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An Open Letter from Prison Professors to All Course Participants
Hi,
My name is Michael Santos. I’m the founder of Earning Freedom and the Prison Professors nonprofit. If you’re working through our course, it’s likely that you’re going through the criminal justice system at some stage—pretrial, in custody, or on some form of community supervision. Both Bill McGlashan and I can empathize with your plight.
For 9,500 days, I lived as federal prisoner number 16377-004. I am intimately familiar with challenges of living in confinement. Despite those challenges, I know the opportunities that open when a person chooses deliberate adjustment strategies. A jail or prison may or may not offer rehabilitative courses. When a person develops a self-directed work ethic, a person can work on personal development regardless of where administrators confine him or her. At Prison Professors, we develop courses that help people that want to help themselves.
For that reason, it pleases me to offer our course:
Lessons on Leadership: With Bill McGlashan
Some may wonder why a person like Bill McGlashan would work with a startup like Prison Professors. Bill is known across the globe as one of the foremost impact investors. Why would such a man volunteer so much of his personal time to help people locked in America’s jails and prisons?
To respond to that question, it may help if I offer some context. Participants will learn all about Bill and the way he thinks through the course. Before getting to the course, let me offer the backstory.
Backstory:
I made bad decisions as a young man, refusing to heed the advice of teachers or mentors. Excitement of a fast crowd lured me away from productive habits. I began making bad decisions during the recklessness of youth. Those decisions turned worse in 1984, when I was 20. I began participating with a group that sold cocaine. In August of 1987, federal agents arrested me. For the next 30 years, I lived inside prisons of every security level or on some form of community confinement, including:
- • High-security US penitentiaries,
- • Medium-security federal correctional institutions,
- • Low-security federal correctional institutions,
- • Minimum-security federal prison camps,
- • A halfway house,
- • Home confinement,
- • Supervised Release.
- • Special Parole,
- • Parole
As I reveal in Earning Freedom: Conquering a 45-Year Prison Term, leaders taught me many lessons during that lengthy odyssey. With hopes of helping as many people as possible, I accept a responsibility to pass along lessons that transformed my life.
Even though a person may serve a lengthy term, any of us can choose to work toward reconciling with society. While in prison, I learned from many leaders. People like Bill McGlashan taught me to follow the principles of leadership:
Define success, as the best possible outcome.
Create a plan and prepare to overcome the challenges ahead.
Put priorities in place, knowing that incremental progress would lead to new opportunities.
Create tools, tactics, and resources that would help me grow, and
Execute the plan every day.
That disciplined adjustment strategy could help any person that wanted to prepare for a life of meaning, relevance, and dignity. It could help a person restore confidence. Regardless of what bad decisions we made in the past, at any time, regardless of where we are, we can work toward making better decisions.
I aspired to reconcile with society and to prepare in ways that would allow me to emerge successfully. A willingness to learn from leaders opened my eyes to a new philosophy. Rather than complaining about the challenges wrought by my bad decisions, I could work to make amends.
Any person could do the same.
In Earning Freedom: Conquering a 45-Year Prison Term, I share the entire story. On August 11, 1987, authorities arrested me. After a jury convicted me, a judge sentenced me to serve a 45-year sentence. While locked in jail, a correctional officer passed me a copy of Plato’s book, The Republic, which introduced me to philosophy. I learned about Socrates and his remarkable way of looking at the world.
Reading The Republic changed my life. It helped me to realize and accept the colossal mistakes I had made as a young man. I’d been living by a bad philosophy. Rather than working to help my community, I broke the law.
Socrates (and other leaders) taught me to stop feeling sorry for myself. Leaders suggested that we change if we don’t like our situation, or if we’re facing a challenge. To start, we must change the way we think. From leaders like Socrates (and Bill McGlashan), I learned the power that comes when we think about other people and our community instead of only thinking about the challenges we face. We can recalibrate. We can work to earn freedom.
That change in thinking influenced a deliberate adjustment strategy. While incarcerated, I made a 100% commitment to:
Pursue self-directed learning,
Contribute to society in meaningful, measurable ways, and
Work toward building a strong support network that would include positive role models.
That three-pronged strategy made all the difference. When defining success at that stage in my life, I simply wanted to emerge with my dignity intact. I wanted to pursue a path that would open opportunities to live as a law-abiding, contributing citizen. By preparing well, no one would know that I had served a quarter century when I got out. I wanted to emerge unscathed.
That strategy led to my earning a bachelor’s degree from Mercer University, a master’s degree from Hofstra University, getting married in prison, and opening many income opportunities that I could expand upon after release. By the time I walked out of prison, I had sufficient savings in the bank to launch my career. None of that would have been possible had I not opened my mind, and my heart, to learn from leaders.
Any person that served time alongside me could have done the same. At any time, we can choose to learn from leaders like Bill McGlashan. Sadly, the prison culture conditions people to learn from so-called “shot callers” instead.
