Pivot in the Financial Times

Posted in News

The business schools taking teaching into prisons


Devaughan Bell, a former inmate, hopes to set up his own business © Greg Kahn/FT

Like many business school students, DeVaughan Bell is doggedly working through classes on improved financial analysis and clearer communication, and hopes to start his own company in the future. But he has a less conventional past than most of his peers.

“I was on the streets from age 13, convicted of my first felony at 18 and spent 40 per cent of my adult life incarcerated,” he says. “When I was locked up for the third time in 2015, I told myself that no matter what happened I never wanted to be in that situation again.”

He is a participant in Pivot, a programme launched this year by the McDonough School of Business at Georgetown in Washington DC — part of a growing trend to train people who are in prison or have been recently released with specific business skills to help them find work or create their own companies.

Read more in the Financial Times, or click here to read the article in PDF format.