Ten months ago, Kaamilya Finley was presented with an ultimatum: She could either stay in her home, where she was living after returning from a period of incarceration; or she could take part in an education and internship program at Georgetown called Pivot, where she’d just found out she got accepted.

“[I was given a choice] to stay in the home I was living or do the program, but not both,” Finley said last week, speaking in front of Pivot’s graduating class of 2021 over Zoom. She chose Pivot, an education and internship program for people returning to D.C. from incarceration run through Georgetown’s McDonough School of Business. She slept on couches and stayed in a transitional home while pursuing her studies and internship.

“I did it,” Finley said at the graduation. “I’ve been sober for over two years. I’m constantly in my children’s lives. I started as an intern and ended up with my offer letter as an employee for the Deloitte consulting firm. I am no longer homeless; I am actually paying rent. I’ve created a website that will change lives for returning citizens.”

The Pivot Program, which started in 2018, is a full-time, 10-month experience that includes both business classes and internships with businesses and nonprofits; its goal is to offer both academic rigor and training in entrepreneurship. Graduates have gone on to start their own businesses and accept full-time positions at firms ranging from architectural design to consulting.

And this year’s cohort of the program had the added challenges of the pandemic. They only gathered officially in person twice: Once when students were picking up their laptops, and another time for an ice cream social this spring. Still, this year’s fellows say they managed to form deep relationships anyway—and they emerged from a politically tumultuous year with true clarity and conviction about their next steps in life.

“It’s so weird, because even though we just saw each other on a screen, it almost was like the bonds were stronger, because we found other ways to connect,” said David Schultz, who graduated from the Pivot Program last week . “Whether it be a few of us [meeting] socially distanced outside of the group, reaching out to have FaceTimes, phones, we’d set up our own Zoom meetings. We just found such creative ways.”

Last week’s graduation was particularly poetic for Schultz, because it also marked exactly one year since his release from prison. Schultz was incarcerated for about five years and successfully petitioned for early release last June, during an outbreak of the coronavirus at the federal prison in Ohio where he was being held.

During the Pivot Program, Schultz took classes ranging from business writing to accounting to entrepreneurship and negotiation. He worked with a team on a design thinking project; they came up with a concept for a personalized app to help people coming home from incarceration navigate access to services. Through the program, he was connected with an internship at the Frederick Douglass Project for Justice, working to connect people in prison with people on the outside. Like the rest of the fellows, he received a stipend from D.C.’s Department of Employment Services throughout the program.

Schultz is the son of two educators, and he had participated in higher education in several other settings before; He had studied at Northern Virginia Community College, and finished a certification in paralegal studies through Adams State University while he was in prison (He told DCist/WAMU he used those skills to help as many as 200 people start the process of petitioning for compassionate release while he was incarcerated).

But, Schultz said, “the Pivot program is different because … they put you in this network where you’re guaranteed to succeed. Not only do they give you the tools and teach you, but they’ll coach you just with life issues that you might be having.”

Schultz said that he called his advisor to talk through personal issues, and she would pick up the phone, even on weekends.

Schultz said he also developed another key relationship with Finley, his fellow cohort member.

“I know that we’re like family,” said Schultz. “We’ve just really been a support system for each other through the whole program … that relationship has just been a real blessing and a strength.”

Jeanine Turner, a Georgetown professor who teaches in the Communication, Culture, and Technology department and the business school, was one of the Pivot Program’s faculty members this year. During her speech at last week’s ceremony, she spoke through tears about what her relationships with students meant—and what they had gone through.

“Several students had to deal with the challenge of homelessness while simultaneously navigating school and getting their homework in each week,” said Turner. “The most recent group of graduates has to manage the challenge of a pandemic, a very divisive political year, and online classes. On January 6, my first day with the students, we were online at 4 o’clock while the Capitol was under attack, and the fellows were engaged and contributing in a thoughtful way to our conversation about conflict and the danger of stereotypes and the tragedy that can come from misunderstanding.”

Alyssa Lovegrove, the Pivot’s academic director, says the program is designed to avoid the pitfalls of framing the work of education as some kind of “charity”—a word that is often associated with a sense of powerlessness on the behalf of the recipient.

“It’s really about capacity building,” says Lovegrove. “And that is what we can do as a university. That’s the one thing we know—how to develop people, right?”

But even though the capacity of the fellows is apparent, Lovegrove says a big part of her job is

conveying that to potential employers, and trying to expand second chance hiring in the region. She says initially, some employers they approach are reluctant—and others see hiring formerly incarcerated employees as a kind of “charity,” too. But those employers who actually hire formerly incarcerated employees start to see the effort as something completely different.

“Employers who actually do it say … it actually enhances the quality of the workplace,” says Lovegrove. “It conveys to everyone in the organization that the people in the organization really matter, and once you create that sort of culture … everybody’s morale and productivity improves.”

Schultz will finish his internship with the Frederick Douglass Project for Justice in August. He said the political climate he returned to from prison, in combination with the Pivot Program, has given him clarity as he decided what he wanted to do next: stay in the nonprofit world, working to help other formerly incarcerated people navigate their returns home.

“I really want to be able to be there and represent—for not only returning citizens like myself, but as an African-American and a Caucasian individual, since I am biracial,” said Schultz. “It really has just really strengthened my passion for wanting to help people and just try to create a different narrative.”