announcer: Support for this program was provided by Horizon Blue Cross Blue Shield of New Jersey.

Berkeley College.

Education drives opportunity.

Be inspired.

[upbeat jazz music] - Hello and welcome to "Pathway to Success."

I'm your host, John Harmon, founder, president and CEO of the African American Chamber of Commerce of New Jersey.

You know, every guest we have is special, but today's guest is even more special to me in what she has done across the state of New Jersey, just trying to give other people or people that may have had an unfortunate circumstance in their lives an opportunity to reintegrate into society in a meaningful way.

I speak no other than Dr. Darcella A. Sessomes.

She's Chief of Division of Programs and Reintegration Services for the New Jersey Department of Corrections and I'm extremely excited to have her here today.

Welcome, Dr. Sessomes, to "Pathway to Success."

- Thank you, John.

I'm so happy and excited to be here.

- I am excited as well.

But just a little bit about yourself.

- So, John, I am a Jersey-born girl.

Lived here all my life.

I went to high school at a high school called Monroe Township High School, which is in about Central Jersey, where I played soccer and basketball.

I excelled academically there.

Then I went on to Rutgers University, New Brunswick campus.

At the New Brunswick campus, I studied sociology.

I received my bachelor's degree there.

Then I stayed and received a master's degree in social work.

Then I took a break from academics and went into the real world to start, you know, earning money, and later, I went on to University of Pennsylvania, AKA Penn... - Mm-hmm.

- To earn my doctorate in social policy and practice.

And more recently, during COVID, I went on to Princeton Theological Seminary and earned my second master's; this time, a master's in divinity.

So that is my academic route.

- Wow.

Praise the Lord.

So why Rutgers?

- Yeah, I ended up choosing Rutgers because I was close to home, close to family.

Made a lot of friends, joined a lot of organizations on campus and I'm still connected to those people I went to school with.

So it ended up being a great selection for me.

- That's fantastic.

Inspiration, mentorship.

Who in your circle-- or your village, if you will, can we attribute those things to your success?

- Wow.

So I've had many huge mentors in my life, and a lot of them start with my family.

I want to start with my mom.

My mom has been my rock.

She is a woman of excellence, someone that I still want to be when I grow up; instilling values of integrity and decency and honesty and treating people with respect and knowing who you are and where you come from and never forgetting that.

So she has been the greatest inspiration in my life.

We have a matriarch in our family who happens to be 100 years old.

- Oh, wow.

- You know, should it be God's will, I hope to reach her age.

So I want to give a shoutout to Aunt Eva who is the matriarch of our family who just celebrated turning 100 years old in August.

- Wow.

- Career-wise, there have been many people.

I had a lot of mentors in my career that pushed me to, you know, believe in myself, stay the course, stick, you know, don't run, and educating me on the way, particularly as it relates to how things operate in state government.

And so, I think mentorship is important-- finding someone that aligns with you and your beliefs, finding someone who you are OK with them giving you the good feedback as well as the bad feedback or the critical feedback and being able to learn from that-- not sulk, not run-- but grow from that.

I think it's super important when you identify someone who's truly a mentor for you.

- Career-wise, following Rutgers, what did you do professionally?

- So I hit the bricks running.

One of my first "real jobs" was in the City of Newark.

I worked at a youth shelter.

That facility was funded by then we called it DYFS, and these were young boys who had no place to go.

So it was a transitional foster place for them until they could get an actual foster home.

And so, I just continued in that non-profit space until I ultimately got a job with state government.

- So describe your role as the Chief of the Division of Programs and Reintegration Services.

- So as the chief, I am responsible for the service industry of the New Jersey Department of Corrections.

We are the breath and the arm of the services that the population receives inside the correctional facility.

There's a plethora of services that we have, John.

We have a robust education department that offers everything from a GED to graduate credits.

So we partner with Rutgers University, Raritan Valley Community College, and other academic institutions to offer a college program inside the correctional facility.

Recently, we partnered with Drew University.

They are providing a post-graduate 15 credits certificate program.

We also offer vocational training in our C-Tech programs with a huge menu of vocational training opportunities.

So in terms of training and academics, our education department, they pretty much handle that.

