Helping Turn Lives Around
Press-Telegram
By G.M. Bush, June 20, 1997
Jobs: L.B. business owner hires ex-gang member as part of the program. She urges others to join effort.
LONG BEACH- Emmanuel Wright is a young man with a firm handshake, a cheerful smile, and a new job. The 23-year-old ex-con is also a former gang member; in his words, “affiliation by association.”
Karen Scott, the owner of the consulting and bond administration firm that hired him, is a woman with a mission.
Since April, she has been enrolled in the Landmark Education Center’s three-month Self-Expression and Leadership Program. The course includes completing a project that benefits the community by helping 20 to 200 people.
Scott, who says she always wanted to run a ranch for inner-city kids, decided to find at least 20 business owners who will give an equal number of former gang members a chance to prove themselves by giving them jobs.
It’s quite a challenge. So far, she has no commitments from prospective employers. But she remains optimistic.
“This is not about me,” she says. “It’s a community project. I hope business owners will see it as an opportunity, a real opportunity, for them to contribute to the community.”
There’s an added incentive: The Private Industry Council will reimburse employers for a portion of the wages paid during training.
Scott has already visited a number of parole officers, and they’ve agreed to help her find the right gang members for the jobs. “They will be looking for men who are ready to take advantage of an opportunity,” she says, “ready to make a change in their lives and build a future.”
Her goal is 20, “but sure,” she adds with a laugh, “I’d work with 200!”
About 18 months ago, the Belmont Heights woman met Emmanual Wright. She immediately recognized him as personable and intelligent, and they became friends. That friendship, she says, “was based on finding out our similarities instead of our differences.”
But there was one problem: Wright was a gang member on parole for a robbery he helped plan when he was a teenager in Compton.
A few months later, he was caught with a small amount of pot – an automatic parole violation – and back to prison he went.
He was released in May. On June 2, he began working for Scott Associates as an analyst. Much of his work is done by computer. By all accounts, he is a quick learner.
“It’s obvious when you meet Emmanuel that he can think,” Scott says. “It’s working out fabulously.”
Another young man at the firm is Dan Ohgi, an intern from the Wharton School of Business at the University of Pennsylvania. Despite obvious differences in their backgrounds, the 19-year-old sophomore says working with Wright is mutually pleasurable. They are learning together. “I think the experience is really valuable for both of us,” he says.
Wright, his hair pulled tightly back in a ponytail and a tiny diamond twinkling from his left earlobe, agrees. He takes two buses and the Blue Line to work – an hour’s commute – but says he wouldn’t trade it for anything.
“I love working here,” he says. “It’s the experience of my life. I think I’ve always had a business mind, but never an opportunity to put it to use before this.”
Reprinted from the Press-Telegram Long Beach, California, June 20, 1997.