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Callie Chaney (JD ‘24) remembers the “God moment” when she and Kenzie Thielen (MBA ‘24, MNA ‘23) discovered their deep connection. They and their classmates in Business on the Frontlines, a course in which graduate business and law students create projects with organizations working in some of the world’s toughest places, were discussing “The Other” by Ryszard Kapuściński. The author asks readers to reconsider the Western practice of treating non-Europeans as alien or threatening. Examining how privilege or bias can be barriers to seeing partners fairly and equally is a core component of the Frontlines program.

“Kenzie came in late that day and somebody had taken her usual seat. So she sat in the empty one beside me,” Chaney recalled. The instructor asked students to share when they felt like the other. Eventually, Thielen raised her hand and said she had a family member who had been imprisoned. “I remember so well. There was something in the way she said it, where I knew that the family member had to be closer to her than like a third cousin,” Chaney said. She leaned over to Thielen and whispered, “Hey, my dad went to prison, too. We should talk about this.” Chaney and Thielen were living in Eastern Kentucky and Minnesota respectively when their relatively stable, upper-middle-class, adolescent lives lurched into chaos. Police began investigating both of their fathers and eventually charged them with felonies: Chaney’s father for prescription drug fraud, Thielen’s for mortgage fraud and money laundering. Their fathers eventually spent time in prison, missing milestones like graduation and college decisions. And though the two women approach how they shared the details of their fathers’ incarceration differently, they both say the experience of loving someone in prison inspired their paths in similarly meaningful ways.

Mustering moral imagination

Chaney and Thielen have front-row seats to the two Americas that coexist uncomfortably in our country. They were “the haves” until criminal charges, frozen assets, investigations and prison sentences moved their families into “have nots.” Chaney, whose father was a doctor and could afford gifts like a private jet trip to a concert, felt like her family went from the highest of highs to the lowest of lows. “You’re in a totally different class,” Chaney said. “All of a sudden, there was a period where we didn’t know where our next paycheck was coming from because most of my family members were out of work for one reason or another.” The only person she recalled maintaining a job at that time was her grandpa, who owned a gas station. “The economy works well when there's dignified work and a decent living. It was working for my family, and then it wasn't. It was much worse,” Thielen said. After leaving prison, her father could only find work in a construction firm owned by a family member.

"It's hard to imagine until you go through it,” Thielen said. Business on the Frontlines courses ask students to muster that imagination — the moral imagination led by empathy and deep listening — to better understand the perspectives of those facing barriers to economic participation. For both, working toward the Frontlines program’s mission to create jobs and the dignity of work in marginalized communities hit differently. Thielen said she made her way in life “dissociating from it” until taking two Frontlines courses during her MBA – first Frontlines in America (FIA) in the fall and then Business on the Frontlines in the spring –  prompted her to ponder economic exclusion, inequity and her lived experience. The intense immersion of the projects motivated her to speak her truth. "This is the reason it hit me. I kept feeling like I wanted to say why I was so into the program and the classes. I love how Frontlines asks us to listen to the people who this economy doesn't include, helping them create something that works for them.” Thielen, now a brand partner specialist at IBM, served on Team Homeboy Industries during her semester in Frontlines in America. A long-time FIA partner, Homeboy Industries provides training and support to formerly gang-involved and previously incarcerated people, operating social enterprises for their trainees to gain work experience and a steady income during their re-entry. Thielen’s team worked alongside one enterprise, Homeboy Threads, to help position it for market opportunities in textile recycling. Despite the connections to her family’s experience with incarceration, she hadn’t specifically requested a position on that team. Once she was immersed in the work, and especially during the community visit halfway through the semester, she felt a kinship in ways she hadn’t expected with many of the trainees from Homeboy who had incarcerated parents and served time themselves. “My dad hired people who he was in prison with at our construction company, and I worked part-time during school breaks alongside men who had just gotten out.” For her part, Chaney had been quite open about her father’s prison time. As a law student, she found many opportunities to consider her family’s experience with incarceration. She was a part of Notre Dame’s Exoneration Justice Clinic, working to bring wrongfully convicted clients home from prison. Her childhood in rural Appalachia is what actually drew her to apply for Business on the Frontlines. “A lot of people back home are children of incarcerated parents because our communities are battling a drug problem,” she said. “Our communities are battling a drug problem because there's a bad economy. It's all one big circle, really. It's tough.” In law school Chaney sought to understand how the theories, laws and policies she studied affect people on the ground. She was intrigued by Business on the Frontlines and the idea that she could make such a connection with somebody on the other side of the world. Her team worked with Newmont Mining in Ghana to create plans for land conservation in communities near the mines. Ghana and the people she and her team met there reminded her of home. “Everywhere I go, I take a little bit of Eastern Kentucky with me, and then come back to Eastern Kentucky with a little bit of that place, too,” she said. “Ghanaians are also just good people who are trying to make it through to see the next day. Trying to see people on a human level, not on an academic level, is what drew me to the class.” When it came time to decide on a career path post-graduation, she got lots of advice against public defence, hearing that public defenders are overworked, underpaid and represent people who “do terrible things and get them off on a technicality.” “I have found that none of that is true. We are all humans, and nobody deserves to be thrown in prison without due process of law,” she said. It was the only job she considered or applied for after graduation and Chaney attributes her dad's incarceration for shaping the course of her life. She is now back home in Kentucky serving as a public defender in the capital city, Frankfort.

There’s no us and them, there’s just us

With the passing of time, Chaney and Thielen look back with a certain amount of circumspection on how their fathers and families weathered the mess of legal battles, drastic lifestyle changes and relationships with spirituality and faith. Both stopped attending church for a while, the publicity, gossip, rejection and ensuing shame and embarrassment became overwhelming. In prison, their fathers embraced faith to help them make sense of their sentences. The two women communicate frequently about their shared experiences and how the shame and embarrassment has transformed into grace and inspiration for supporting others. Thielen is becoming more comfortable sharing her story. The two have discussed creating opportunities like an online community, a scholarship, a book or a podcast to help other children of incarcerated parents who feel “in the shadows,” as Thielen put it, “To make sure they don't feel alone. If I would have had Callie as a friend in middle school and high school, it would have been drastically different.” Chaney said sometimes shame still rears up and tries to hold her back. “There are people who have parents in for the rest of their life because of a violent crime, and people of color are disproportionately impacted by the criminal justice system,” said Chaney. “And I'm white with a dad that went to prison for a short time. Sometimes I fear that I’m not the right spokesperson for this issue.” Likely the two will wrestle this for the rest of their lives. Father Greg Boyle, a Jesuit priest and founder of Homeboy Industries, where Thielen’s team served, writes beautifully about shame and how kinship can eclipse it: “We tend to think that shame happens to someone else. It seems outside of us, yet it's precisely within the contours of one’s shame that one is summoned to wholeness.” It’s toward that wholeness that the two look as they create a community of kinship that Fr. Greg describes, where there is “no us and them — there’s just us.” “I'm just amazed at how God put us in those two seats on that day for that conversation,” Chaney said, recalling the birth of their kinship. “Our stories are so, so similar.”   Originally posted on Business on the Frontlines.