Meet the former gang member who created a $10 million packaging startup that hires former inmates:
arrell Jobe had a rough start in life. Raised in Richmond, California, Jobe dropped out of school in eighth grade, joined a gang, and was in and out of juvenile detention as a teenager. At age 14 he was incarcerated for stealing cars, he says, and later did time for possession of a stolen gun. By 23, he promised himself that he would turn his life around and be a better father to his kids than his absentee dad had been for him.
Companies are generally loath to hire former prisoners and gang members, and Jobe struggled to find a job. Eventually, he made his way to the packaging industry, helped by the father of a friend, a willingness to take a lengthy personality test, and his own persistence. Then, in 2015, Jobe, now 39, founded his own business,to make sustainable, environmentally friendly packaging that can replace Styrofoam and other expanded polystyrene foam packaging for shipments that need to stay cool.
It’s not easy to make an environmentally friendly insulated cooler at a viable price point, and Jobe tried a variety of materials, including starch, coconut husks, bamboo and hay, before settling on postconsumer plant fiber that is recyclable or compostable. A self-taught engineer, he filed 30 patent applications on his creations, five of which have been awarded. “I build everything in my head. If I wrote it down, that would mess me up,” he says.
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