This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with T. Renee Smith, 51, who is based in Atlanta. She is CEO of iSuccess Consulting. In 2007, she was sentenced to 46 months in federal prison for conspiring to use false financial information to obtain bank loans. Business Insider has verified her sentence and employment. This piece has been edited for length and clarity.
Everything happened at once. In the space of a year, I got married, pregnant, and started serving my prison sentence.
My business partner and I ran communication businesses, made some very bad decisions, and my life spiraled out of control.
I was charged with a felony in 2005. In the roughly two years it took to go to court, I met my husband and got married. By the time I was sentenced in 2007, I was four months pregnant.
The first night of my 46-month sentence in late 2007 felt like an out-of-body experience where I was looking at my life from the outside, feeling sad for that woman. My son was born in April 2008 and spent the first 11 months with me in prison. Then he went to live with my husband and parents. It was a psychologically challenging time for all of us.
Being in prison stripped me of everything I thought was important, and I had an identity crisis. I had no idea who I was outside my role as a business owner.
I decided to see my incarceration as an opportunity: I had to come out better on the other side, to make something great out of a bad situation. When I was released, I would rebuild my life and reinvent myself with a felony to my name. I eventually got there, and now I’m the CEO of an AI consultancy.
Rebuilding my career after a break wasn’t easy
When I was released in late 2010, the reality that I likely wasn’t going to be hired for any corporate positions with a felony hit me hard. I realized I’d have to start a business for my livelihood.
At first, I had tunnel vision about rebuilding myself, and my attitude was: let’s go. What I didn’t realize was: sweetie, you’ve been away for years. You have to reintegrate into your family and your life.
After such a setback, you need time to acclimatize and reinvent yourself, which I didn’t give myself, because I just threw myself back into work.
Courtesy of T. Renee Smith
I started with contract work that didn’t require background checks, while setting up a consulting business on the side in 2011. It was a slow build, but over a few years, clients referred me to other clients, and the business grew.
I’d rebuilt my life and business from the ground up. Now, as an AI transformation strategist and the CEO of iSuccess Consulting, I help clients assess their AI readiness, develop implementation strategies, and make sure their workforce is prepared for those changes.
My 3 pieces of advice: grieve, practice acceptance, and shift your mindset
Hopefully, others don’t have reasons like mine for a career break, but many people have stories where life turns out differently than they planned. Whether it’s becoming a caregiver, going through a divorce, losing a child, or being laid off, many people end up needing to find ways to bounce back.
For all these people rebuilding after a setback, I believe my advice applies.
The first thing you need to do is grieve the life you thought you’d have. Secondly, replace the belief that your life “should have” turned out a certain way with acceptance of how it is. Instead of wishing my life were something else, I ask myself what lesson I needed to learn from it and how I could grow from that.
The most important thing is shifting your mindset. If I’d looked at myself and thought, “I’m a convicted felon. Nobody’s going to hire me. I can’t build a business,” then I would’ve become my own worst enemy. I had to shift my mindset to my current situation and ask: how did that break help you, what did you learn from it, and what do you need to build your new life afterward?
My life has been an absolute journey, but I wouldn’t change anything because it made me who I am today. There’s no way that I’d be as resilient as I if I wasn’t incarcerated.
