View a WFAA Channel 8 feature on PEP here.

View an NBC Nightly News feature on PEP here. 

Last year, Cornerstone welcomed to its pulpit a young business executive who presented an extraordinary proposal to our congregation. Catherine Rohr, former venture capitalist and private equity investor, now the founder and Executive Director of Prison Entrepreneurship, introduced the vision and mission of her creation.

Imagine, Rohr said, a successful entrepreneur, CEO of a multimillion-dollar business, with a loyal customer base and high demand that earns a 90-percent profit margin. Imagine the same man serving nineteen years in prison because his product is crack-cocaine. After all that time, with parole suddenly ahead, he faces the question of how to survive on the outside. It’s hard to get anywhere in life when you are now known only as an ‘ex-con’.  With drug-trafficking the only business he knows, the chances of him returning to that business are great.

Like many in his position, this businessman has an innate ability to get the job done.  Entrepreneurial by nature, he is passionate, willing to take chances, has an incredible ability to find resources, and understands prime business concepts of competition, profitability, risk management and the importance of proprietary sales channels. If he chooses to employ these skills as a negative force in society, he can be deadly.

Rohr presented startling statistics that hit close to home: Dallas has the highest crime rate in Texas, and one of the highest in the U.S., surpassing even New York and Chicago. By law, when prisoners are paroled in Texas they are released in the county in which they were charged. Of the more than 600,000 State and Federal prisoners released each year in the U.S., fully two-thirds return to prison in two to three years.

Efforts are made to address the rate of prison return (known as "recidivism"), but very few are successful.  Prison ministries may focus on "saving" inmates, but are largely unable to help them create a productive life in society after they are released.

What if inmates about to be paroled are given an opportunity to take their self-employment and entrepreneurial skills and use them to develop lawful and genuine business opportunities?  Prison Entrepreneurship, designed “to stimulate positive life transformation for executives and inmates, uniting them through entrepreneurial passion, education and mentoring”, is a possible answer to that question.  PEP is a non-profit Christ-centered organization that constructively redirects inmates’ talents by equipping them with value-based entrepreneurial training, thereby enabling them to productively re-enter society.

"Here are guys who are already seasoned entrepreneurs", Rohr said. "Teaching them a passion for work is not something we have to do.  What we do is show them how to make it legitimate."

Rohr founded PEP after she visited a prison facility in Texas and felt called to the work of inspiring and providing real opportunities to men on whom it seems the rest of the world has given up. She asked Cornerstone to join her in that work. The response from our congregation at that time was great, and in the three years of its existence, the program has grown beyond any of our imaginations and been successful in that regard many times over.

Starting with a 23-page application, multiple interviews, and a demonstrated ambition and sense of self-purpose, inmates who are accepted into the program participate in an in-prison Business Plan Competition for which inmates create comprehensive business plans and present concepts to judging panels of nationwide executives.  After they graduate that program, complete with a cap-and-gown ceremony, many of the former inmates are paired with an executive mentor and enroll in the Entrepreneurship School created by Rohr, staffed by business executives who hear about the program and volunteer to teach based on their own personal knowledge and experience.

Bill White, current mayor of Highland Park, and a long-time member of HPUMC and attendee of Cornerstone, said that when he heard Rohr speak in Cornerstone he felt called to be a part of the program.  After a year’s involvement with the program, which includes going into the prison unit twice and currently serving on the Advisory Board for PEP in Dallas, White reflects on the emotion behind volunteering for a program like this. “I certainly felt inadequate to be involved, but I believe when God calls you to come do something, go and do it, and He will give you the tools to do it well,” he said.  White is also going to teach a class for recent graduates in September 2007.

With volunteers like White and his son Stephen, PEP’s success is evident. Through 2006, PEP has nearly 300 graduates of the in-prison program, and not one of the participants who have remained active have returned to prison, and only six have done so after removal from the program.  Additionally, their participant employment rate has remained consistently north of 93%, an amazing number for the employment rate of ‘ex-cons’.  Connected with MBA programs at Harvard, Stanford, Cal-Berkeley, University of Texas at Austin, Rice University, the University of Dallas and Texas A&M University, PEP has been able to engage the nation’s top business and academic talent by creating and combining high-impact service opportunities with business strategy and development.

Its success has received national attention. The program’s innovative work has received coverage on NBC Nightly News and in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal and Entrepreneur Magazine.

After a year of remarkable growth and success, Catherine Rohr has come back to Cornerstone, to ask our congregation to support a program that has made such progress in one of the most overlooked areas of our society.  Bill White remarks, "It’s been a wonderful experience for me, and one that I ought to be doing. I encourage anyone who feels moved to become involved to do so. The Bible is full of references to visiting prisoners. This program takes it a few steps further to help ensure their well-being once they are released. Prison Entrepreneurship does a wonderful job in that regard."