206 | Maximizing Our Impact on the Criminal Justice System with Karen Lee
Our guest on the pod this week is Karen Lee. Karen is the CEO of Pioneer Human Services, a non-profit social enterprise in Washington State that serves individuals released from prison or jail, and those in recovery, who are in need of treatment, housing, job skills training and employment
Resources mentioned in this episode:
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Prison Reform Nonprofit Interview with Karen Lee
SPEAKERS
Karen Lee, Paul Zelizer
Paul Zelizer 00:02
This is Paul Zelizer, and welcome to another episode of The Awarepreneurs podcast. This podcast is all about the intersection of three things, conscious business, social impact, and awareness practices. Each episode, I do a deep dive interview with a thought leader in this intersection. Someone who has market tested experience is already transforming many. Before I introduce today's guests and our topic, I have one request. If you could go over to Apple podcasts or whatever app you're listening to this show on and hit the subscribe button and do a review, it helps tremendously. Thanks for considering. Today, I'm thrilled to introduce you to Karen Lee. And our topic is maximizing our impact on the criminal justice system. Karen is the CEO of Pioneer Human Services, a nonprofit social enterprise in the Washington State area that serves individuals released from prison or jail, and those in recovery, who are in need of treatment, housing, job skills, training, and employment. Karen, welcome to the show. Thank you, I'm so glad to be here. But you are doing some fabulous work. And this is a really, really, really important topic and one that's close to my heart as somebody who did 15 year career in community mental health before I, you know, I went from social worker, basically to social entrepreneur, and I saw a lot of the school to prison pipeline, and all the kinds of issues we're going to talk about today, up close and personal, I saw how our criminal justice system is tearing families and communities apart. And I'm so grateful to be sharing your work with our listeners.
Karen Lee 01:37
Thank you.
Paul Zelizer 01:39
Before we get into the specifics of what you do, were called Awarepreneurs, Karen. And one of the ways we like to get to know somebody is to ask you about a wellness or resiliency practice that you personally use to resource yourself for this really important, but not always very easy work.
Karen Lee 01:57
Certainly, Paul, you know, wellness is really important. And, and, and we have to be well ourselves to be able to, to do this work with a kind heart. So for me, my wellness practice, it's actually not meditation or yoga. Actually, wellness, for me is all about being prepared. I find that being prepared for the day just lowers my stress level. So I'm not rushing from thing to thing to thing. And you're, it's just an awful feeling when you know, you've just got a limited amount of time to get something done, and you don't have enough time to do it. So the biggest bonus practice that I really have is, is making sure that when I face the day, I'm fully prepared to face that day. So for example, I knew I had a podcast with you. today. We're in the Pacific Northwest here. So last night, before I went to bed, I started thinking about the podcasts, I had been thinking about how, you know what time I wanted to wake up what I wanted to do in the morning, you know what I wanted to wear, I like to always look professional and podcasts, whether or not they're taped. And so that as I'm going through the day, I feel like I've already I'm kind of prepared for whatever it is I have every day. So I find that when I set my day up like that, it's gonna be a great day. You know, if I make up my bed, I know it sounds like a small thing. But my bed is made today I thought about this podcast last night, I thought about all the other appointments that I had today and what I needed to get done today. And I was so prepared for everything had such a good setup last night. I know today is going to just be a wonderful day. Conversely, on days when I set up or I get or I am I take those things for granted. You know in the morning I decide Oh, I want to read the paper for two hours and they look up and I I'm not where I need to be. Those end up being stressful days for me. So that's the wellness practice that you know that that I really like I find I find it helps me in my life more than yoga which I also do. long winded answer.
Paul Zelizer 04:51
That's a great answer. I don't think anybody's ever framed it that way before what a great you know, I know my one of my least favorite experiences feeling Like I'm trying to catch up with my day, you know, oh, wait, I gotta go to this. And then I gotta go to that, oh, wow, I'm late for this, what a miserable feeling that
Karen Lee 05:08
that is. And that happens more than you like. And in one of the things that one of the blessings I have COVID has been the day, because there's not as much travel from place to place to place. So it's really allowed me to think about how I want my days to be spent. And as we start to visit people and incorporate travel and live visits, and Gosh, maybe even handshake and face to face meetings, one of the things that I would like to keep is this approach that I've started as a way of self improvement of looking at my day, and make and making sure that it's manageable.
