Everyone in the world can make a bad choice that can leave them feeling stuck and like they can’t ever change which is what makes second — and sometimes third — chances so important. Televerde is a marketing and sales firm that offers second chance employment to incarcerated women through career and learning opportunities. In 2020, they also launched the Televerde Foundation which offers more emotional support to round out the program and give all the women who participate the best chances to succeed in life.
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Michelle Cirocco, Executive Director of the Televerde Foundation and Chief Social Responsibility Officer for Televerde, knows how important it is for the women in the program to be given a second chance because once upon a time, she was one of them.
“I started my career with the company while I was serving a sentence here in Arizona,” she says. “I went from there just being an individual contributor, sales rep all the way up to chief marketing officer. So, I always say from cell block to C-suite.”
Even though she did make great strides moving up the ladder of Televerde, this was not the main thing on her mind when she first tried to get a job while incarcerated.
“I had two small children that I had lost custody of, and the only job I’d ever had was bartending,” Cirocco says. “I knew that if I wanted to get out, be successful and have my kids back, I had to learn a skill, and I had to learn how to do something that would enable me to take care of my kids.”
But what started as a goal to be better for her children, turned into a realization that the more the company grew the more help could be offered to women who are in the same boat she was once in.
Part of this realization came when she was asked to start the Televerde Foundation.
“Televerde’s got the jobs and everybody there,” Cirocco says, “but with the services and the support that we can provide through the foundation, we can make that experience so much better. It’s like it became the whole package.”
She explains that this package comes complete with a community for the women that extends well beyond the prison walls.
“Our objective has been to create [the feeling] that ‘I belong to something bigger than me,” Cirocco says, “All the women who have gone before me are now part of this community so I can develop better relationships, better friendships, better habits, better things to do rather than what I used to always do.’”
Many of the women have forged friendships that continue to this day. They call each other up to share successes, important moments or if a Tuesday girl’s night is just long overdue.
Televerde gives incarcerated women second chances
A few women who have been through programs either with just Televerde or both Televerde and the Televerde Foundation sat down to share their experiences.
Monique Romero
Monique Romero arrived at Perryville for her most recent stay in 2015 and knew it was time for something to change.
“I started participating in all activities there,” she says. “Anything that was positive, anything that the prison offered us, I did it.”
She came across Televerde about a year and a half before her release date, and even though she had been able to utilize other educational opportunities, Romero explains Televerde offered her the missing piece to her puzzle: “What was missing was exactly what I needed. It was more business skills.”
She learned how to use a computer, Outlook and Teams. Along with all the new skills she learned, Romero was given a confidence in the business world that she is forever grateful for.
“It means the world to me, actually,” she says. “I was very happy to be in the first cohort because I knew that women in there needed this program. I knew that if we did it right, there would be plenty more to come, and I want that for everybody else as well.”
Currently, Romero is working on her bachelor’s degree in communication with a minor in business, but her other current goals are still being worked out.
“Recently I just accomplished every goal that I made for myself while incarcerated,” she says. “So my goals for the future are just … It’s more than happiness. It’s more than successful. It’s just something like living life and living it to its fullest. I know that I have the drive right now and I’m not letting it go.”
Ashlee Liberty
Ashlee Liberty ended up in a 10-year sentence at Perryville due to what she explains as “extreme codependency” and “a pretty poor choice in partners.”
She spent much of her sentence not preparing for what would come after she was released, but that would all change when she began work with Televerde.
“About eight years into my incarceration, it was almost like the universe aligned for me,” she says. “I was fortunate enough to go through the first cohort as well as Monique. And that just empowered me. It instilled a lot of confidence. It gave me life back.”
Liberty’s release date was on Valentine’s Day which ended up being very symbolic for her.
“Valentine’s Day is usually the day that you’re single and you’re sad because you don’t have that person,” she says, “and I was able to walk out into the world and know that I’m independent, empowered and can live like a fierce, amazing life.”
