From B-School to the Big House

At several innovative programs, MBA students spend time in local prisons, helping inmates develop business skills and even business plans

By Alison Damast

Chelsi Pohlmeier still remembers the butterflies she felt in 2007, when she first saw the barbed wire fences surrounding the Cleveland Prison Unit in Cleveland, Tex. After she passed through security, a guard escorted her down a hallway to a classroom full of former gang members and convicted felons awaiting Pohlmeier and her classmates from the honors program at Texas A&M Mays Business School (Mays Full-Time MBA Profile). She'd come to observe a marketing class given to the prisoners by the Prison Entrepreneurship Program, a Houston-based nonprofit group that equips inmates with business and life skills. "I just remember being terrified. I had never set foot in a prison before and I was really nervous," says Pohlmeier.

Her fears dissipated as inmates in navy jumpsuits greeted her and shook her hand before participating in such team-bonding exercises as group hugs and an obligatory round of the "chicken dance."

"I didn't expect such a warm welcome and to feel so accepted in that environment. My fears just went away immediately," says Pohlmeier, now getting a master's degree at Mays. Since that day, she's paid dozens of visits to the prison, advised inmates on business plans, and helped develop curricula for classes.

Under ordinary circumstances, business school students and prisoners wouldn't have much opportunity to intermingle. That's starting to change as business school students take a growing interest in helping inmates acquire business skills to help them ease into the job market upon release from prison, whether by starting their own companies or finding new careers. While such programs are rare, dozens of MBA students from business schools around the country are participating in them—and in some instances, creating their own programs. Students are drawn to the opportunity to mentor and coach the inmates on business plans, pass on basic business skills, and give them career advice and tips on job-hunting, say career services officers and administrators.

"Every student I've ever worked with who has gone to work with the prisoners just can't wait to go back," says Cynthia Billington, Mays' associate director of MBA career education and advising, who helps recruit MBA students for the Prison Entrepreneurship Program. "It really gets into their system."

Emory's Goizueta: prison career fair

At some business schools, grassroot movements are emerging to help assist the prison population. Last winter, Evan Levine and Robert Sigman, then juniors in Emory University's Goizueta Business School(Goizueta Undergraduate Business Profile), decided to see if they could expand a volunteer SAT tutoring service they'd been running at a local high school and bring the concept to a nearby prison. They got in touch with the superintendent at the Atlanta Transitional Center, a facility run by the Georgia Department of Corrections. He agreed to let the students come in several times a week to help the inmates prepare for the high school equivalency diploma test.

The program has been such a success that the students are now expanding the program to include job skills. They are organizing a career day to take place later this month, with sessions on job selection, interview preparation, and professional skills development. To participate at the career fair, they've recruited Goizueta career services advisors, administrators, and local employers with a history of hiring convicted felons, says Levine.

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