I first met Dr. William Arnold, Director of the Tennessee Office of Reentry (TOOR), in 2023 at a second chance convening in Tennessee. The more I spoke with Dr. Arnold, the more impressed I was by the work his team was doing to connect justice-impacted Tennesseans with skills training opportunities and employment. And I was especially impressed to learn that when Tennessee launched TOOR in 2021, it was intentionally housed within the Tennessee Department of Labor and Workforce Development (TDLWD), recognizing the importance finding meaningful work has on supporting an individual’s reintegration back to their community following incarceration.
For the past year, the TDLWD TOOR team and NRWC have been partnering to strengthen Tennessee’s reentry workforce ecosystem to expand fair chance hiring statewide. The approach is four tiered. An effective fair chance hiring initiative needs to raise awareness of the benefits of fair chance hiring with employers and the broader community, identify community resources that can be used to address employment barriers, build capacity within the ecosystem to connect the justice-impacted talent pipeline to employment, and support continuous learning & sustainability to promote lasting change.
To support this effort, TDLWD TOOR is building a community of practice (CoP) of dedicated partners connected to reentry workforce efforts across the state. Communities of Practice are “groups of people who share a concern or a passion for something they do and learn how to do it better as they interact regularly”, as defined by Dr. Jeane Lave and Dr. Etienne Wenger. The shared passion I’ve seen from Dr. Arnold, the TDLWD TOOR team, and their partners in the volunteer state is exactly what’s needed to move fair chance hiring forward and get closer to the vision of economic justice for all community members, criminal record or not.
The NRWC Ecosystem Building Model