They handle it extremely well, and we're proud of the services that they offer.

We're proud of the advancement that our students are seeing academically.

It does something for them, it does something for their spirit, for their families when they can see their loved one with their cap and gown photo.

And be able to send that photo home, it does a lot for who they are in their development and creates an opportunity for them post-release as well.

We have programs that are offered through our social services unit.

A lot of those programs are cognitive-based and they're about cognitive behavioral therapy, emotional management, family reunification, employment readiness.

We're now offering entrepreneurship, and I can talk a little bit more about that later.

We have a host of programs and services that we offer through our chaplaincy office, which I think is extremely important.

A lot of those that are in our custody do participate in their religious faith, and that's extremely important to them.

On any given day, they are looking to speak to a chaplain.

We have our PACE unit, which does resume writing, mock interview prep.

There's volunteer services.

There's victim services.

There's trauma and gender responsive services.

So I have quite a few units within my division that I'm ultimately responsible for.

- But I wanted to get a sense of the number of facilities, number of residents, so we can get a-- kind of a understanding of the footprint of the Department of Corrections in New Jersey.

- When I started in 2004, we had 13 correctional facilities.

Now we are down to nine.

- What is a typical day like for you in the Department of Corrections, if there's such a thing?

- There's no such thing as a typical day in the New Jersey Department of Corrections.

But my intended day is usually to arrive at my office, go through the thousands of emails that I often have-- or what feels like a thousand emails-- usually it's about 500, address any pressing issues, meet with leaders of my team to hear what some of the hot issues are in their service areas, if there's anything I need to know about that's going on in the correctional facilities.

Sometimes I'm reading about proposed legislation and how that legislation will impact our department.

If I am able to get out in the field, which is truly my passion, I am visiting the correctional facilities or our RCRP facilities, meeting with the population, talking to them.

Sometimes I'm attending the programs and actually just sitting in the back because I want to see what's going on.

I want to make sure that they're getting the services that we say we're supposed to be providing.

- Well, listen, let's take a break here on "Pathway to Success."

I'm having a great conversation with Dr. Darcella A. Sessomes, Chief of the Division of Programs and Reintegration Services with the New Jersey Department of Corrections.

We'll be back in a minute.

announcer: The African American Chamber of Commerce of New Jersey is your pathway to success.

We encourage you to visit our website at www.AACCNJ.com or call us at 609-571-1620.

We are your strategic partner for success.

- Welcome back to "Pathway to Success."

So before the break, we started to talk about some of the programming that's offered to the residents.

And now I would like to talk about, you know, what is New Jersey LEAD?

- Well, NJLEAD is the newest initiative of the New Jersey Department of Corrections that we are so excited about.

During COVID, I was asked to put together a proposal.

If I was given the opportunity to do anything that I wanted in corrections, like, what did I see was the issue, and to put together a proposal.

So one of the issues that I saw was the fact that there are not enough service partners in the community for when citizens return home.

- Mm-hmm.

- These service community agencies are important for them to reconnect with their community and find resources and be able to navigate the spaces when they get home from prison.

So we put together a proposal.

The proposal's purpose was to obtain enough money in order to fund organizations in the community, not inside the correctional facility, because reentry really gets started once they leave our facility.

Wrote the proposal.

I only expected to receive a couple of thousand dollars, which we were gonna make work for ourselves.

But first year out, we received $3 million.

- Wow.

- We took that $3 million-- we didn't keep a dime of it-- the New Jersey Department of Corrections, we offered an RFP, we asked community-based agencies to submit proposals so that we could fund agencies in the community that are doing the work of supporting those who are coming home from prison.

Because our philosophy was one agency cannot do it all, and that there were numerous agencies out in the community that were not receiving their fair share of funding, but yet, they were doing the work.

So first year out, we funded 17 organizations in order to partner with the New Jersey Department of Corrections.

- I think that's phenomenal.

Programming; who's eligible to participate and so on and so forth?

- Well, before I talk about that, John, can I just expand a little bit more on NJLEAD?

So that was our first year out.

We just re-RFPed for the second year.

The second year, we were-- we were blessed that the legislators believed in this initiative, and the second year, we were given $7 million.

