As CROP Organization’s 1st Director of Programs and co-founder, I contributed to the development and delivery of a holistic career development program that I currently manage in both Oakland and Los Angeles California. Along with my other four co-founders, I helped to spearhead a historic partnership with the state of California to secure 28.5 million dollars to run a three year pilot of this program.

CROP served as the primary source of funding for the restorative work which helped to transform the culture of prison at CTF Soledad. I served as one of the primary project directors and lead counselors of internal programming for the CROP Organization. The combination of my formal education and proximate leadership helped in the development and implementation of programming that has impacted thousands of people’s lives both inside and outside of prison. The CROP organization is a non-profit foundation working in partnership with the public and private sectors to address the pressing needs of currently and formerly incarcerated people. CROP works in the areas of personal leadership development, hard skills training in tech and counseling, job placement, and housing solutions . We offer support to returning citizens through our transformative program called Ready for Life. The ultimate goal of our programs are to:reduce recidivismimprove opportunities / outcomes upon reentry facilitate successful reintegration into societyheal families and communitiesIn addition to our programming goals, we aim to help reform the policies that have brought our prison systems to it’s current state of crisis. Based upon newly-developed reforms created and being implemented in California, CROP intends to expand our public-private partnerships all across America. We want to make these opportunities available to people who are highly motivated and will take responsibility and action on their own rehabilitation.By supporting the rehab of these individuals and helping them return to society as productive members, we can reduce recidivism while restoring lives and healing our communities.