Liberty met Cirocco and the Televerde Foundation after her sentence and still works with them as the program specialist.
She is also working on a bachelor’s in science to be able to move to a project manager role.
She says, “I want to help expand our foundation and hopefully be able to play a role in project managing all of the things that we have going on and see where that journey takes me.”
Danna Tongate
Danna Tongate’s journey with Televerde has been windy, a little bumpy at times, and definitely long.
She found herself at Perryville the first time after a series of bad decisions made to support “a raging drug addiction.”
Once in prison, she didn’t want to make a habit of coming back, so she looked around the yard and realized there was a group of women who were different from the rest.
“They were very articulate, they were intelligent. There was just this light about them,” she says, “and I really wanted to be just like them.”
After making friends with these women and realizing they were part of the Televerde program, Tongate set out to join them.
She attended classes and got her GED, and then she interviewed for the job. She was denied.
The rejection hit her hard, but then one of her friends suggested she try again. Tongate chuckles a little as she reflects on this memory when she thought to herself, “Oh, okay. I never thought of that.”
She tried again and got the job. She continued to work while incarcerated and was hired at the corporate office after her release.
“[I] spent the next six years learning new skills and moving in departments,” she says, “moving up and over and up and over and was really just hungry to take advantage of every opportunity that was available to me.”
Unfortunately, Tongate then found herself in a relationship that sent her on a downward spiral.
“I was in a totally toxic relationship that I had no idea was toxic at the time and found myself addicted to drugs again and spiraled within 12 months [and] was on my way back to prison,” she says. “I remember getting back to Perryville and just being so embarrassed and so ashamed that it shouldn’t have been me.”
The shame she felt made Tongate feel like she could never show her face at Televerde again until Cirocco reached out saying that Televerde was a company of second chances and asked Tongate, “Why are you hiding from us?”
Tongate says, “It helped me to forgive myself and realize that I didn’t have to continue living this pattern.”
With that, she picked herself up and marched right in to get her job back.
During her first incarceration, Tongate was able to build professional skills through the Career Paths program, but the Televerde Foundation had not yet existed.
The new programs provided by the Televerde Foundation gave her exactly what she didn’t know she needed.
“It also helps us work on our personal development, emotional development. We have mentors that are with us through that entire journey, even post-release,” she says. “So now I know that I’m never going back to prison. I continue to work on myself every day.”
As she continues to work on her emotional and spiritual self, Tongate is also still working with Televerde as the Demand Generation Manager overseeing marketing campaigns for the corporate marketing and sales team as well as managing marketing services for top clients.
As she moves forward with Televerde, she has goals to make it onto the leadership team.
“My boss tells me I’m going to be chief marketing officer one day,” she says. “That’s one of those moments where somebody believes in you a little bit more than you believe in yourself, but I’m just going to make sure it happens.”
Lasaundra Hall
Lasaundra Hall finished her sentence earlier this year. She says Televerde gave her a soft landing out of prison and “it’s really been a godsend.”
Much like other women, Hall found her way to Televerde through a friend who she saw make “drastic changes” while working with the Televerde foundation.
“There’s no room for negativity when all there is, is positivity. And she was just so positive all the time,” she says. “I was like, I need some of this.”
She fell in love with all that the foundation had to offer from its curriculum to its facilitators to its mentors.
“We had absolutely just amazing mentors that helped really push us to be the best versions of ourselves,” Hall says.
Through the foundation, Hall has also been able to connect with Arizona Small Business Association (ASBA) to help her achieve the entrepreneurial dreams she has.
Hall hopes to run her own successful event planning business as well as get back to the work she did before as a freelance makeup artist.
ASBA connected her with a mentor in the film industry who she is very excited to be learning from. “I went to school for film, so that was always my first love,” she says. “To have a mentor that’s in that lane, it feels phenomenal.”
As she works to build her dreams, Hall says she is “really just trying to stay on the up and up and stay positive and keep good momentum.”