Paul Zelizer 05:57
So what a great that
Karen Lee 05:59
is, I just find that to be the biggest stress reliever I have that that I can do.
Paul Zelizer 06:07
Great answer. So your background, Karen, it's it's it's an interesting background and includes West Point and a law degree, like you've been in this role as CEO, pioneer human services for like 11 plus years now. But give us just like, what's the quick version of your origin story that somebody gets a little background professionally, who is Karen, you were going to put a pin on the map that started to kind of orient you in the direction or some skill sets you learned and experiences you had that led to this passion and this seat that you've now been in in a long time.
Karen Lee 06:48
Since you've read my background, I won't go into the impact of the United States Military Academy at West Point, because going to an academy impacts just everything about your life. I think I'll go back to when I was a elementary school youngster, I was a tomboy. In the early 70s, and a tomboy to a parent, a set of parents that wanted a young lady, they got me. So I always felt that things weren't quite fair. For me, first of all, because I wanted to, to do things that only boys could do, I wanted to play football. I wanted to get be a Boy Scout, I just wanted to just do some of the things that boys could do. And I didn't want to have to wear a dress every day. And, and then that was compounded by many times being the only black student in an all white school. And then in, I wanted to be like everybody else. So I felt like life wasn't fair to me earlier because of my race and because of my gender. And as I grew and became, you know, a young adult t grew into my teen years, and and then into my college years, that's the one thing that I I wanted was this sense of parity, that I could be the same thing that other people could be by virtue of their birth. And then, after my time in the army, I realized I wasn't the only person that suffered from a society that valued other races or other genders more than mine. And in my mind, I wanted that fairness, not just for me, but for everyone. Right. And then as I became even older, I've that sense of of the world and the United States in particular should be fair is still with me today even more. And I tried to exercise that idea. By always being in a profession where you're bringing opportunity to someone that wants it, someone that deserves it, someone just because they're because they are born in this country that we live in. They are deserving of the same opportunity of it as everyone else. So And hopefully that's a little bit about me as a person that aligns with what you've read about me on our website.
Paul Zelizer 10:10
Thanks for that, Karen. So along the way you landed on the lever point you're going to focus on and like I said, You've been in the CEO role for 11 years now, is the criminal justice system. As somebody who's thought a lot about the criminal justice system, we're gonna talk about maximizing the impact in just a second. But just like, if you were gonna sketch out maybe the top three issues from your perspective, Karen, when you look at our criminal justice system, and, you know, let's talk about the US criminal justice system. There's similar issues around the world, we do have worldwide listeners, but you're, you're you're focused in Washington state in the US. So let's let's stay in the US, if you look at the US criminal justice system, from somebody who's been thinking about this a lot and said, you know, what, the top three issues in our criminal justice system that I want to move the needle on are a, b, and c, what are a, b, and c? That I want to move the needle on? Oh, yeah, you want to make a friend.
Karen Lee 11:17
First of all, 77 million Americans 77 million, have a criminal record. And I think that the population of our country is something like 225,000,070 7 million that have
Paul Zelizer 11:39
been like a quarter of the population 30% of the population, that's
Karen Lee 11:43
right, has a record 40% of the of the people that are incarcerated today. So today, 2.3 million, are locked up in prison or jail. 40% of those are African American, and we are 14% of the population. That's too many. That is simply too many. So when I think about how do you deal with this problem of mass incarceration that is so huge, it's similar to a mountain range. where, you know, where do we attack it, it's a mountain, it's got this strong base, so you can't shoot it at the bottom and expect it to topple over. It's a mountain that's made of granite, so you can't just, you know, take one stick of dynamite and think you're gonna make a change, you know, one little chunk will fall out. But at the same time, we don't want to wait for erosion, to lower that mountain. So, we are going to have to all, I believe, take every tool at our disposal to wear that mountain down as quickly as possible, with dynamite with chisels with hammers, with water with just any, anything that we have available to us, because we are causing damage to the fact that how people end up in jail is through over policing, arresting systemic racism, discretion at the local level. sentencing laws that are huge punitive criminalization of behavioral health issues related to substance use and other challenges. A punitive mindset when it comes to juvenile behavior. And then these they have compounding effects because we have supervision, probation, parole, and violations of supervision, in depth with people being rearrested. So that's kind of the the nugget in the center of our mass incarceration problem. But we also have these these intersecting challenges related to poverty and education, that coincide with what we call in Social Work