“The value in Professor Phillips’ course and Resilience Education: Wharton WORKS is just as much in the act of empowering these justice-impacted individuals as it is changing our own views and preconceived notions about prison in this country.” – Alec Shah, WG’24

There is growing recognition of the importance of education and training programs for incarcerated individuals to reduce recidivism and enhance their chances of success after release. In response to this need, the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania partners with Resilience Education to create Resilience Education | Wharton WORKS, which pairs Wharton MBA students in Professor Damon Phillips’ Reforming Mass Incarceration and the Role of Business class with incarcerated men at the State Correctional Institution – Chester (SCI Chester) in Delaware County, Pennsylvania. Wharton will follow the same model with a larger MBA teaching group and the full Resilience Education curriculum in fall 2023.

Over the course of two semesters, Wharton students teach and empower justice-impacted individuals with business education and marketable skills. In addition to the connections they are able to forge beyond the Penn campus community, those who take Professor Phillips’ class earn credits for participating in this groundbreaking pedagogical initiative. 

Wharton Stories attended the graduation ceremony at SCI Chester, and caught up with four of the MBA students in Professor Phillips’ class. Of his greatest takeaways from the program, John Burgoyne, WG’24, discussed the impact this experience will have on his perspective as a future employer. “Thanks for both Professor Phillips and Resilience Education, we are now equipped with so much more information about how incarceration works in this country,” he said. “We will weave this issue front-and-center into our own future hiring decisions.”

John Burgoyne, WG’24, and Alec Shah, WG’23, share their takeaways from their course before the drive from Huntsman Hall on Wharton’s campus to the prison in Delaware County, PA.
Pictured here is one of the certificates of completion that each justice-impacted individual received upon their April 2023 graduation from the Resilience Education: Wharton WORKS program.

Led by Professor Phillips and Resilience Education, Wharton MBA students and justice-impacted individuals engage in a powerful information exchange 

Professor Phillips first taught Reforming Mass Incarceration and the Role of Business to a wider group of Wharton MBA students in fall 2022. This preceded the spring 2023 portion of the course, which saw sixteen MBA students from the fall class teach cases within Resilience Education’s flagship Financial Capability course to twenty incarcerated learners at SCI Chester.

Of the partnership, Professor Phillips said that providing business education to incarcerated individuals is an important step in breaking the cycle of poverty and incarceration that affects many communities in the United States and specifically in the Philadelphia area.

“I am excited for this partnership that allows our MBA students, as future leaders, to both teach and learn from incarcerated learners,” he said.

A long-time champion of social impact and entrepreneurship within the business world, Damon Phillips is Wharton’s Robert Steinberg Professor of Management and instructs the School’s Reforming Mass Incarceration and the Role of Business class.

In April, the pilot class of incarcerated individuals graduated from the Wharton Works program in a celebratory moment witnessed by their Wharton MBA student instructors; plus Professor Phillips and Dr. Tierney Fairchild, C’89, the latter of whom serves as the Executive Director of Resilience Education. 

Of the graduation ceremony upon the course’s completion, both Professor Phillips and Tierney witnessed the justice-impact individuals receive their Wharton-branded certificates of completion. “Through our partnership, Resilience Education and Wharton are not only providing incarcerated learners with the tools and confidence they need to flourish in their communities; we are also creating a lasting impact on Wharton MBA students, who will go on to become leaders who actively promote social and economic justice in their respective fields,” said Dr. Fairchild.

Executive Director of Resilience Education, Dr. Tierney Fairchild (left), C’89, pictured with Resilience Education’s National Program Director, Bianca Bellino (right), in the lobby on Huntsman Hall on Wharton’s Campus. Tierney and Bianca both organized the program and coordinated the logistics of the visits between Professor Phillips’ MBA students and the justice-impacted individuals at SCI Chester.
Parting gifts: Camille, John, Alec, and Sush all receive necklaces with “Resilience” written in Morse Code, in addition to wrist-watches, from Resilience Education and Professor Phillips on graduation day in April.

The program fulfills an urgent civic mission while changing lives and shaping minds along the way

While Resilience Education | Wharton WORKS fulfills its mission in fostering personal growth and teaching business skills to incarcerated individuals, the Wharton MBA students who actually teach these classes are also empowered through the act of information exchange and knowledge delivery. The program emphasizes the development of interpersonal and leadership skills, as well as an understanding of ethical and social responsibility in business. Justice-impacted individuals learn how to market their talents and consider their post-release plans from an entrepreneurial perspective, and Wharton MBA students learn how to connect with a new and underserved community while learning the benefits of employing individuals with records on the teams they themselves will lead after graduation. 

