Homeless, scared, and lost, Corey Pollard had been out of jail for less than a year when he nearly gave up hope of ever returning to a normal life.

“I had been going to the halfway houses in D.C., hanging around there, and I couldn’t find a job,” he says. “I wanted to go back and do things that I had done in the past—things that were not good, and things that would get me back in prison again.”

Pollard’s situation mirrors thousands across the District, where over 5,000 people are released from prison annually and expected to reenter the workforce, oftentimes without financial or familial support. Despite efforts from city government, 46 percent of ex-offenders in D.C. end up back behind bars each year, falling prey to a cycle of crime and incarceration.

Launched in November of last year, a new program at Georgetown’s McDonough School of Business is trying to make a dent in these statistics, helping formerly incarcerated people not just find employment, but work toward becoming business owners and entrepreneurs themselves.

The Pivot Program chooses up to 20 students per year for a full-time, 10-month program pairing classroom experience and business internships. The program is run through a partnership of the D.C. Department of Employment Services, the Mayor’s Office on Returning Citizen Affairs, and the Department of Commerce’s Minority Business Development Agency, (which awarded the program a $40,000 grant).

Pivot just graduated its first class, and will cycle through a new class yearly. In order to apply, individuals are either referred to the university by personal or professional sources, or they can apply online. Then they’re put through an intensive screening process: Applicants have to be at least 25 years old and D.C. residents with a high school diploma or GED, according to requirements posted on the program website. Up to 20 individuals can be selected, and they will receive an internship stipend of $600 per week provided by DOES.

“We’re not just an employment readiness program, the District already has a few of those,” says Alyssa Lovegrove, the program’s academic director. (Similar programs include Thrive DC, Women in New Directions, and DOES’s outreach services). “We’re really looking for people who can thrive in a challenging academic environment with an entrepreneurial mindset.”

So far, the program is showing some promising results, per staff. Pivot’s internship subsidy ends in August, meaning many of its participants are still working at their initial jobs, but one participant left the program early to pursue a full-time job offer and another is in the midst of salary negotiation, according to program director Joshua Miller. Five other fellows have established six self-made business, with five of those turning a profit.

“We recognized there was this need to formally support incarcerated people and help them achieve their goals when society sets up all of these obstacles in their way,” says Marc Howard, executive director of the Pivot Program and director of the Prisons and Justice Initiative at Georgetown.

During the program, fellows go through months of instruction at both the Georgetown campus and the Georgetown Venture Lab at WeWork White House, where they take a range of classes from basic liberal arts to courses on the fundamentals of business and personal financing, Howard says. After the classwork, fellows choose to be on one of two tracks — incubation for those wish to start their own businesses, and employment for those seeking full-time employment.

All fellows are required to complete an internship, and the program makes use of Georgetown’s massive network of business owners to pair students with opportunities, according to Lovegrove.

“These [business owners] have their own experience and their example to help spread the word to other employers, so it creates these opportunities for the fellows to be considered as permanent hires either at their own internship or outside elsewhere,” Lovegrove says.

Internship possibilities include non-profits, digital marketing firms, and tech-startups. A recent graduate of the program, Olayemi Oljadiji, recently wrapped up her internship as an office administrator at Northern Real Estate Urban Ventures and is now working as a recruiting assistant intern for Defenders of Wildlife.

“This program has been a whirlwind in the best way possible, and a complete 360 from where I thought my life would be,” Olijadiji says.

The program graduated its first cohort of students in May, who all received non-degree certificates in business and entrepreneurship. Among the graduates is Corey Pollard, who recently received a full-time offer from his Pivot internship at Torti Gallas, an architectural design firm.

“[Around the time] I was getting back into my old habits, I ran into someone from DOES, and they told me about this program,” Pollard says. “And you could say the rest is history.”

As a graduate of the program, Pollard, who has long hoped to run his own business, now has an entire network of business owners and entrepreneurs in the District helping him to make some of his business ideas come to life.

“I was incarcerated for five years, and Pivot believed in me,” Pollard says. “It didn’t just give me hope, it didn’t just point me to a job where I could eventually survive, it gave me a goal I know I could maintain and thrive.”

The program has begun the screening process for their second cycle, and interest has grown tremendously from the first round, according to Lovegrove.

“We have so many people coming out of prison and if we systematically exclude all of them, no one wins,” Lovegrove says.

This story has been updated to clarify that Pivot applicants don’t have to be referred to the program, but can also apply online through the website.