Women Initiating Success Envisioned
Empowering and Supporting Formerly Incarcerated Women
Fast Facts
California, USA
Carla Williams and Mary Pruiett
2023, 2024, 2025
Job Training
How Women Initiating Success Envisioned (WISE) Is Making a Difference
WISE’s mission is to empower Formerly Incarcerated Women (FIW) to become self-sufficient and productive members of society post-incarceration.
WISE helps these predominantly African-American and Latinx women overcome limited legal options for even basic survival and fit into their communities upon reentry. WISE provides individually tailored programs that reduce the risk of recidivism, and assists these women in regaining a productive place in society by providing job training, employment placement, financial literacy education, counseling, and intervention in issues of substance abuse.
What WISE Does
- Helps women acquire their GED.
- Provides basic financial education and coaching.
- Teaches women how to fill out a job application and secure references.
- Matches the women with prospective employers, preparing them for the hiring process with coaching in resume writing and with practice interviews.
- Facilitates the unification process between women and their children.
Initiatives Supported by Project Redwood
2022-23: $25,000 to support individualized services and counseling post-incarceration.
2024: $50,000 to fund the “Ignite Your Future Re-Entry” program, which provides financial literacy education, job training, resume writing, interviewing practice and role playing. Funds were used for staff, rent and supplies, and to supply work attire and transportation for the women.
2025: $40,000 to support the “Project Future” initiative, a critical intervention service which partners with sober living houses to provide a pathway for self-sufficiency to formerly incarcerated women working through substance abuse, with the goals of reducing recidivism and breaking cycles of poverty and incarceration.