in solitary confinement.
Despite having a high school diploma already, that Shatswell described as having been “gifted” to her by a northern Virginia high school, her actual academic skills ranked at only a 5th grade level upon entry to prison. She was assigned to special education. There, an insightful and caring prison teacher saw something in Shatswell and profoundly changed the course of her life. Starting with a simple book about Greece, Ms. Hayden worked alongside Shatswell for several years to improve her reading comprehension, stimulate intellectual curiosity, and develop other essential academic skills.
Ultimately, educational mentors introduced Shatswell to a college program offered at her prison by Piedmont Virginia Community College, where she enrolled and excelled. She thanked outside funders like the Sunshine Lady Foundation for helping make that possible in the years before Pell grant restoration.
“We say ‘second chance’ a lot here,” said Shatswell. “For a lot of us it’s not a second chance, for a lot of us it’s a second chance mentality but a first chance reality. College was not an option for me before, I didn’t even know what that was. There are invisible doors all around us and unless somebody is there to show us where that door is, we won't find it.”
Applying Life Experiences in the Workforce
Both Shatswell and Gomez eventually received pardons, with early releases. Education and even their experiences in prison are helping them succeed in the workplace today.
Today, Shatswell holds nine degrees and is starting an MBA in sustainable business practices next fall. She is the Correctional Education Manager for JSTOR, a digital library service that provides college-level research materials for students in jails and prisons.
After working as a paralegal upon release, Gomez is now employed at a major telecommunications firm as a senior analyst. He supports programmatic activities for the company’s major learning platforms and has worked on teams with policy and legislative activities.
Shatswell’s mentors in prison helped her to translate lived experience to employer-recognizable skills on her resume. She explained that, in prison, people must master important “soft skills” to navigate the complex social environment – complete with management and coworker personalities, power dynamics, and resource challenges. Shatswell noted that conflict resolution, teamwork, and communication are all qualities that are crucial in the modern workplace – skills that incarceration actually fosters out of necessity.
Korzenik said: “The word I hear most commonly associated with fair chance hires is ‘grit.’ As an employer, having employees with grit is really, really admiral.”
Gomez highlighted grit too, as well as loyalty, and referenced how formerly incarcerated people are ready to work hard.
“Don’t discount lived experience,” added Gomez. “For me, anyone with lived experience has value. Sometimes it takes time for the individual to recognize it and people around them to help draw it out.”
Elizabeth Shatswell, Correctional Education Manager, ITHAKA-JSTOR
Opportunities to Build Stronger Educational and Workforce Programs
Shatswell emphasized the importance of cross-training in prison college programs. She suggested that programs could start with core academic skills that all enrolled students benefit from – such as writing – and then lead to more focused topics that match student’s specific interests and talents.
Ensuring that incarcerated students become fluent with technology is key too, injected Shatswell.
Gomez called for more wraparound services for people after they’re released to address the variety of essential foundations for stability and success.
Korzenik encouraged businesses to connect with the local corrections community to build relationships and to seek out opportunities like mentorship or coaching activities within the prisons near them.
“There's plenty of opportunities,” said Gomez. “There's a lot of high demand fields without people to join those fields. [Among incarcerated Virginians,] DOC has the talent.”
If you’d like to be part of the continued effort to expand access to postsecondary education in Virginia’s prison system, we invite you to take a simple step toward tremendous impact and join the Virginia Consensus for Higher Education in Prison.