In 1997, Michelle Cirocco never dreamed she’d one day have two C-suite titles and be mentoring and inspiring women to make the most of challenging circumstances. That’s because that year, she was sentenced to a seven-year prison term for selling drugs.

“I was a girl with a misguided entrepreneurial spirit,” she says. “But while I was in prison, I heard about Televerde, an Arizona company that might offer a job while you’re incarcerated and might then offer you a job with the corporate office when you got out of prison.”

Founded in 1994, Televerde is a B2B sales and marketing solutions company offering high-tech products and services. The company’s founders didn’t think incarcerated women were being given the same opportunities as incarcerated men to rebuild their lives, so they developed a prison-to-workforce program that prepares women for successful business careers through telemarketing centers established on prison campuses.

Among the 4,000 women who have gone through the company’s programs over the past 30 years, the recidivism rate is just 5.4%. And in the past four years, 725 women have participated in Televerde programs. Of those, 455 have been released from prison and none have returned.

Cirocco knows firsthand how successful the company is in providing vital help for incarcerated women to transition back into the community. In 1999, she got hired to work in a call center and when she was released from prison in 2002, she was offered a job as a sales executive. Including her work at the call center while still in prison, she’s now been with the company for 25 years.

Today, Cirocco is Televerde’s chief impact officer and CEO of the Televerde Foundation, which she created in March 2020. As the nonprofit arm of the company, the foundation is committed to “providing more women with the opportunity to be able to come out of prison better than they were when they went in,” she says.

The women are taught career skills in a six-month, full-time workforce development program called Career PATHS (Prepare, Achieve and Transform for Healthy Success). They learn business fundamentals, customer service, project management and other critical skills, all while earning college credit through Arizona State University.

Each year, about 200 women in Arizona will either work in the call centers or complete the Career PATHS program, which is paired with a re-entry program that focuses on the women’s personal development, as well.

“[The program offers] resources for job placement and provides support and services that can help the women get good jobs when they’re released. It will help them stay out of prison forever,” says Cirocco, whose own life has been transformed.

“The experience really changed the trajectory of my life and the lives of my family and children,” she continues. “That’s what the Televerde experience is about for the thousands of women who have worked with the organization. That’s the basis on which I’ve built the foundation.”

Ashlee Liberty was part of the first cohort of women who completed the Career PATHS program. But for Liberty, it wasn’t a straight line to completion of the program and release from prison.

“I interviewed for the program because I knew I needed experience with interviewing,” she says. “It was important because I was about to be released.”

Despite quitting on the first day, Liberty recalls seeing Cirocco interacting with other prisoners, and she felt inspired to complete the program. “Michelle gave me another chance,” she says. “She’s really been my hero, my guidance and my inspiration.”

But Liberty didn’t feel ready to be released from prison on her parole date. She had been incarcerated for more than eight years of her 10-year sentence when she first connected with the Televerde Foundation.

“I was so focused on surviving my incarceration that I lost track of when my release was coming,” she says. “One day, I pitched the idea to Michelle of not taking parole and being hired at the call center.”

Liberty stayed in prison for the entire length of her sentence, working at the call center at the prison to earn money to help her when she did get released. On Valentine’s Day in 2023 she left prison and today, she is now the program specialist for the foundation, overseeing the PATHS and the re-entry programs.

“I feel like I would not have become the person I am today without having gone through the experience of being incarcerated,” Liberty says. “Life is rebuilding itself.”

Like Cirocco, Liberty wants people to know her story. For Cirocco, sharing her own story has made a huge difference in being able to help others. “I told my story for the very first time in 2018. I realized that every time I did, I enabled someone else to tell their own truth and to break stigmas.”