Fresh Start
Entrepreneurship
Turning Business Ideas Into Reality
Fresh Start Entrepreneurship & Financial Capabilities is a collaboration among several entities with a shared goal of promoting economic empowerment for justice-involved individuals. First Step Alliance launched this program in Boston in 2024 in partnership with Harvard Law School, the Boston Mayor's Office of Returning Citizens, and SCORE, a resource partner of the U.S. Small Business Administration and mentor to America's small businesses. We look forward to expanding partnerships with community organizations and government agencies to make the program available to returning citizens interested in starting a new business.
Our program instructors and mentors are system-impacted individuals and business and financial professionals who share a deep commitment to economic empowerment and second chances. Together, they bring extensive experience as certified business mentors, certified financial instructors, and attorneys, and include graduates of leading business and law schools such as Wharton, Harvard, Berkeley, and NYU Stern.
Program Goals
Fresh Start Entrepreneurship aims to provide justice-involved individuals with the education, mentoring, and legal assistance they need to start and run their own business. The Program's unique curriculum combines entrepreneurship training and money management skill development with individual coaching by experienced business mentors, certified financial coaches, and instructors with lived experience. To help remove barriers to mainstream banking and build credit, participants have access to an affordable bank account and free credit counseling services. Program graduates may also be eligible for a micro-grant to help them get started.
Business ownership represents an alternative path to income and wealth creation opportunities for justice-involved individuals. Fresh Start Entrepreneurship helps people turn their ideas into reality by providing essential business training, personal finance knowledge, peer mentoring, and access to affordable banking products and credit-building resources.
Our program partner, Harvard Law School, has this to say about the Fresh Start program:
This kind of training program helps people who are at the very beginning of dreaming about their business. They’re just starting to figure out, how do I do this on a larger scale? How do I make this a sustainable income source for myself?
Read more about the Fresh Start program and its impact in From Incarceration to Entrepreneurship, featured in Harvard Law Today.
The next program cohort will be held in Boston in the Spring 2026. If you are a returning citizen entrepreneur living in the greater Boston area, please apply HERE.
What our graduates say
Wayne
Dreaming after incarceration can be difficult. The Fresh Start program helped me out in way you couldn't imagine. My vision widened, and I decided I wanted to open a CDL driving school. Fresh Start helped me put that business plan into action.
Tatiana
This program is empowering! Not only am I more knowledgeable in business, I'm also so much more confident in my venture. The mentors are amazing. Thank you for the experience, encouragement, and all of the help.
Zilla
The Fresh Start Program gave me the foundation I needed to launch my business, and I'm grateful for the chance to give back and hopefully inspire others who are on the same path I once walked.
Jose
The experience with the program opened my eyes to what it really takes to have a successful business. It made me realize you need a business plan, a vision, a goal and a plan to get there.
Caroline
Thank you so much for everything! This class was great and I looked forward to it every week. I wasn’t sure if I could do it all and make it to the end but now I feel I can do anything I set my mind to.
Sonny
The Fresh Start program is more than a program. It's an opportunity to change the rest of your life. God bless these guys. We need more programs like this.
Marquis
Thank you all for this program. It was very beneficial for all of us. I really did learn a lot. Blessed are the ones that never give up.
Charles
Best program in the city for returning citizens!
Friendy
This is a great program to help future entrepreneurs on their journey.
Real Results.
Real Impact.
a Fresh Start program graduate shares her experience with a new cohort and how she's applying what she learned to reach her goals.
Read our article Entrepreneurship After Prison: Fresh Start Business Ideas for more information about practical and affordable business ideas for returning citizens.
