Teresa Y. Hodge, is a committed champion for people living with an arrest and/or conviction record in America and creator of Unlock Inclusion.
Unlock Inclusion is a body of work made possible by way of her 2016-2017 Open Society Foundation, Soros Justice Advocacy Fellowship. During her fellowship she was able to focus on how the diversity in technology/tech inclusion movement was missing advocacy on behalf of people with arrest and/or conviction records. She informs and engages cross-sector influencers to close the digital divide created by mass incarceration in America. Teresa believes that without tech education and inclusion at the core of reentry mediations millions of Americans will remain unplugged and locked out of sustainable opportunities. Her fellowship term resulted in a podcast series; a position paper “Unlock Inclusion: A Pathway of Digital Inclusion for people living with criminal records” position paper; and, a national network of committed supporters.
While promoting the power of tech in reentry Teresa built the confidence to become a tech founder herself. In Mission: Launch (link www.mission-launch.org), the organization she co-founded with her daughter Laurin, she faced a problem, which was how could they assess the skills and readiness of individuals living with records while fairly measuring risk. Realizing there was a void in the market for a tech product that could solve this problem they set-out to validate their idea. November 2017 Teresa was named an Unlocked Futures inaugural cohort member for the tech product now known as R3 Score (link www.r3score.com).
