From The Field

CEO is celebrating the women leaders who make our work possible. For 14 years Elizabeth Balfour has served on CEO’s board of directors. We asked Elizabeth to share her reflections on Women’s History Month and her leadership at CEO.

It’s not unusual for CEO employees to be highlighted for their hard work by supervisors, coworkers, and family. But it is a special occasion for their efforts to be acknowledged by a professional sports team.

Dozens of people gathered last week for a health fair in Solano County, California. The fair was hosted by the Center for Employment Opportunities (CEO) and provided CEO participants and other formerly incarcerated individuals in the local community with access to free health screenings, wellness information, and food.

The city should work with unions and re-entry providers to create work opportunities that facilitate and track long-term success. Across New York City, the public safety crisis is most acutely seen and felt in low-income communities of color. Indeed, gun violence is ravaging neighborhoods already hit hardest by COVID-19, mass incarceration, unemployment, and low-wage work.

At CEO, we have a vision that each person returning home from incarceration will have access to a quality job and economic mobility. Even though more than 600,000 individuals return home from incarceration each year, they are largely unable to access our country’s public workforce system and the support needed to focus on employment training during reentry. This past winter, CEO invited federal lawmakers to 9 of our sites to hear directly from justice-impacted experts on needed changes to law to make employment training better.

Imagine what it is like to look for work with a past felony conviction. Every time you are applying for a job, the burden of your conviction weighs on you. You worry about having to explain your conviction to a hiring manager -- a person that doesn’t know you. Even if you are qualified for a job, you might find it hard to get past the initial application process, where you may have to check a box indicating you have a past conviction, and you know deep inside that you won’t get a call back.