Repurposing Skillsets: From Survival to Leadership

Street hustle. Navigating systems. Reading people. These are high-level skills. What if we saw ex-offenders as untapped strategists, not risks?

We don’t lack talent. We lack imagination.

When we look at people who’ve survived life on the margins—those who’ve come through incarceration, street economies, or long stints in care—what we’re really looking at are strategists. Tacticians. Innovators. People who had to learn risk assessment, negotiation, and emotional intelligence just to make it through the day.

But too often, we reduce them to their rap sheet or trauma. We assess them for risk, not for potential. We call it “lived experience” when it’s safe to do so—when it fits into a tidy program box. But what if we went further?

What if we redefined the leadership entirely?

Imagine seeing the ability to read a room, hustle for resources, or de-escalate volatile situations not as “survival skills,” but as boardroom competencies. These are the skills we train executives to develop. Yet those who learned them in real-world pressure cookers are rarely invited into rooms where strategy is shaped.

We call for innovation, yet ignore those who have been innovating out of necessity for decades.

From the block to the boardroom—it’s not a leap, it’s a transition.

To truly lead with equity, we need to move past tokenism. It’s not enough to offer a seat at the table. We need to redesign the table, drawing from the wisdom of those who’ve been building with scraps.

Ex-offenders don’t need fixing. They need platforms.

People who’ve survived broken systems know better than anyone how to fix them. Not in theory—but in real time, with real stakes.

The future of leadership is already here. We just haven’t learned how to recognise it yet.