“Our thesis is that the vast majority of people who go to prison or return to prison is because of poverty,” says Jason Wang, founder and CEO, FreeWorld. “We decided to create an economic development platform that trains and places people with criminal histories into living-wage careers in the trucking industry.”
WorkingNation sat down with Wang at JFF Horizons in New Orleans.
Wang says participants can move from application to earning their CDL in as little as 45 days.
“We’ve had approximately 6,000 people over the past three years join our program all across the nation. We currently operate in eight states in 22 cities,” says Wang. “We have a less than 5% recidivism rate. Our graduates earn anywhere between $60-to-100,000 within their first year alone.”
Wang – who has his own incarceration history – explains, “We chose the trucking industry to change the system through scale. In the trucking industry, there are four million people all across the nation that are in CDL careers and that there is a massive driver shortage of about 80-to-100,000 drivers just this year alone. And that will continue over the next couple of years. We’re essentially taking a social need – connecting people with criminal histories to a market need, a trucking industry that is desperate for drivers.”
Learn more about FreeWorld.
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Dana Beth Ardi, PhD, Executive Committee, is a thought leader and expert in the fields of executive search, talent management, organizational design, assessment, leadership and coaching. As an innovator in the human capital movement, Ardi creates enhanced value in companies by matching the most sought after talent with the best opportunities. Ardi coaches boards and investors on the art and science of building high caliber management teams. She provides them with the necessary skills to seek out and attract top-level management, to design the ideal organizational architectures and to deploy people against strategy. Ardi unearths the way a business works and the most effective way for people to work in them.
Ardi is an experienced business executive and senior consultant who leverages business organizational transformation through talent strategies. She uses her knowledge and experience to develop talent strategies to enhance revenue and profit contributions. She has a deep expertise in change management and organizational effectiveness and has designed and built high performance cultures. Ardi has significant experience in mergers, acquisitions, divestitures, IPO’s and turnarounds.
Ardi is an expert on the multi-generational workforce. She understands the four intersecting generations of workers coming together in contemporary companies, each with their own mindsets, leadership and communications styles, values and motivations. Ardi is sought after to assist companies manage and thrive by bringing the generations together. Her book, Fall of the Alphas: How Beta Leaders Win Through Connection, Collaboration and Influence, will be published by St. Martin’s Press. The book reflects Ardi’s deep expertise in understanding organizations and our changing society. It focuses on building a winning culture, how companies must grow and evolve, and how talent influences and shapes communities of work. This is what she has coined “Corporate Anthropology.” It is a playbook on how modern companies must meet challenges – culturally, globally, digitally, across genders and generations.
Ardi is currently the Managing Director and Founder of Corporate Anthropology Advisors, LLC, a consulting company that provides human capital advisory and innovative solutions to companies building value through people. Corporate Anthropology works with organizations, their cultures, the way they grow and develop, and the people who are responsible for forming their communities of work.
Prior to her position at Corporate Anthropology Advisors, Ardi served as a Partner/Managing Director at the private equity firms CCMP Capital and JPMorgan Partners. She was a partner at Flatiron Partners, a venture capital firm working with early state companies where she pioneered the human capital role within an investment portfolio.
Ardi holds a BS from the State University of New York at Buffalo as well as a Masters degree and PhD from Boston College. She started her career as professor at the Graduate Center at Fordham University in New York.