is anti social behavior. But in other ways, it's it's poor decision making that for certain groups land you in prison and for other groups. Is gets get someone to talking to. It's interesting because at the time that we are making, that we were having this conversation that we were taping this, this podcast, it's during the time of the trial rule relating to George Floyd's death. That trial is going on right now as we speak. And, and George Floyd is representative of many, many, many, many, many, many, many people, black men in particular. And, and how the criminal justice system interacts with them, it's so hard for them to get away. And, and those are the things that I I want to help make, right. So pioneer, interestingly enough pioneer Human Services, the company that I'm honored to work for, tries to address many, many of those root issues. We have an advocacy arm at pioneer that work to to change laws, we have diversion programs from jail, which gives people a place to go when they're in the throes of substance use disorder that can help get them treatment. We have re entry programming and services that help folks that are coming out of prison and jail, that have maybe never had a quality, a quality job. And we help them as they're entering the labor market. We provide housing and other services for individuals who have been discriminated in the in the rental housing market, because they have a criminal record. And people that have criminal record are 10 times more likely than others to be homeless. And, and we believe that everyone has a right to being housed. And services are not effective on someone who is who doesn't know where they're gonna live, from day to day. So a pioneer, those are the things that we, we try to address with the people that we serve and the people that we advocate for. But there's so much more that needs to be done. We, you know, in many ways, if we could just to help open the eyes of the general person in society, to understand that all the people we serve are human. So much could change if, if the hearts and minds of Americans who have not been impacted by the criminal justice system could be open, we would have a place to start.
Paul Zelizer 18:31
One of the things I was really impressed Karen, when I got a pitch from somebody from pioneer, saying, hey, Karen would be a great guest for your podcast, and I took a look and I was like, you're right. One of the things I was really impressed was that multi kind of level the advocacy on the systemic level, you know, sometimes people get really focused and community mental health, for instance, we need to attend to the community mental health and the you know, the mental health, behavioral health to substance abuse issues, etc. And there's no advocacy whatsoever, or somebody will take like a really granular social entrepreneur folks need jobs, right. And we need job training. And there's a social enterprise or like housing first and and one of the things that was really impressed is that to the best of your ability, you're working on those simultaneously. And it is one of the more comprehensive programs I've ever seen. And I've been in this work for a long time. So just a deep bow to what you're doing and pioneer.
Karen Lee 19:32
Thank you. Thank you. It's important. One of the things that our founders noticed early on they this company was started in 1963 by an individual named jack Dalton. He was an attorney who ended up in prison because he had embezzled client funds to support his alcoholism. So he noticed right away that people when they exited, from prison, they really wanted, people really want to work. And they want to turn their lives around, they don't want to go back to jail, they don't want to go back to prison. And, and, and if right away, we can give someone a place to live, treat treatment support, and the job, they'll be on their way. And in 55 years, those three things really haven't haven't changed at their core, we still try to make sure that people have a job. They have, you know, health and their treatment support, and they have a place to live. Now, there's a couple more barriers to getting a job than just having a job, right, there's, you have to, you know, have a job, able to get to your job, you have to, you know, you can have a whole bunch of supervision appointments, you have to, you know, make sure that, you know, you're passing your UAS, and you have to know how to behave when when you get on the job, certainly, you have all of those barriers, but the basics still are in play. And, and, and they're not really different from anyone else in society. Everyone in society needs a place to live, they need, they need to be healthy, and they have to have find a way to support themselves. So why is it different? Why Why do we think that people don't deserve a place to live? Why do we, why do we think that? That their sentence should not be complete when the judge says it's complete? Why are we so judgmental?
Paul Zelizer 21:52
These are great questions, Karen. And if you were gonna advise somebody who's listening to this podcast, and they're saying, this makes a lot of sense. And we don't have a pioneer in our city or our town, we have people who are doing it kind of piecemeal, right? The advocates are doing the advocacy and the mental health folks are trying to piece together the mental health part, and whatever, you know, job support or job development programs they have, like they could scattered and it may not be exactly tailored to somebody who has been incarcerated and is, you know, doesn't want to go back. Anything you can say about what you've learned from doing it in this holistic way to somebody who's saying, that makes a lot of sense. And we don't have a pioneer in my city.
