Roux Institute brings entrepreneurship workshop to Maine State Prison

Working with Warden Nathan Thayer, the program specifically targeted a group of people who hadn’t participated in educational opportunities at the prison.

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The exterior of the Maine State Prison buiding.
Staff at Northeastern’s Roux Institute hope to return to Maine State Prison for another Idea Jam session in the future. Photo by Maine Department of Corrections

Staff at Northeastern University’s Roux Institute recently partnered with Maine State Prison to offer a group of incarcerated men the chance to engage in an entrepreneurship brainstorming workshop.

For four hours, 22 men at the Warren, Maine, correctional facility became entrepreneurs as part of Idea Jam, a rapid-fire entrepreneurship workshop program. The participants brainstormed and pitched a series of creative solutions to a real-world challenge to a panel of judges.

“The prisoners that we worked with are people who may have limited options if they do leave,” says Anna Ackerman, entrepreneurship program manager at the Roux Institute. “We’re thinking about what their options are upon leaving prison, and entrepreneurship is actually one of the options that is most readily available to them and is well suited for them. They are able to solve problems based on their experience that other people might not be able to.”

Working with Warden Nathan Thayer, the program specifically targeted a group of people who hadn’t participated in educational opportunities at the prison. The end result was a workshop that reached people who hadn’t previously benefited from this kind of programming, partly by focusing on a challenge that hit close to home for many of them: substance use.

Three judges sitting at a table covered in a black tablecloth with the Northeastern Roux Institute logo on it.
The judges of the Maine State Prison Idea Jam were Chris Wolfel, associate vice president and head of entrepreneurship and venture creation at the Roux Institute; Jodie Ireland, Maine-based social justice advocate and philanthropic adviser; and Anthony Cantillo, deputy commissioner for Maine Department of CorrectionsCourtesy photo

The start of these workshops can sometimes feel like pulling teeth, Ackerman says, as the ice breaks and nerves disappear. But the group at Maine State Prison was energized by the opportunity. 

“I was really excited by that entrepreneurial energy … being channeled in a really positive way and by people starting to have a moment to reimagine how they might channel their energy moving forward,” says Chrystina Russell, managing director of strategic initiatives at the Roux Institute.

That energy showed in the final pitches that the group made to a panel of three judges: Chris Wolfel, associate vice president and head of entrepreneurship and venture creation at the Roux Institute; Jodie Ireland, Maine-based social justice advocate and philanthropic adviser; and Anthony Cantillo, deputy commissioner for Maine Department of Corrections.

Pitches included a monthly care package subscription aimed at helping people recovering from substance use or their family members and a substance use educational curriculum that school districts could purchase.

The prisoners were so energized by Idea Jam that as soon as they finished, they started asking about when the next workshop was going to be, Russell says. There are already plans to host another workshop at the prison in October.

Beyond the workshop in October, Russell says there are plans to train prisoners who have gone through the program in running Idea Jams at other correctional facilities in Maine.

The program gives incarcerated people a chance to exercise their entrepreneurial muscles, as well as help people see these men “less as problems and more as our future neighbors who, when we come across them, if they get healing in the prison, that might really change how the community moves forward,” Russell says.

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