Breaking Out

Baylor MBA student Gaurav Gupta (pictured) has been to prison only once, and he absolutely loved it. Gupta volunteered through the Hankamer School of Business with the Prison Entrepreneurship Program (PEP) and helped a Texas inmate develop a business plan for his life after incarceration. Gupta didn’t have any idea what he would get out of the experience, but it changed his life, he said.

Mark Zertuche knew exactly what he was looking for when he signed up for PEP—he wanted to change his life. Zertuche, who served four years and two months for aggravated robbery with a deadly weapon, was Gupta’s prison partner, and the two of them worked to develop a way for Zertuche to start a successful concrete construction business on the outside. Zertuche was released from prison in early summer and has been working in the concrete business to save money. In fact, he has a specific savings plan to help him accomplish his business goals. He thinks it will take him about two years before he’s ready to start his own company. His main motivation, he said, is his nine-year-old daughter. “I want to be the best father I can be, because I didn’t have a father growing up,” he said.

Baylor students began volunteering with PEP in 2007 through the efforts of Dr. Gary Carini, professor of management and associate dean for graduate business programs. Carini found out about the program from a Baylor graduate—John Jackson ’79, president and CEO of Price Gregory in Houston. “He said he was involved with this, and it is absolutely incredible and consistent with Baylor’s mission,” Carini said. So Carini took a trip to prison himself and was immediately sold. In addition to MBA students, Baylor’s Executive MBA students in Austin participate in the program, and the Baylor Business Women recently went to the prison for Etiquette Night.

Houston-based PEP was founded in 2004 by former Wall Street venture capitalist Catherine Rohr. The program boasts a recidivism rate of less than 5 percent, and its graduates have launched dozens of new businesses. Rohr first visited Baylor in the fall of 2007 to help Carini recruit volunteers.

“I was hoping for five or ten,” Carini said. “We got twenty-five.” The next year, thirty-five volunteered. Carini has also mentored prisoners and judged the business plan competition. In all, he’s helped five mentees and visited prison three times.

PEP’s four-month educational program for the prisoners includes traditional in-class presentations—often by founder Rohr—etiquette training, a business plan competition, and mentoring. It is through the mentoring program that Baylor students get involved.

After an initial pitch of his business idea to a panel of CEOs, Zertuche was paired with Gupta to help refine his plan. The mentoring that Gupta provided to Zertuche was primarily through e-mail, which was passed back and forth by PEP, since prisoners don’t have Internet access. They worked on a résumé, market research, accounting, and financial statements, among other things, through nine weekly interactions. It’s like consulting for a business, Carini said, and the experience hones the new skills of the students in addition to providing a service.

After weeks of correspondence, Gupta got the chance to actually meet Zertuche and other prisoners at the Cleveland Correctional Center.

“Yes, the men are convicted criminals,” Gupta said. “Still, when you meet them, you don’t feel like that.” Gupta said that the attitude of the prisoners changed him. “They have nothing in their hands, but still, they are fighting to do something. They have that energy and zeal. Every time I feel low, I remember them, and I know what I have to do.”

Gupta, who is from India, said he volunteered to give something back to society. “In India education is costly, and when I needed help, someone came forward to help me,” he said.

Zertuche said that Gupta’s dedication affected him. “Even though he was wearing a suit and I was wearing a jumpsuit, just for that moment I felt like I wasn’t inside a prison wall,” he said. “He made me feel good about myself because he treated me with respect.”

PEP teaches more than business skills, Zertuche said. “What I learned in PEP is that I no longer want to measure the level of my success by money or cars; I want to measure it by who I am as a person. I want people to say, ‘You see that man? He’s a good person; he has a caring heart.’”

For a look at Etiquette Night in the prison, go to our Web Exclusive.