Wharton Opportunities for Reentry, Knowledge, and Skills (WORKS)
The Wharton Opportunities for Reentry, Knowledge, and Skills (WORKS) program, launched in April 2023 in partnership with Resilience Education creates pathways to economic mobility for individuals impacted by the justice system.
WORKS is empowering the next-generation of business leaders to address inequities mass incarceration.
WORKS offers dual impact:
Support incarcerated individuals in gaining the skills needed to forge a path of professional and personal success as they reintegrate into the workforce and society.
Provide MBA students with insights into the issues affecting incarcerated populations to widen students’ perspectives on the transformative power of business education and expand their capacity for compassionate leadership.
WORKS Team
Damon J. Phillips
Robert Steinberg Professor of ManagementBio
Damon J. Phillips is a Robert Steinberg Professor of Management at the Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania with a secondary appointment at the Annenberg School for Communication.
Prior to joining Wharton, he was the Lambert Family Professor of Social Enterprise at Columbia University Business School.
He received his Ph.D. from Stanford University. Before joining Columbia in 2011, he was on the faculty of the University of Chicago Booth School of Business (from 1998-2011). During the 2010-2011 academic year he was a fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford University.
Phillips has expertise in social structural approaches to labor and product markets, entrepreneurship, innovation, organizational change, strategy and structure, as well as social network theory and analysis. His industry specialties are markets for professional services (law, consulting, investment banking) and culture (music industry).
Fareeda Griffith
Managing DirectorBio
With over a decade of experience in higher education, Dr. Fareeda Griffith is the Managing Director of the Opportunity Lab at the Wharton School. As a quantitatively trained sociologist and demographer, Griffith received her PhD in Sociology from the University of Pennsylvania and worked for the last thirteen years at Denison University as an Associate Professor of Anthropology and Sociology and Director of Global Health.
Champions for Financial Legacy
Launched in 2024 in collaboration with the Shawn Carter Foundation and with support from Toyota Motor North America, Champions for Financial Legacy (CFFL) is a comprehensive financial education initiative designed to empower students at Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) and surrounding communities. Modeled after Professor Keith Weigelt’s “Bridges to Wealth” program, CFFL aims to reduce the growing wealth gap by equipping students with the financial knowledge and skills needed for economic success and social mobility. CFFL is open to all students at participating HBCUs.
