Hardware Podcasts

HIBT Lab! The Confess Project: Lorenzo Lewis

How I Built This · 2 Mar 2023 · 36m

What this episode covers

Lorenzo Lewis, founder of The Confess Project, explains how he transformed his personal history of incarceration and trauma into a social enterprise that trains barbers in predominantly Black neighborhoods to act as frontline mental health advocates. He details the evolution from a small library focus group to a scalable four-tier curriculum teaching active listening and stigma reduction, noting that the program has trained over 2,000 barbers across 28 states. Lewis also discusses the organization's strategic pivot from a grant-dependent nonprofit to a sustainable healthcare model by partnering with insurance companies to bill for care coordination services.

Most relevant to

companies scaling up

Topics

Mentioned

Companies
U.S. Bank, Goodfellas Barbershop, Harvard University, Georgia State University, Gillette, Realist Foundations
Products
The Confess Project

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