When Leslie Stevens turned 62, she decided it was time to figure out the next chapter, get out of her comfort zone and see what was possible. For forty years, Leslie was a marketing communications strategist and ran a successful PR agency representing Fortune 500 companies and startups. She loved building brands, developing exciting campaigns and winning awards, but it was time for a new beginning.
A few friends mentioned the Advanced Leadership Initiative (ALI) program at Harvard as a great opportunity to learn and grow and she applied. She was accepted into the class of 2023 and moved to Cambridge full time as a student. There was a lot of trepidation. The last time she was in school was at Princeton in the 1980s. Harvard was an intoxicating experience with a variety of courses at all the schools (HBS, HKS, HLS, Divinity, Education, Design and Harvard College). There were lectures, lunch and learns and seminars on every topic with access to professors and brilliant thinkers. She wrote papers, was “cold-called” in class and studied. Her brain was on fire!
Essential to the ALI program and accessing all that Harvard has to offer is to develop a project with purpose at its core. The idea is that leaders were successful in their first chapter in life and in this next chapter, have the opportunity to define and refine a direction for solving some of the world’s most pressing problems.
Although Leslie was looking at climate change and the perils of social media as her focus, she pivoted to prison reform and criminal justice after taking Professor Marshall Ganz’s class on personal narrative and making change happen. The lightbulb went off. Leslie’s great grandfather, the founder of Southern Steel Company in Texas, invented, patented and manufactured the locking mechanisms for jails and built the majority of prisons in the US in the early 1900s. Prison reform would be her lane.
Leslie got proximate to the problem of recidivism and through MIT, went to Boston South Bay House of Correction every week with 12 MIT “outside” students and 12 women inmates/”inside” students. She learned their trauma and difficulties with re-entry. She met professors, took classes, studied the current state of mass incarceration and knew her calling was to make a difference with the recently released. The second lightbulb went off. With a predicted shortage of workers for the green energy sector, why not train current inmates with solar, wind and battery production skills, so they can have a meaningful, well paying job after leaving prison. Her program – SecondChance Green- received a great response and she set out to make it happen.
Tennessee is her focus for a pilot where Ford is building BlueOval City, an electric vehicle truck manufacturing plant. Leslie has secured a number of prisons with the hope that Ford will train and hire those behind bars for potential employment upon release. The potential pilot will help show other green companies what is possible and that hiring the incarcerated who have served their time offers hope, dignity and a chance at re-entering society as productive citizens.
With a successful blueprint, Leslie credits her school experience with putting her on a new path to making a difference. She is energized, excited, full of possibility and determined to take her skills and put them to good use. And she is working on a play highlighting prison life to create a theater experience that calls attention to the plight of the incarcerated.
Leslie still loves to travel, play tennis and ski but being open to new experiences and living a life of purpose is now a driving force.
It is never too late to go back to school and be exposed to thought-provoking ideas, meet interesting people, enjoy college life and get the brain neurons flying. She loved it!
