Carla Anderson

Being able to have an interview with a magazine called Influential Women means that I have risen above the title that society has given to me. That's my most notable professional achievement - it shows I'm no longer defined by the label society placed on me as a returning citizen. My success comes from refusing to let that title limit me and instead using my experience to reach back and help others who are coming home from incarceration without support.

The biggest challenge is changing how society views returning citizens. When people talk about convicted felons, their mind goes to the worst - the murderer, the rapist, the child molester. But people made mistakes, and they've done their time. They're not trying to come back and invade your home so they can go back again - they just want to sit and be normal, just like everyone else. We are quick to apply 'felon' on someone and condemn them for life, but if people have affairs or do things in their marriages, that's just as wrong, but we can forgive that mistake. Who are we to judge which mistake is more tragic than the other? It's really tragic that we apply something that somebody did at 17, 18, 19 years old, and now they're 40, and we expect them to act the same. Another challenge is that when people come home from incarceration, they went in with trauma that was never addressed. We have to make sure that trauma is taken care of on this end so there aren't triggers. The opportunity is that people coming home have really thought out their next steps - they've had time to plan. The only thing they haven't thought out are the obstacles that people put in front of them when they tell them no.

The most important value to me is recognizing people for who they are and not their disability or their past. I've learned to approach situations differently - even when my friends share horrific situations, I used to immediately switch to judgment, but now my mindset has changed. For example, when people were talking about kids being bullied, everyone immediately said the parents must not be good parents. But I realized we should ask what is the child going through - there's a reason he's taking that action, maybe his home life is not the same. Instead of condemning and pushing that narrative further that he's a bad person, if we could just stop for 5 minutes and realize what's going on, we could approach it from that perspective. My heart and my immediate response has changed greatly. My main goal in life is to have people look at returning citizens in a different light and help others understand my community.