By Katie Kull
St. Louis Post-Dispatch
MOBERLY, Mo. — For the better part of four decades, Everett Washington has been in prison.
The St. Louis native grew up in poverty and, from an early age, turned to the streets. He picked up robbery charges. He learned the ways of the state’s prisons — to hold contempt for guards and officers, to avoid eye contact and interacting with them at all costs.
But earlier this month, Washington sat beside a sergeant in the chapel at the Moberly Correctional Center, about 30 miles north of Columbia, and talked about how his views had changed.
“I shake hands with the lieutenant,” he told a room full of men. “I joke with the deputy warden.”
He developed those relationships thanks to the Global Leadership Academy — a 22-week program founded by a former inmate that’s expanding to facilities across the Missouri Department of Corrections.
It’s designed to bring prison officers and residents into a room to build relationships by discussing leadership principles. They watch videos with featured speakers, including faith leaders, government officials and business innovators and speak about their backgrounds and hopes for the future.
Prison officials say it’s working.
Capt. Kayla Purnell said in a recent meeting in Moberly that she values the relationships she’s built through the academy, and she plans to keep going as much as she can.
“I learn from you guys as much as from other staff,” she said.
Building a vision
By many metrics, at 40 years old, Bo Cornelius was thriving. He had a wife and a young daughter, a business, a house and credit score over 800.
But that all came crashing down when he drove drunk and got into a crash that killed the other driver. He was sentenced to seven years in prison.
He ended up at Algoa Correctional Center in Jefferson City, where the prison staff treated him and his peers with absolute indifference, he said in a recent interview. It was toxic, violent and hopeless.
Then, in 2019, while still in prison, Cornelius attended the Global Leadership Summit, founded by a church in the Chicagoland area. It featured videos of speakers from all over the world who talked about leadership principles, and it sparked Cornelius’ imagination.
He sought to expand that short summit into a weekslong academy. He wanted to bring prison leadership and offenders together.
He started with a group of around 20 people and kept pestering the prison’s warden to attend. Eventually, the warden came and sat down. He stayed for an hour, and he told more of his staff to join in.
Cornelius said the change was gradual but started paying off. The men in the academy built relationships with prison leadership and stopped problems before they occurred. They advocated for themselves.
And even after Cornelius was released more than two years ago, he kept up with the men in the original academy and helped it expand to new facilities. Now, he’s working to get an academy started in the U.S. Department of Corrections.
“Prison is better than it was a few years ago,” Cornelius said. “That’s what we’re trying to do.”
Showing what is possible
In Moberly last month, a group of nearly two dozen men surround a table in the prison’s chapel. They’re listening to a video play on a screen.
The protagonist of the video faces two paths, a narrator explains: In one narrative, the protagonist is critical, silent and prone to self-sabotage. In the other, she speaks up. She empowers others with her leadership and vision.
The video asks those watching to consider which path they’d take.
Paul Dudley Jr knows which one he’s taken before.
Dudley, 40, is more than 20 years into a 30-year sentence for second-degree murder and robbery.
A couple of years ago, he and a friend sat down with Cornelius, who was pitching the Global Leadership Academy. Dudley was dubious at first, but he listened because Cornelius had been in his shoes before, too.
What Dudley heard was inspiring, he said.
“He was showing me what is possible,” Dudley said in an interview.
Now, Dudley is a facilitator of the program along with another offender, Ryan Bloom.
Earlier this month, they asked the group of men to reflect on the video they’d seen and the choices the protagonist had to make.
Making the choice to change your situation can be scary, Dudley said, but it’s important to have a vision and share it.
Dudley asked the group what they wanted for the future.
To be a better father, one said. To build better relationships with family, another replied. Even the prison’s warden, Amanda Blissett, chimed in, saying she’d like to see more positive relationships between the detainees and staff.
Washington, the St. Louis native, said he’d like to find success this time when he’s released. In the past, he didn’t feel like he had a vision for himself. Now, he said he’s ready to help others.
“I want every one of us to get out of here and live a successful life,” he said.
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