Karen Lee 22:44
So a lot of cities may not have a pioneer. But most cities have a number of nonprofits that all offer the same business line of pioneer, it's just not as holistic. So I would say in those cities, what I would do is make sure that the nonprofits that do that are active in this space, that they set up a strong coalition. Maybe they even set up an overarching organization that they're all part of, with the strong referral network with its own database. And, and just do it from that perspective. So that they're all very, very, very, very linked. So your behavioral health provider has a superhighway of referrals to a housing, a housing provider. And another organization like goodwill, for example, that does job training. In most major cities do have some type of organization that is committed to employing people that are formerly incarcerated. And it's just a matter of finding that organization and linking to it. So you don't have to be set up like pioneer where we're every you know, where all of the major services are in house. One could actually also get a lot of this work done by having just a strong, strong network, maybe even with an executive director, that their whole entire job is to connect all of those services together so that you can bring them to bear appropriately and the people that you serve.
Paul Zelizer 24:50
I'm a huge fan of collaboration. And I think in this situation, it's as or more important than just about any social issue I can imagine. So great, great answer. Every pioneer, he just because we have all the services doesn't mean that we always deliver all the services to everyone, people come to come to pioneer, and they might need one service, or two, or three or four. But we believe in what's called the best science that's available today is based on a principle called risk need and responsivity. And the are in the responsivity is, it's it's like dosage in healthcare, it's you're giving the person the services that they need, when they need them. Not too much, not too little. But what they need when they need them. And, and that can be, it doesn't have to be at a point at a pioneer can be at many different companies. reentry is local, it's it's community by community, person goes to prison or jail, they're going to come back and live in a community. So that's the community where the services have to be delivered. And pioneer, we operate all through the state of Washington. But not every community where we have services have all of the services delivered by pioneer, we have a set of partners. And, and each, and then communities also have personalities, communities have their own culture. And we have to deliver services within the culture of that community, how they like to see progression, and also with with, with the services that we have, and the services that our partners have. So it's very, it's very localized in its in its delivery mechanism. super helpful. Thank you, Karen. In the second part of the show, and just a bit, I want to ask you to unpack pioneer as a social enterprise and get into some of the specific offers. But before we do that, I want to ask you about the advocacy part. In the US, especially in the modern world, in general, we're so individually focused, right? And, you know, those, here's a person and they're coming out of prison, and you know, they need certain things, okay, you work with whatever resources you can, and you keep increasing the collaboration and hopefully get more resources over time. Make sense? Got it. This advocacy part and looking at the cultural context, you started this conversation with her rific, horrific statistics about what's happening. And those are structural things. And who goes to prison? Who's there is not by accident, it's by design, right? And you're doing advocacy work that's looking at some of those larger contextual, cultural issues. Can you talk to us a little bit about how you personally in a pioneer, you think about that advocacy, where
Karen Lee 28:13
advocacy is very important, because any nonprofit can only directly touch a sliver of the individuals that need the services, unless we're government and the service we're offering is universal. as a as a single nonprofit, you can't, you can't touch everyone, you're just not, you're not. You're not big enough, you don't have enough bread. So advocacy is a way that we can at least address the bad laws that are part of that mountain range that I talked about earlier. When sometimes politicians run for office, at every level, whether it could be local, state, federal, and and when they run on a public safety type of platform. They are running a campaign to put people in jail, in prison. And they're appealing to fear. And, and so over the last 100 years we've just had so many of our local elected officials have wanted to be in office so badly that that they're willing to run a fear but a fear based campaign to appeal to a certain segment of voters that they then get an office in them they have to pass a law to show that they are Actually, we're responsive to the people that elected them. And this has happened over and over and over and over again. And this is on top of the, the legacy of, of Jim Crow, and in the period after the Civil War, so it's really, really massive this battle that we fight. And without an advocacy campaign, I think it would be extremely difficult for us to make measurable progress. I'm really proud in the state of Washington, because we are our governor, our legislature just passed a voting rights bill, that is a step in the right direction, it allows people that are in community custody and impartial confinement to vote. So you can be at a halfway house and vote. And that's important. People that go to prison that are incarcerated, are citizens. And so this is a step in the right direction. Hopefully, we'll be able to go back and, and get the voting rights extended to people that are incarcerated. But I will take this step, as a good one. Our supreme or Supreme Court has had a number of decisions in the past year that decriminalize a lot of drug offenses, we've had one decision called the Blake decision that we think and we hope will have a significant impact on our prison population. So I see some, some steps that are occurring in the right direction that would not have occurred without advocacy.
