DeAnna Hoskins

What’s your organization’s mission?
JustLeadershipUSA was founded to directly empower impacted individuals, elevate and utilize their voices, and use their personal experiences to help change policy. We realize that not talking about people who have been impacted by the criminal justice system makes groups lack the expertise needed to change the system. But the industry has been very reluctant, and I think that’s because of continued stigmas around second-class citizenships.

When did you first become passionate about activism?
I first took interest when I was released from incarceration in ’99. I had data entry skills that were able to get me jobs prior to my felony conviction, but now those jobs were no longer available to me. I would always make it through an interview and they would say, “Oh, we can’t hire you. You have a felony.” I’ll never forget when I applied to this one company where I met all the qualifications and my record stopped it. I was like, “Can you show me the policy that your company has created?” and there wasn’t one. I started to realize—these are policies based on what people think of others impacted by the criminal justice system.

So what did you do?
I had to switch my career. I worked at treatment centers because they were open to people who had experience of substance abuse. I took my skills to their admissions department, then I wanted a raise, so I started calling other centers in the area and found the one I had gone to when I was trying to get clean. They were like, “Come in for an interview,” and I got hired as a case manager… But these unwritten rules still bothered me. So I started calling companies and asking, “Can you send me a copy of your HR policies that say people with criminal records couldn’t get [the job]?” Some had it, some didn’t.

How did you go from working in admin to being in the presidential administration?
I turned to policy when I became a case manager at the Indiana Department of Corrections. Then I worked at the governor’s office for about 4 years, and one day my boss moved to run a federal program. I was at a conference with her after she’d left and I said, “I don’t know what I’m going to do or where I want to go.” I happened to look back at positions in my hometown and they had one for a Director of Reentry. I had been granted a pardon, so I wrote to the county commissioners telling them I wanted to build a reentry process in the county where I’ve experienced the most oppression. In that position, I was able to get the county to not utilize criminal records against people and adopt a fair hiring policy. The state of Ohio adopted our policy, too. Eventually, I was recruited to the Obama Administration, where I ran the Second Chance portfolio.

Wow! So what made you want to run JustLeadershipUSA?
My mentor who founded the organization had resigned, and formerly incarcerated people across the country started calling me saying, “There is nobody that could do this job but you.” I was comparing the job to what the founder did, so I was like, “I’m not ready for that. I just don’t think I’m there.” The headhunter said, “I’m not asking you to fill anybody else’s shoes. I’m asking you to bring your own shoes.” At that moment, I realized I went from not being able to get a job to actually setting the boundaries of what a job has to give me. And I knew that seeing a Black woman running a national nonprofit focused on oppressed communities would be a pillar of hope for people who couldn’t find hope in other places.

What are some ways our readers can support the formerly incarcerated community?
Get involved with a local advocacy group, and if you don’t know where one is, tap into JustLeadershipUSA. Also, try understanding how the correctional facility works in your state. A lot of people think, “out of sight, out of mind,” not understanding that incarceration is a traumatic experience. So being open-minded to people’s experiences, but also to the fact that people can change, because we all go through the process of recreating who we are.