Wharton understands that to do good, we must do well

The benefits of this partnership between Wharton and Resilience Education extend beyond the individual participants. By empowering incarcerated individuals with business education and entrepreneurship skills, the initiative can help break the cycle of poverty and crime, create jobs, and contribute to economic growth in underserved communities.

This initiative combines the power of business education and entrepreneurship with the goal of promoting personal growth and resilience among incarcerated individuals. It has the potential to create positive change not only in the lives of the program’s participants, but within the Wharton community and beyond. The Resilience Education: Wharton WORKS program is a testament to the power of collaboration between academic institutions and nonprofit organizations. 

– Grace Meredith

Posted: April 28, 2023

MBA Program

Also meet John, Camille, Sush, and Alec; all Wharton MBA students who enrolled in Professor Phillips’ class, and all of whom taught in SCI Chester throughout both Penn’s Fall and Spring semesters.

John Burgoyne, WG’24


Hometown: Blue Bell, Pennsylvania
Professional experience: Investment Associate, the Penn Medicine Fund for Health
Previous education: Dartmouth, BA in Geography

A native of the Philadelphia area, John is passionate about innovative solutions that help alleviate poverty in his hometown, and Professor Phillips’ class was the perfect fit. John reflects:

“With our students, we emphasized something that we, in turn, learned during our time at Wharton: in business education, what you learn can be applied anywhere. So, when we taught about a unit on entrepreneurship at SCI Chester, we underscored: ‘these skills aren’t just applicable to your future business, but are also applicable to whatever job, whatever role you’re taking on.’

Some of my most powerful moments from the course came from hearing just how rich, well-rounded, and dynamic many of these incarcerated men possess from across their various professional experiences. And so many of them have resilience and have cultivated the ability to overcome adversity; and from an employer’s standpoint, there is real value in candidates with those intangible skills, and is something I will definitely remember forever.”  

Camille de Ry, WG’23


Hometown: Los Angelas, CA
Professional experience: Real Estate Associate, the Blackstone Group
Previous education: Brown University, Sc.B in Applied Mathematics & Economics

At the end of the coursework at SCI Chester, Camille de Ry, WG’23, shared about the power of witnessing one student’s turnaround moment during a unit on entrepreneurship. Camille reflects:

“There was one student who, at first, was not into the exercise where we develop 30-second elevator pitches on business ideas. He said something to the effect of: ‘I don’t need an elevator pitch because I’m an artist, and I don’t need that kind of pitch for my business’. But, on the other hand, he filled out the entire business model canvas before we met for class, and we could see that he was super engaged throughout our lecture.

He proceeded to experience this eye-opening moment where he realized he needed these skills. ‘I never thought I needed to use to learn how to this because I thought that my art spoke for itself; but when I’m out one day, I will use what you’ve taught me to get my art into people’s homes,’ he told me. And for me, just witnessing that a-ha moment was incredibly rewarding.”

Sushmita (Sush) Mukherjee, WG’23 


Hometown: Dubai, UAE
Professional experience: Consulting at Bain & Company, Fellow at Supply Change Capital
Education: University of Michigan, BBA in Business Administration

Sush found particular value in a simulation that replicated the complex web of challenges justice-impacted individuals experience upon release. Sush reflects:

“We engaged in a re-entry simulation, where we had people who had been through the justice system join our class and role-play the different entities with whom one is compelled to interact after departing from prison or jail. That’s just really stuck with me, to see that the challenges encountered by these individuals are important issues that more people should be working on. 

As for our visits to SCI Chester, the aspect that resonated with me the most is how interested our students, the incarcerated individuals, were in the material. They were quite prepared, even if they hadn’t processed the complete concept of our teaching materials just yet, answering questions and engaging with the coursework with eagerness and honesty; sometimes, with even more enthusiasm than you might encounter in a typical Wharton lecture hall.”

Alec Shah, WG’24


Hometown: Mount Laurel, NJ
Professional experience: Investment Banking – Vice President of M&A, specializing in legal technology
Previous education: NYU Stern

For Alec, some of the most impactful takeaways from Professor Phillips’ class came from the process of breaking down his preconceived notions about the American justice system. Alec reflects:

“The value in Resilience Education: Wharton WORKS is just as much in the act of empowering these justice-impacted individuals as it is changing our own views and preconceived notions about prison in this country. At first, I kept returning to my former viewpoint of thinking: ‘well, if you did the crime, you’re doing the time;’ but now, I understand that the incarceration system is so much more nuanced than that. 

As it turned out, my new students were some of the most passionate people I’ve ever met, just so excited to be there, and so ready to learn. I now know who these individuals are; how seriously they take getting a second chance, and who are so willing to get to work.”

Related Content

Read More Stories