Darden Program That Teaches Inmates Business Skills Goes National

Allison Kroboth was close to finishing a 15-year-sentence at the Fluvanna Correctional Center for Women in Troy, Virginia when she first heard about a business class taught by MBAs from the University of Virginia’s Darden School of Business. She’d completed her GED while in prison and earned an associate’s degree but was eager for more education as her release date neared. She signed up for the year-long class in 2016, learning about business and entrepreneurship through Darden’s well-known Socratic case method approach, which encourages collaborative classroom discussion about the topic being taught.

The class, part of Darden’s Reentry Education Program (PREP), changed the trajectory of her life. Eager for more, she took the two other classes offered by PREP – Foundations in Business and Financial Capability – before she was released in July of 2018.  While she didn’t have a desire to start her own business when she got out, she knew that learning the fundamentals of business and how to become an entrepreneur would help make the transition back into the workforce easier. Most importantly, it helped her find her voice, she says.

“What we did in the classroom gives you the confidence to speak up, to say what you think and be able to back up your argument with actual facts,” says Kroboth, who now works as a mentor program coordinator and developer for Resilience Education, the nonprofit which oversees Darden’s PREP program and provides education programs to overlooked populations. “Not only are you learning the material itself, but the Socratic method was impactful for a person who is incarcerated. In prison, you don’t have a voice, nobody ever asks your opinion and you’re not asked to argue your point.”

DEMAND GROWS FOR BUSINESS EDUCATION IN PRISONS

Kroboth is one of more than 1,000 graduates who have taken a class through Resilience Education, a nonprofit which brings business education to the incarcerated population through partnerships with top business schools in the U.S. The program was started at Darden in 2011 after Professor Greg Fairchild received a letter from an incarcerated man nearing the end of his decades-long prison sentence who wanted to start his own business but lacked the necessary skills to write a business plan. His request for help inspired Fairchild to bring four of his MBAs to a men’s correctional facility for a pilot to teach an entrepreneurship class. It was the birth of Darden’s PREP program, and two years later, Fairchild along with his wife, Tierney Fairchild, decided to expand the program’s reach, co-founding Resilience Education in 2013.

In recent years, Resilience has expanded its reach beyond Darden, and has brought its expertise in delivering its courses and resources to Columbia Business School and the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton Business School. MBA students from those schools now work with prison populations in New York and Pennsylvania, and there are now over 550 MBA student instructors who have worked with inmates and more than 1000 incarcerated graduates from Resilience’s program, according to data from Resilience’s website.

NEW GRANT ALLOWS RESILIENCE TO PARTNER WITH MORE B-SCHOOLS

Now, a recent $2.5 million grant from the Ascendium Education Group will allow Resilience to take its program nationwide and have a wider reach at business schools across the country by helping other professors or administrators start similar programs at their schools. The funds will expand the resources Resilience offers its post-incarcerated population through mentoring programs and other workshops aimed at career readiness and financial literacy. In addition, Resilience plans to use the grant to grow its newly-formed Fair Chance Business Education Consortium, a group of business schools that included Darden, Wharton, Columbia and Georgetown’s McDonough School of Business . These schools will work together to essentially help redefine the role the business community can play in helping the incarcerated prison population, Fairchild says. In 2024, Darden will host the 2025 Business Roundtable’s third annual Business Case for Second Chance Employment conference, where the Fair Chance Business Education Consortium will also convene.

“We need to think about this problem as a national issue,” says Tierney Fairchild, the executive director of Resilience Education. “The grant lets us bring a coalition of schools and people together to really think more deeply about how we can understand data, research, innovation and programming and how eventually we can change company’s hiring practices for this population.”

 

MENTOR COMMUNITY OF MBA ALUMS HELPS FORMER INMATES FIND JOBS

Indeed, one important part of Resilience’s program has been helping grow a robust alumni population of MBA instructors who are eager to help graduates get back on their feet after they finish their prison sentences. The program has become extremely popular at Darden, with 401 Darden MBAs who have been involved in the program since its inception. Since 2020, the school has seen an average of 40 second-year MBAs participating each year, with a 36% increase in applications for the 2024-2025 academic year, the school says. The program has become so well-known that there are are some students who have learned about Darden PREP even before coming to the MBA program, with some writing about wanting to do it in their application, Fairchild says.

The impact of the program for students are felt beyond just their MBA years. Of the Darden MBAs who teach in the PREP program, 97 percent say they want to be an advocate or an ambassador for formerly incarcerated individual looking to find better jobs and strive for upward economic mobility, Fairchild notes.

MBA ALUMS CONTINUE TO GIVE BACK AFTER GRADUATION

To meet that need, the Resilient Professional Community (RPC) was formed in 2022, offering MBA students who have taught in the program, along with employee partners, a way to continue to give back to those who have completed Resilience’s courses, Fairchild says. There are now 200 mentors in Resilience’s community, many of whom are former MBA instructors from Darden’s PREP program who now work at leading finance and tech companies. This mentor community helps those who have recently left correctional centers with career advice as they explore the job market. For example, Resilience hosted a panel recently on different jobs roles that formers inmates can have in the technology industry.

“The most important thing that we can do is think about plugging people into the resources, connections and opportunities our MBA students have when they come out,” Fairchild says. “Now that our MBAs who have taught at our programs are at other employers, they can really serve as ambassadors and allies to this population.”

 A DIFFERENT APPROACH FROM TYPICAL REENTRY PROGRAMS

Indeed, one of the things that makes Resilience’s program so powerful is its ability to connect its graduates with mentors that can help them find jobs that are not just standard minimum wage jobs, but ones in which they can have better long-term prospects and economic mobility, says Resilience’s Kroboth, who runs Resilience’s mentoring program. It is one of the things that differentiates Resilience from typical reentry program for those who have been incarcerated and are trying to reenter society and find a job, she says. For example, she recently connected a former inmate who was interested in getting a joint law and MBA degree with a mentor from Resilience’s mentor community who had pursued that path and could give them advice on the process and how to apply.

“Most reentry programs will show you very basic skills, and then as soon as you have any job, they will check the box and say, ‘Ok this person is set,’” Kroboth says. “But I think we all know that nobody can survive working at McDonald’s for the rest of their lives or on that wage. They have very limited and narrow ideas of what jobs we should be going after, whereas at Resilience, we ask “What do you want to do and let’s look to see if we and make that happen.’”

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