Paul Zelizer 31:57
Thanks for sharing that cared. So let's do this. Let's take a quick break here from our sponsor, and we come back, I want to hear how pioneer works as a social enterprise. You have something, a business, a social enterprise, that's about making the world a better place. And you want it to grow, both in terms of the impact that you're having, the number of people you're helping, and the income that it's bringing in for yourself. And if you have the desire to build a team to grow real company, if you do, I'd like to talk to you about podcasting for a second, let me tell you why. podcast listeners are very special bunch. And in particular, I want to point out three data points from the research that I think might be really interesting to our listeners. The first one is that podcast listeners are what's called early adopters. They're looking for new ideas, and they incorporate if it makes sense, you all try things. You're innovators. Second, podcast listeners are natural leaders, both at work and in our community. We're the kind of folks that people say, you know, Karen, you have great ideas, and you always seem to be on top of what's going on in terms of the community and how we can bring good things into the community. What do you think about blank and the third is a podcast listeners tend to make more money, not just a little bit more, but quite a bit more. You put that together. That's a pretty unique profile. And I guess as listeners, if you think about what that might mean for you and your business, you get a sense of why I'm so appreciative and why I love podcast listeners so much. There's also the medium itself, the average podcast episode is 43 minutes long. Think about that for a minute in this distracted like 13 word meme culture, you have time to go into nuances and the intersections and the depth of what you do not compress it to fit some profile. And you know what Seth Godin calls the attention economy, which is really the attention deficit economy. So when you put together who listens to podcasts, with the medium itself, you have a really significant opportunity for the kind of businesses that you all have. If you'd like some help learning how to leverage podcasting to help your impact business grow, whether you want to be a guest, like Karen has been such an awesome guest today. Or you want to be a host, I have the honor of being the host today, or you want to do both. We're printers as a podcast success team will show you every step of the way, how to go through the technology choices to make sure you sound good. If you want to be a host. How do you get your podcasts on Apple podcasts and Google podcasts and Spotify and all the places? Do you want to be a guest? How do you find good podcasts that are really good fit and have well developed audiences will walk you through every step of the way. It's called the podcast success team and you can find out more at aware printers dot COMM forward slash podcast dash success. And thank you to everybody in the podcast success team who sponsors this podcast. So in the second part of the show, Karen, we'd like to joke about putting on our entrepreneur glasses, right. So as a social enterprise leader, you you, you have this nonprofit social enterprise structure that has a lot of moving parts, it's now to be fair listeners, if you're comparing remember, please be kind to yourself, pioneers been going for 55 years. That's a long time to put some things in place and build relationships. So please be mindful of that. Right. But like, give us a sketch of what are some of the programs? And what are some of the main revenue streams in those programs? If somebody's looking at pioneer as a social enterprise, and wants to just understand what are the moving parts? And how are those parts funded?
Karen Lee 35:57
Certainly, so I'll start out with a little about the size and scope of Pioneer because it is large and impressive. And, and I agree, don't feel bad if your company that you lead is not the same as pioneer, because we have been at this a long time. And, and we're this way at the start. But our our revenue annually, typically is between 90 and $100 million a year. Now, the COVID year of of 2019 threw that off. So that that dropped us down about 10%. But in general, we're going to be right in the 90 to $100 million range. our balance sheet also is going to be at about 100 is at 100 million. And I say that just to give you a sense of the size, the number of employees that work at pioneer ranges from 860 to 1020. And the number of our locations is right now between 40 and 50. And that number just it just fluctuates because you have programs opening and you have programs closing and you have buildings you're buying and you have buildings you're selling, so we've always got something, you know that's fluctuating. And that so that gives you the size and scope. We're in about seven major geographic locations in the state of Washington, Spokane, Washington, it's an Eastern Washington, it's the home of Gonzaga University, for example, that probably 25% of our work is there. Northwest Washington, is another probably another 40% of all of all of our work and employees. And that's on the western side of the state and up to the Canadian border. And then the county we're Seattle sits in this called King County. And the rest of the organization is is the rest of is located in the king King Pierce County area, Seattle metropolitan area. So that's just a rough of where do you know, where do you deliver services? What you know, where do people work the pioneer. We are organized as a social enterprise, as Paul said. So that means that we have a business, a for profit business, we call that pioneer industries. We also have a construction company, pioneer industries construction, and the profits that we generate out of our profit enterprises support the services side of the organization. And then pioneer the services that really need support or housing in our job training functions. So the the enterprise organization and pi pioneer industries, which is the largest enterprise that we have, that is really important to us, because that's where people can work, gain skills and leave us and go work somewhere else or they can work at pioneer and stay at pioneer their entire career. Pioneer industries as an aerospace manufacturing company, we make the escape hatch assemblies in the 737 Boeing aircraft along with a lot of other parts for a lot of other aircraft companies, a little for air for a company called Airbus. We do a little for companies that make smaller airplanes but aerospace manufacturing is is the business niche and we are a machine cleaning company. And so that means that that we cut metal that's used to specification to produce the airplanes that all of you fly in whenever you travel. And, and that's a competitive business, we have to do work there that meet specifications, we have to be better than our competitors. If to keep our customers happy, we have to make sure that all of our workers are certified, that they're skilled, that they're highly skilled technicians and, and that we can end that we maintain all of our certifications. And and we're very, very proud of the work that we do. And, and we're very proud of the jobs that we can offer because those are high skilled, highly paid jobs.
