The Corporate Coalition's June meeting on Fair Chance Hiring at North Lawndale Employment Network was featured in the Chicago Tribune by Darcel Rockett. The article not only describes the opportunity in hiring Fair Chance talent—the roughly 70 million Americans, or 1 in 3 working-age adults in the U.S. who have a criminal record—but also some of the challenges, and how participants in our June meeting explored those challenges through a re-entry simulation.

“When you think about who is disproportionately represented in that 70 million, it’s communities of color,” said Brian Fabes, Corporate Coalition of Chicago managing director. “But it’s just not Black Americans, it’s all Americans. Remember Martha Stewart has a record and people invest in her; golfer Scottie Scheffler has an arrest record. The way we have built up human capital systems in most large corporations and in most of the business world is we have learned how to exclude people, how to screen people out. There’s not this perfect set of people who are waiting for ‘my job.’ This takes work on both sides.”

"The movement needs visible commitment by leaders who continue to pound the drum around the importance of hiring and integrating fair chance talent,” according to Stephanie Dolan, Corporate Coalition of Chicago program director for fair chance hiring. One of the efforts Dolan leads is our fair chance hiring cohort, a nine-month-long collaborative where interested employers gather to get guidance on policy and practice changes to hire, retain and advance people who have been involved with the criminal justice system in collaboration with Cara Plus and Chicagoland Workforce Funder Alliance.

Read the Tribune Article