- Wow.

- And we just closed on finishing making awards, so this year, we funded 25 community-based organizations to be partners with NJDOC.

So we're up to 32 partners in the community across the state, so that when someone's coming home from prison, there should be no excuses that "I can't find someone in the community to help me."

And we're still striving.

We want to make sure that we have partners in every county.

So, you know, I encourage-- if there are community-based organizations who never knew about NJLEAD and these opportunities that are out there to please keep an eye on the New Jersey Department of Corrections website.

We RFP every year.

- Can you drill down a little bit on the types of services that are provided for those once they exit the facilities?

So when we put the NJLEAD initiative out, we funded it in three different categories.

Category A was solely for the mayors of urban cities.

We wanted every mayor in an urban city to have a reentry liaison in the mayor's office to serve as that bridge between community and prison so that someone coming out would always know that "I can go to the mayor's office of reentry services, "meet with a liaison, and that liaison can point me "in the direction of all the community-based agencies that are willing to assist with reintegration."

Category B was case management and wrap around services.

So our partners in that area, they assist with family reunification, housing support, anything that the person needs in order to be successful in returning home.

And then in category C, we were very specific.

Category C recipients provide career education, training, and entrepreneurship.

So we saw entrepreneurship as another way in which people could become financially stable and pretty much chart their own path.

- So let's talk about this a little bit, I guess the elephant in the room.

What is the significance of having employers and residents to align in a partnership around initiatives like New Jersey LEADs to give these men and women a chance of a better life?

- I think it's crucial that you have employers who are willing to provide an opportunity for people who are coming home from prison.

We want to dispel the myths for any employer that's on the fence about, you know, "Well, should I hire this person?

They have a criminal background."

You know, everyone's charge isn't the same.

And so we want them to be open-minded when they make the decision about selecting to hire someone because it's important that people be able to take care of themselves and feed their families.

- So there's varying degrees of success as it relates to the work that you do.

How do you arrive at success?

- So success internally for us is making sure that what we say we do, we're actually doing.

I think it was King who said we just want America to be what America says it's going to be on paper.

And I feel the same way about my division.

We need to make sure that the seats are filled in those programs, and more importantly, we need to make sure that those inside are completing the program.

So I do examine completion rates every quarter for every program, and when those completion rates are not above 85%, I'm asking the tough questions of my staff.

Why aren't the residents, as you say-- we use the term IPs-- why aren't the IPs completing, and what do we need to do to increase their completion?

So internally, it's about making sure that they're getting the services that we say that they should be receiving, and are completing them.

So we look at completion rates.

Externally, I'm always looking at the success stories out there.

And there are many success stories.

And we have many people who, you know, they reach out to us.

They tell us how they're doing.

We have, now, NJLEAD-funded partners who actually used to be incarcerated.

Doesn't get any better than that.

- Wow.

- And, you know, I could call several names of people who once wore the khaki uniform and are now working with NJDOC.

There's no better success than that.

- I underscore what you just said.

There's some in the midst of our team and doing excellent work with passion, credibility, and genuine commitment.

What do we say-- or what do you say, 'cause it-- we're doing the same thing because there's perceptions.

- There's, right now, two people in particular that served, between the two of them, 60 years in prison, and now one is a director and one is an assistant director of a social service-based agency right here in the city of Newark helping other people who are coming out of corrections be successful.

I could name numerous formerly-incarcerated persons who have gone on to college, completed their, you know, undergrad degree, master's degree, and now are running organizations or are second-in-commands in community-based organizations.

And oftentimes, we actually have them come back into the correctional facility and talk to the population because they give inspiration.

Because when the population can see, "You used to be here and now you're doing this," it gives them inspiration and hope.

- When you're out either trying to identify partners or getting those who have perceptions or apprehension about working with formerly-incarcerated men and women, you know, what are some other ways that you try to get them to give this man or woman a shot?

- We're using our success stories to tell the stories of others so that employers will know that you can hire someone who is coming out of corrections and not have to worry.

I mean, there's a federal bonding program that also helps to protect the company in the event that, you know, there is some concern about loss.

So there are resources out there also for the employer, including the Federal Tax Credit.