Paul Zelizer 40:54
Let me interrupt, I want to hear about the other part, Carmen. Let me just interrupt real quickly here. And like, let's say Boeing or Airbus, if they're hiring you, how much are they hiring you? Because of your social impact mission? How much are they hiring? Because you do a great job? How much are they, you know, going with PCI, because you're the most affordable like, just give our listeners a little sense. Like, if I'm one of your customers, what might be going on in my head that I say, I'm gonna hire these folks.
Karen Lee 41:26
If you're a customer, for our aerospace company, you may not know that our company has 60% of the employees have are formerly incarcerated, or suffer from substance use disorder, you may not know, we may not use that in the sales pitch. It all depends. The one company that that does care is Boeing. And so about 40% of our Boeing work is through a contract where they are aware of, of our company as a nonprofit manufacturer, but all the other work, it's just straight up. Who's the best person that can deliver value to that company? Right. So our customers really care about quality, and timeliness, and price. Those are the three things and if we we can't deliver the hire, somebody else got it.
Paul Zelizer 42:35
Cool. Thanks for sharing that. And I noticed that when you go on the site, that part that you might refer to a company, it's not needing you're not shouting from the rooftops that your employment force, as you said, in the manufacturing, part of the business 60% of folks who have been incarcerated have history there, that's not the lead story, the lead story is we get a great job done, and we quality control and pricing, etc. So I found that very interesting. And I wanted to just give our listeners not you know, there's different ways people handle this. And in the social entrepreneur space, oftentimes, the companies who make the nose noise about the social entrepreneur, social impact part of the business, get the most media coverage or the most visibility, but it's not always, it's not the only strategy. And it may not even be the best strategy. And here's an organization, at least in this part of the work, listeners, just notice that there's a set of choice to lead with quality, timeliness, and profit and not front and center, the impact part of the story, even though it's deeply baked in to what you're doing. And I just wanted to point that out to our listeners,
Karen Lee 43:48
I'll add some color to that. We're in a, our, our company supplies parts to another company, right? So it's a b2b relationship. So that type of relationship is one where price to mean price reigned supreme. So even if the buyer that hired us to, to produce some parts for them, if our parts are late or they're expensive, then they're not going to be able to explain that to whoever they report to. So when it comes to aerospace manufacturing, or any type of manufacturing, you just don't have, you don't have that flexibility you might have had 20 years ago when competition wasn't so steep. It is all about price. It's all about quality. It's all about timely delivery. Now. We have a company that we do a lot of work with here in the state of Washington, and in the name of that company is called mod pizza and you may have heard of them. They're a great, great company. And we work with them quite a bit. Now they're a company That it's it's a restaurant chain, I believe it's in the fast casual business. And you go there and you put the pizza to eat that you want together, it's modular pizza. They hire a lot of people that have been formerly incarcerated. They are a B to C type of company, business to consumer. So mod pizza has a better chance of being able to tell that they're the consumer, hey, come to my pizza, because you're helping someone. So you or I could go eat there. And we could feel really good about dinner, dinner would taste good. But we'd also feel really good about it. Because we know we're supporting a company that's doing the social good. When your company's b2b, like pioneer, we're we're in manufacturing, we're in construction, traditional industries that are b2b, it's a little bit different, because our customers, they have to hit a budget. And as much as they like us, they still have to hit that budget. So we just have to compete in a highly highly competitive market.
