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By Sam Schaeffer, Chief Executive Officer of the Center for Employment Opportunities
Today, we mark an important milestone: 30 years of the Center for Employment Opportunities (CEO). In the span of history, three decades can seem brief. Yet living through years marked by rapid change, recurring crises, and widening inequities has stretched our understanding of time itself. As I reflect on the CEO’s 30-year journey, I feel deep pride and gratitude—not only for what we have built, but for what this moment now asks of us.
CEO began as a simple but bold idea: that access to work, offered immediately after release from incarceration, could change the trajectory of a person’s life. In the mid-1990s, when CEO became an independent nonprofit, this belief ran counter to conventional thinking. People returning from incarceration were expected to wait for stability, trust, and opportunity. CEO chose a different approach. We chose to lead with work.
Over the last three decades, that decision has shaped everything we do. From our early days serving people returning from New York State prisons to our presence today in 30 cities across the country, CEO has remained anchored in a single truth: employment is not a reward for stability, it is a pathway to it.
What has grown over time is not just our reach, but our understanding. We have learned that immediate, paid employment paired with coaching, skills training, and long-term support creates stability at a moment when it matters most. We have learned that opportunity and accountability can—and must—exist together. And we have learned that people impacted by the justice system are not defined by their pasts, but by their aspirations and their capacity to contribute.
CEO’s history is also a story of people. Our story is shaped by participants who showed up day after day to transitional work crews, staff who built trust through consistency and respect, and businesses and hiring managers who saw potential where others saw risk. It is a story molded by public servants, employers, advocates, and funders who believe that fair chance hiring strengthens communities and the workforce alike.
Along the way, CEO has grown into a national leader in reentry employment, with an evidence-based model that has demonstrated lasting impacts on employment and recidivism. But numbers alone do not capture what matters most. What matters is the individual who earns their first paycheck after release. The parent who can contribute to their household again. The worker who stays connected to the labor force and builds a future that once felt out of reach.
When CEO was founded, criminal justice reform was far from a mainstream cause. Advocating for investments in the futures of people impacted by incarceration was often met with skepticism, fear, and bias. While those forces have not disappeared, CEO chose a different path—confronting prejudice with evidence, leading with person-centered narratives, and centering justice-impacted leadership. Over time, that commitment produced an organization built not just to endure challenge, but to meet it with clarity and purpose.
Across three decades, CEO has faced moments that tested our resolve: 9/11, economic recessions, a global pandemic, natural disasters, and national reckonings with racial and criminal justice. At each juncture, CEO and its community stood together, took care of one another, and continued to push forward,not only for the people we serve, but for a country where everyone has a fair chance to build a stable life for themselves and their families.
We meet this moment the same way we have met those before it: with determination and creativity. While many organizations are being forced to scale back, CEO is scaling up, guided by the same courage, discipline, and innovation that have defined us for thirty years. This is a moment that demands boldness, evidence, and scale. CEO was built for this kind of challenge.
During the Great Recession, as unemployment surged and public budgets were cut, CEO expanded. We partnered with states, cities, and counties to bring employment services to communities across the country. That strategy laid the foundation for the organization we are today—serving nearly 10,000 people each year across 30 cities.
In 2016, amid profound political change, CEO formally added policy and advocacy to our work. Beginning with the Less Is More Act in New York State, we committed to advancing reforms shaped by the voices and leadership of people directly impacted by the justice system. Today, that work spans multiple states and the federal level, advancing policies that strengthen reentry systems and expand access to work.
The COVID-19 pandemic challenged us again. In its earliest and most uncertain weeks, CEO and generous philanthropists mobilized quickly—raising and distributing more than $24 million to people returning home from incarceration. At a time of deep fear and division, CEO helped bring together philanthropic and nonprofit partners to provide stability to thousands of people and families. That collective action was a turning point. It reaffirmed that our field is strongest when we act together,and it helped catalyze a movement, led by justice-impacted people, that has since inspired reentry cash legislation in states including California, Colorado, and New York.
The landscape has changed since CEO first began expanding nationally. Where we once entered cities with few reentry programs, we now see a growing ecosystem of community-based organizations ready to lead. These organizations have cultivated deep local trust that need resources, tools, and sustainable funding to scale. The next chapter of this work cannot belong to any single organization alone.
That reality shapes Opportunity 2030.
Opportunity 2030 is CEO’s commitment to building a reentry system that works at scale. By 2030, CEO will more than triple its annual reach—supporting 36,000 people each year through a combination of direct services, partnerships, and systems change. True to our origins, we will continue to prioritize immediate income and employment support in the critical weeks after release. At the same time, we will increasingly focus on strengthening the broader field—supportinghundreds of organizations to access funding, infrastructure, and policy pathways that make reentry services possible nationwide.
As critical supports like SNAP and Medicaid face renewed threats, reentry services are once again at risk. This moment is uncertain, but it is also a generational opportunity. We can protect existing resources while building a stronger, more resilient system that transcends any one organization.
In this next chapter, CEO’s role is not only to deliver services, but to serve as a bridge that connects community-based organizations to public funding, employer partnerships, and evidence-backed program models. The future we are building is a national reentry employment network that has never existed before, but is urgently needed now—not only for people returning home from incarceration, but for the health, safety, and economic vitality of our communities.
I’ve had the honor of leading CEO for the past decade. Anyone leading a nonprofit these days is tempted by despair, and I would be lying if I said I’ve never felt that pull. The north star for me—and, I believe, for everyone at CEO—is our participants. So many of the people who have gone through our program are building their futures while advocating for those coming home after them. I think of Demetrius, a former participant, who led advocacy efforts that resulted in visitation reform in Colorado. I think of Will, a colleague and justice-impacted person, who sat beside me and testified before Congress. What is so often overlooked in people returning home is their desire to better this system and create real opportunity for everyone coming home.
Let us continue to lead with justice-impacted voices at the forefront and trust their vision for a more just reentry system. After thirty years, the lesson is clear: when we invest in people, opportunity grows. And when opportunity grows, everyone benefits.
