Glenn E. Martin & Richard Bronson: Reinventing Yourself After Prison, on White Collar Week with Jeff Grant, Podcast Ep. 20
By: Jeff Grant, J.D.
Tags: Jeff Grant, Crime, White Collar, Prison, Reinvention

Guests on this Episode:

Glenn E. Martin

For two decades, Glenn E. Martin successfully conceptualized, created and directed a handful of national multi-million dollar organizations in the non-profit sector. Glenn has occupied the important leadership role of “visionary”, while developing a strong track record in the more pragmatic aspects of building and running successful organizations, including fundraising, operations, administration and communications.

Before launching both GEMrealestate and GEMtrainers, multi-state real estate investment company and a successful non-profit consultancy, respectively, Glenn founded and served as President of JustLeadershipUSA for three years, an organization he built as a tribute to his son Joshua, dedicated to cutting the U.S. correctional population in half by 2030. For almost 20 years, since leaving prison, he’s been a part of the vanguard of successful reform advocates in America.

His leadership has been recognized with multiple honors, including the 2016 Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights Award, the 2017 Brooke Astor Award, and the 2014 Echoing Green Fellowship. He is also a Founding Member of the Council on Criminal Justice.

Prior to founding JustLeadershipUSA, Glenn was the Vice President of The Fortune Society, where he founded and led the David Rothenberg Center for Public Policy. He also served as the Co-Director of the National HIRE Network at the Legal Action Center, and co-founded the Education from the Inside Out Coalition. He’s also the founder and visionary behind the #CLOSErikers campaign in NYC.

Glenn has served as a public speaker and has been a media guest appearing on national news outlets such as NPR, MSNBC, Fox News, CNN, Al Jazeera and CSPAN. You can follow him at @glennEmartin on Twitter

Richard Bronson

“Y Combinator-backed employment platform 70 Million Jobs is launching a new social network geared toward helping formerly incarcerated individuals connect with each other. While 70 Million Jobs focuses on helping people with criminal records find jobs, Commissary Club wants to serve as a place for folks to find community.

‘Folks with [criminal] records have always, since prisons were first built, lived in the shadows,’ 70 Million Jobs founder Richard Bronson told TechCrunch. ‘They’ve lived in fear and in shame — afraid to emerge with this terrible stigma, being treated as second-class citizens in every single way.’

Through Commissary Club, folks can find community through topic-specific clubs, explore education courses and find mentors, jobs and housing. […]

The plan with the social network is to take an ad-based approach, along with referral fees for things like online classes and wellness services. Commissary Club also plans to partner with brands and host events for the community.

‘The population we serve is really desperately in need of help,’ Bronson said. ‘But we’re not in position to provide all of it. We’re going to be a concierge for folks.’

But there’s an obvious risk with bringing formerly incarcerated people together and serving them on a platter to advertisers, given that some are notoriously predatory.

‘I feel incredibly protective of our clients because there are bad actors,’ Bronson said. ‘We’ve seen people try to come to our job business and gain access for their less than positive ends. So we’ve gotten smart and also sensitive to the fact that this could go on. We make damn sure that whoever we’re working with is operating with integrity and honesty. We’ve been in this space for a long time and we know the good lawyers and bad ones, the good education platforms and bad ones and many other verticals with good actors and bad actors.’

Commissary Club launched a few days ago in beta and currently has thousands on the wait list. But the service is doing a slow rollout because, Bronson said, ‘we want to get it right.’

To date, parent company 70 Million Jobs has raised $1.6 million from investors and is seeking an additional $2 million in funding.” — Taken from TechCrunch