Paul Zelizer 46:13
Thanks for sharing such detailed examples. Karen, this is so helpful to our listeners. And, and I'm thinking of, you know, my brother and sister in law used to live in the greater DC area. And I remember like coming across the dog tag cafe, which as you might imagine, dog tag refers to veteran military and its military, it hires folks who are vets and have had anybody who listens to this podcast know that vets are over represented among many things that we care about as a community here on this podcast, whether it's PTSD, and homelessness and substance abuse, and lots, we really suck at taking care of our veterans, we really suck at it. So anyway, the dog tag Cafe is a cafe in the DC area chain and cafes that explicitly creates a safe environment. It gives work training and other wraparound services to veterans. And I was like, we are going to the dog tag. Right? Like it was just such an fabulous story. And I'd read you know, so that's a B to C like, I took my whole family there because and we had a great meal. The food was awesome, but it was also part of what drew us there. Want to taste the food we we just want to see what is this place like and and how does it feel to be in a culture where there's signs on the wall telling you the story about their impact goals and the culture they create and how they create it. And there's pictures and it's very front and center. But that very much is a customer focused thing. And there's people like me and my family that are like we are going there. Yeah, right like that. Yeah, doing awesome things like we're gonna go spend our money at that kind of business. Right? Exactly. And you feel good, didn't you feel good? The food was the taste of the food. It was the whole it was just a it was an immersion experience of what does it look like to help that kind of find some ground in some sense of community and and mission, after, you know, particularly after combat. You hear so many vets? I used to be in community mental health say like, I don't, I don't feel like my team. And I don't know where my people is. And I don't know what my mission is. And they've created that culture in a food industry company. But it's so much more than just about eating good sandwiches or salads or soups, or whatever it is that's on the menu that day. So yeah, scared. It was like, out it was an exquisite meal that I always remember the food was amazing. But the cultural experience of being there and feeling like as a customer, we were part of helping their impact goals, which I feel highly aligned with inside is my whole family. It was a remarkable experience. Remarkable. Yeah. So since we kind of jumped to the food services part, anything else? So you talked quite extensively about the manufacturing part of pioneer, anything you want to say about the food service, or the construction industry is part of what y'all do?
Karen Lee 49:15
Yeah, the food service and the construction are much, much smaller. The food service that we have, for the most part, it makes meals we serve about 1000 people a day. And we have to have meals to support that we have so many residential programs for our sobering and stabilization and substance use disorder treatment programs. We have some house we have some halfway houses that we provide services to. So that's about 1000 people. And so our food services provide provide the meals. And so that was just a good way for us to just have more employment opportunities. Again, for people that have been formerly in incarcerated, but we don't necessarily do a lot with that too much outside of, of serving ourselves. And our construction business is really, really growing. So, again, not as large as pioneer industries, aerospace, but it's certainly it's on its way. So that's exciting. And plus, because we have so many buildings, we have so many buildings, that our real estate footprint is large, and enables us to also have employment opportunities for people to work at our facilities team and things like that. So we have 700 housing units, for people throughout the state. That translates to a lot of buildings. So we're busy.
Paul Zelizer 50:48
You are busy. Looking ahead, Karen, if you were gonna look ahead, you know, two to five years, like pioneers already doing so much. And you've done so much congratulations. And thank you for unpacking this such a powerful example of a holistic multi pronged, looking at both the big picture issues and really granular like, here's the job. And it's not just flipping burgers, you're like working in aerospace. I mean, it's just mind blowing. And and I'm just so grateful that you're here and sharing with us. And being an example for what our listeners can aspire to. When you look ahead for yourself and for pioneer. So maybe you can answer it on two levels on a personal level. And pioneer what what are you working towards what's on your what's on your vision in the next two to five years?
Karen Lee 51:44
Well, it's so interesting that you asked that, Paul, because we're right in the middle of strategic planning. So the vision that I have for pioneer is, first of all, to be able to more succinctly articulate the value of a life. We change lives every day at pioneer. And I've worked at pioneer for 11 years. And I think that me, our employees, our board members, our supporters and our stakeholders could do a much better job of communicating the value of the work that we do. Most of our programs are extremely effective. For example, we have a job training program that measures recidivism, and, and the recidivism rate for that particular program is less than 5%, less than 5% recidivate. We have and it gives us a sense, like what's the typical recidivism rate when we're talking in the space of incarceration 30 to 50%, depending on how you measure,
Paul Zelizer 53:02
yeah, it's 30 to 50%, or 5%.