- Now, we have to applaud Governor Murphy and this administration for being responsive to you and your vision and your leadership to bring this all to fruition.

And so, from a community or citizen perspective, what can members of society do to better support your efforts and the efforts of the Department of Corrections to do the right thing by these men and women?

- I totally agree that the Murphy administration has been amazing when it comes to the division that I'm responsible for and allowing me to use ideas to help expand the goal, which is, you know, to reduce recidivism in the state of New Jersey and to return people back to their communities so that they can be continued productive members of society.

So I'm very grateful.

As far as the community is concerned, I say keep an open mind when it comes to working with the Department of Corrections.

I know people have their own opinions about what they think NJDOC is and is about, and oftentimes, those perceptions are based on one, two, or three negative stories in the paper.

I'd like to believe this is a new DOC that you've never seen before, where we're working hand-in-hand, lockstep with the community.

I also want to encourage the community-based organizations to find out more about NJLEAD because we need more partners.

The more partners that we have, the more people there are in a community that can support the men and women who are coming home and help them be successful.

So I think the key is open communication and keeping an open mind.

- So can you just speak to our relationship and its significance?

- Absolutely.

So, John, you know, in NJLEAD, our inaugural year, the African American Chamber of Commerce was one of the funded partners that was selected of the 17.

Your organization is providing entrepreneurship training inside the correctional facilities, which has been amazing-- a huge demand.

We did our first group at Northern State Prison.

We had cohort A, cohort B, all of the guys complete it.

We had a huge graduation ceremony.

And we thought it was important to include entrepreneurship in category C because everyone doesn't want to work for someone.

Sometimes they want to work for themselves.

And we feel that that is a great training for people to be able to do and to know how businesses operate.

It also helps us deal with the fact that not every company is going to want to hire a formerly-incarcerated person.

But if you're the president of your own company, you hire yourself.

And so, I feel like entrepreneurship is crucial in the next iteration of how corrections does business.

And we want to foster people becoming entrepreneurs.

- I think that's a phenomenal answer and I'm gonna put a bow on it right here.

I want to just thank my friend Dr. Darcella A. Sessomes for being on today's show.

- Thank you, John.

It was great to be here.

- I want to thank you all for tuning in today.

This is John Harmon, founder, president, and CEO of the African American Chamber of Commerce of New Jersey.

Thank you.

[upbeat jazz music] ♪ ♪ Today's message is your chamber, the African American Chamber of Commerce of New Jersey.

Founded in 2007, today, we are home to 19 employees and I mentioned there's still focus on the 1.2 million Blacks in New Jersey and the over 88,000 Black businesses.

But within our mission, we're looking to cover all sectors of society as it relates to health, education, workforce, and business.

We recently launched our training and development institute, which will work solely on workforce, from, you know, white collar, blue collar, ex-offenders.

We also have a mobile academy where we bring these programs and services to communities throughout the state of New Jersey.

Home ownership.

Job readiness.

We bring banks.

We bring all types of employers right in the community.

We're in conversations with KinderCare about putting childcare facilities on public housing projects.

We are really trying to improve the overall competitiveness of getting the under-performing sectors in the state in a better place.

Today, we had a chance to have a long conversation with the Department of Corrections, and the work that Dr. Darcella Sessomes is doing to reintegrate men and women who had been removed from society back into society.

And one of our partners is open for business ventures.

And a part of that team is a gentleman who was once formerly incarcerated.

So we're committed to making New Jersey successful by helping men and women be more successful.

I guess what I was attempting to communicate: we're not your traditional chamber of commerce.

You know, not to be disparaging against anybody, but we are really embracing a demographic within the state's population that's underperforming and working in partnership with all sectors of the state's economy to get those men and women in the Black community in a better place.

Lastly, we have an expo coming up in the month of June.

It's an event for everyone; for students, for business owners, for elected officials.

Gonna take place at Montclair State University, June 15th.

Go to AACCNJ.com for additional information, and thank you for tuning in today.

♪ ♪ announcer: Support for this program was provided by Horizon Blue Cross Blue Shield of New Jersey.

Berkeley College.

Education drives opportunity.

Be inspired.

♪ ♪