The leaders I studied taught me to think differently from the way I thought before I went to prison. I encourage others to do the same. Those who choose to pursue self-directed adjustments will find opportunities rather than challenges awaiting them upon release—as I experienced.
While still in the halfway house, San Francisco State University hired me to teach as an adjunct professor. Simultaneously, I began building businesses. Together with my partners, we persuaded prison administrators, federal judges, probation officers, and even U.S. Attorneys to purchase our products and services. A successful adjustment inside eased my reentry, allowing me to begin building a career upon release. I didn’t need a job. Preparations allowed me to create my own income streams.
I am convinced that any person in jail or prison can use the time inside to recalibrate and open opportunities. To succeed, however, those people must accept the reality. As administrators used to tell me:
“We don’t care anything about your life after your release. We only care about the security of the institution.”
In such an environment, we should expect obstacles. Despite obstacles that contribute to intergenerational cycles of recidivism, we must focus on what we can do to prepare for the journey ahead. We must reject the dubious advice we receive:
From the system: You’ve got nothin’ comin’. Don’t do the crime if you can’t do the time.
From misguided people inside: The best way to serve time is to forget about the world outside, and to focus on your reputation in prison.
Mahatma Gandhi taught us that we should strive to live as the change we want to see in the world. I want to live in a world where people can always work to become better and reach their highest potential. I’m grateful to the many leaders who taught me this message. For that reason, I’ve devoted my professional career to sharing what I’ve learned from leaders.
It pleases me to share these lessons from Bill McGlashan, a genuine world-class leader.
What qualifies Bill as a world-class leader?
A lot!
Bill has impeccable academic credentials, with an undergraduate degree from Yale, and a graduate degree in business from Stanford. While I served decades in prison, Bill distinguished himself as a steward of capital for private equity companies, business leader, and impact investor. He launched startups that he later sold to publicly traded corporations. As a CEO, he saved hundreds of jobs by accepting the responsibility of restructuring a publicly traded company that was on the verge of failure. As a director of TPG Capital, he created stellar returns on more than $12 billion worth of funds that investors entrusted to him and his team.
Bill built a reputation as one of the world’s most astute impact investors. He brought coalitions of other world-class activists, philanthropists, and leaders together, including:
Bono: Singer for U2, but also founder of RED, ONE, and a cultural leader.
Jeff Skoll: Founder of eBay, Participant Media, and the Skoll Foundation.
Laurene Powell Jobs, philanthropist, and founder of the Emerson Collective.
Mo Ibrahim, founder of Celtel and global philanthropist focused on Africa.
Richard Branson, founder of Virgin Group.
Anand Mahindra, Chairman of Mahindra Group from India.
I did not meet Bill until the summer of 2021, eight years after I had finished my obligation to the Bureau of Prisons.
Despite having devoted his professional career to creating solutions in response huge global challenges that included solutions for climate change, extreme poverty, access to healthcare and education, Bill made a catastrophic decision as a parent. He agreed to participate in a ruse. A conman convinced him to pay an unscrupulous testing service to assist prospects for his son’s admission to a university. His son didn’t need the help, and he didn’t know that Bill had participated in the artifice.
Bill’s decision led to a series of catastrophic event, proving the theorem of Scottish author Sir Walter Scott, who wrote:
- • Oh what a tangled web we weave, when first we practice to deceive.
Authorities arrested Bill, a grand jury indicted him, and he pleaded guilty to a federal crime.
Bill and I spoke for the first time a few days before he would surrender to serve a three-month sentence in federal prison.
During our lengthy conversation, I listened to Bill express his remorse and admired his eagerness to make amends. When he told me that he wanted to use his time inside to help as many people as possible, I offered some observations on what he could expect from the experience. People in jail or prison could learn from his lessons on leadership.
Bill’s story was the type that inspired me to want to learn more while I served my sentence.
Knowing that others could benefit from his wisdom, I invited him to volunteer his time to create a new course with Prison Professors. Through the course, I suggested, we would help people learn the importance of pursuing self-directed learning projects. Since the prison system may not always have resources to offer educational courses, I explained, we could fill the gap.
As evidenced by the video files that accompany this course, and the personal nature of the lessons, Bill volunteered to spend hundreds of hours working alongside me. Together, we developed the course.
This course offers opportunities for self-directed participants to work toward developing their vocabulary, their writing skills, and their critical-thinking skills. Those building blocks can help anyone grow. By developing those skills, I opened countless opportunities as the months turned into years, and the years turned into decades.
Bill’s teachings would have inspired me while I served my sentence. They inspire me now. They make me want to learn more. We hope that you will learn from the video files, the audio files and the lessons that make up our course.
Although I didn’t appreciate the importance of education when I started the journey, this course would have opened my eyes to the liberty that comes with self-directed learning plans. On behalf of our entire team at Prison Professors, Bill and I encourage you to work toward reaching your highest potential.
Sincerely,
Michael Santos