Karen Lee 53:06
And we're 5%. And I don't think that we have to be unique, because we apply the best science that's available today, to get to that result, and we think that that can be duplicated. It's just a matter of will a willingness of society to move money from locking people up to helping people into a society that maybe they never felt that they were a part of to begin with. And we have on other programs we measure well being which is how well are you living? Are you How is your health? Do you have transportation? Are you depressed, and and and our well being scores are very, very good. And even our our sobering programs, what we call stabilization or jail avoiding programs where we're diverting people from jail. We have programs where people are 50% more likely to go to housing or residential treatment when they go through one of our sobering and stabilization programs than if they don't. So my vision First of all, is for us to continue to hone our message that treatment and services are humane and they are effective. And that's how you get a productive citizen. And I think we have a ways to go to be able to communicate that message but that message is truth. The next thing is that we want to work on national level advocacy. Because there are so many laws that, that the federal government that the president of this country could sign into law, that would limit the ability of states to make it difficult for citizens to re enter. So that's so a national platform is something that's important, because otherwise, we'll have to go through all these changes a state at a time. And I think that the situation is too, is too dire for that. And my ultimate vision is that for every single person who has ever had an interaction with the justice system, for them to find their way to a happy and healthy, productive life, where they're not judged about their past.
Paul Zelizer 55:53
Beautiful, well, I hope you'll consider being on other podcasts, Karen, because you're fabulous guests and pioneers doing incredibly inspiring work. So thanks for being on the show today. And I could hang out with you all day, but you're a busy woman, and our listeners are busy too. So I wouldn't do that to you. Where we let you go, is there something you were hoping that we'd get to that we haven't yet gotten to about all the incredible things that you're up to? Or is there something you want to leave a really dedicated passionate group of social entrepreneur listeners who maybe you know, are a little earlier on and development in the kind of scale of impact but no less dedicated, and they're trying to figure out how to get to the kind of place that you are currently at as a way to say goodbye?
Karen Lee 56:43
Well, thank you for the opportunity. I really enjoyed talking with you today. It's just, uh, it's, it's it's a pleasure to be able to, you know, to talk about your vision, and thank you for asking me that, to listeners that want to start a social enterprise or grow their social enterprise. I think that you know, talking about it is one way to do that. And, and, and garnering support, and whatever the social cause that you have, I asked you to put a social equity lens on it. And whatever, whatever good you're trying to do in the world. don't restrict it, to people that haven't been incarcerated, open, you're open the goodness that you're delivering to everyone. That would be helping me and I would be forever, forever grateful. So many times I've seen scenes things as, as, as heart wrenching is, as parents of who had been incarcerated can't go visit their children in school. Or they can't go to church. You know, they can't ever teach Sunday school. And, and really, you know, do we have to be that restrictive. So try to open your heart and make sure that you open the goodness that you are putting out in the world, to all people regardless of what's happened to that person in the past. And if you want to learn more about mass incarceration, please come to pioneer Human Services. Look at our website, pioneer Human Services, that org. If we if you go to pioneer human services.org forward slash quiz, you will see our mass incarceration quiz, please take that. Even you know, email me or in and I'll email you back if we have questions. But learn about mass incarceration. address your issue with the social equity lens. And whatever good you're doing in the world, make sure that you make it available to all that's my parting wish for all of you and, and for all the people that I serve. Thank you, Paul.
Paul Zelizer 59:19
Thank you so much for being on the show today. Thank you. So that's all the time we have for today's episode, we'll put links in the show notes to the quiz to the various services we've discussed in the general pioneer site. Please go support their work or learn about what they're doing what a fabulous example of social enterprise and a really granular array that's doing the work with an equity lens. I want to say that we love listeners, suggested topics and guests if there's a topic or a guest that you think would be really good for the show, then go to a where printers comm go to our contact page and you will see the three simple kind of like lenses that we use to kind of like get a sense is this a fit or not? And if you take a look at those and you say, I've got a fabulous guest or we really need to be talking about blank, please please tell us what you're thinking. We love it when our listeners help us find awesome stories to tell and to learn from. So for now, I just want to say thank you so much for listening. Please take really good care of these are very intense times. And thank you for all the positive impact that you're having in our world.