In 2017, Rev. Gregory J. Boyle, S. J., received the University of Notre Dame's Laetare Medal, the oldest and most prestigious honor given to American Catholics.
For more than 30 years, Father Greg, as he is often called, has walked alongside men and women who have been incarcerated and involved with gangs, founding Homeboy Industries in his hometown of Los Angeles to offer them tattoo removal, counseling, job training and a community of endless acceptance and accompaniment.
Father Greg's speech accepting the 2017 Laetare Medal and his 2010 book, “Tattoos on the Heart: The Power of Boundless Compassion,” deeply affected Kelly Rubey, (MBA '16) teaching professor, and Viva Bartkus, past director of the Meyer Business on the Frontlines Program at Notre Dame's Mendoza College of Business. The Frontlines program is an avenue for students in the Notre Dame MBA program to put business practices to work in partnership with communities devastated by poverty, exclusion and violence. They recognized in Father Greg a kindred spirit, one moved to, as he said in his speech, to "stand with the poor and the powerless and the voiceless … with the demonized, so that the demonizing will stop."
Rubey and Bartkus had envisioned a new course for the program, one that harnessed the decade of lessons learned from dozens of international partnerships working for job creation and economic inclusion for people on society's margins. They dreamed of students collaborating with American communities to address prejudice and barriers to economic empowerment in our own country. Perhaps East LA was a good place to try.
Tom Vozzo, Homeboy’s CEO at the time, initially seemed skeptical about partnering. Rubey said previous experiences with universities had perhaps seemed to him more like an academic exercise rather than true value creation for Homeboy Industries. Students could learn a lot from Homeboy, but was the work coordinating such an experience the best use of Homeboy’s time? Afterall, like many nonprofit organizations, resources are spread thin and the social enterprises have profitability targets to meet.
A partnership begins
Father Greg was a virtual guest speaker in 2020, the first year of the class, which they named Frontlines in America (FIA). Students and their alumni advisors worked with Coalfield Development in West Virginia and Gary Comer Youth Center in Chicago. Rubey and Bartkus saw such promise in working with Homeboy and their social enterprises — businesses including a bakery, a cafe and electronics recycling that provide job opportunities for graduates of their program and that fund their services. Eventually, Vozzo agreed to a partnership, and the second year of Frontlines in America teamed students up with Homeboy Industries.
The 2021 team focused on Feed Hope, an emergency meal preparation organization launched during the COVID closures of Homegirl Cafe and Catering that cooks, packages and delivers nutritious, fresh meals to vulnerable communities in LA. Feed Hope started out small by producing 50 individual meals per week and quickly expanded to more than 14,000 meals per week after LA County hired it as a supplier. After weeks of interviews, research and a community visit, the team, in close cooperation with Mariana Henriquez Flores -- first a trainee and now a manager with Homeboy -- presented their proposal. Their recommendations provided strategic plans for Feed Hope to retain its competitive edge when bidding for local government contracts to prepare and deliver meals for the food insecure and to help Feed Hope capitalize on its use of nutrition for trauma healing within its own community and the broader community of Angelenos.
“What are we going to do next?”
That first year of the partnership left Vozzo impressed. “Now after each subsequent year’s project he asks ‘What are we going to do next?’ and already has his ideas,” said Rubey.
Since then, teams have collaborated on projects to strengthen the e-commerce platform, especially for their baked goods social enterprise, Homeboy Foods, and to support circular apparel and textile social enterprise, Homeboy Threads. Students have analyzed market potential for Threads’ apparel recycling and developed recommendations to build up its position in the resale fashion market.
Rubey’s teaching approach embraces the principles of community-engaged, fair trade learning, developing experiences that are not extractive but reciprocal relationships. “You cannot have student impact without community impact because the student impact comes from the community impact. Detaching student learning from partner impact has a negative impact on both students and partners.”
She designed the course to be not just a time commitment, but an effort commitment. “I ask [students applying to FIA] to really consider their bandwidth because you can't squeeze it into an extra hour between classes and extracurriculars; you can't shift trajectories for communities on nights and weekends. You need to be prepared not only for the rigor of the business problem-solving but for the vulnerability of building relationships.”
Rubey challenges her students to consider their meaningful gifts such as time, effort, skills and resources to make a difference for a partner like Homeboy. “This ties in with the gospel: When you give, you don't just give from what's left over. True giving requires some type of sacrifice.” It’s easy to consider giving in monetary terms. Rubey contends that little of the challenges explored in Frontlines in America can be solved with money alone; solutions require human capital, commitment and true co-creation.
Dan Chapman (MBA ‘23), right, was one of those students in the back room of the bakery. He recalls their report-out meeting on the final day of their community visit. It was the first time all of the stakeholders of the Homeboy Foods enterprise were in the same room: Vozzo, the CFO, the head of marketing, the tech team, and members from the Homeboy Foods team.
“Even before we kicked off, we could feel the energy and excitement in the room. It was the first time the entire leadership team was physically together to discuss Homeboy Foods specifically, which made sense given how many directions each stakeholder was pulled running Homeboys’ 13-plus social enterprises. Just achieving that gathering as a result of our week’s work had tremendous inherent value,” Chapman said. Following their presentation, Vozzo officially invited Frontlines in America back the following year.
“It felt like such a win,” he said. “Of course we wanted to create value for the Homeboy Foods team and its beneficiaries, but we also felt a deep responsibility to ensure that the Notre Dame-Homeboy legacy lives on, along with a sense of pride in knowing we accomplished that.”
As a student, he felt appreciated seeing their work implemented, but sensed an even deeper connection serving as an alumni advisor in 2024. “Tom’s track record in business speaks for itself. He knows the opportunity cost for a professional to commit to these projects weekly and take a full week off to spend on-site at Homeboy. I felt pressure as a student, but now as a professional working specifically with social enterprises, I really wanted to bring the weight and value of my experience to the student team and the project. Tom had this calming presence, putting the project aside and simply thanking Kelly [his co-advisor] and me for coming back and continuing to be a part of the Homeboy family,” said Chapman.
The Homeboy Foods Frontlines team provided supporting research bolstering Wilson’s idea of an e-commerce site selling all the enterprises’ products. “I implemented their suggestions, and as a result we were able to create more jobs,” she said. “Our whole mission at Homeboy is to teach people skills they can then take into the next phase of their life, and now we have a customer service team of three based on that e-commerce site.”
Wilson attended the 2023 Business on the Frontlines Forum along with Vozzo and three other Homeboy staff. The Forum brought together nearly 50 Frontlines partners, alumni and supporters from around the globe to share ideas and strengthen the network of organizations working to create jobs and economic opportunity in vulnerable communities. Wilson, who is passionate about an agriculture enterprise at Homeboy, was inspired by Comer Education Campus’ urban farm and rooftop garden.
“I was really able to learn so much visiting Comer; I talk about that all the time. All the things that I hope and dream for Homeboy agriculture as we continue to build it. I was permanently imprinted by the experience,” she said. “It's a testament to what Notre Dame is able to do, to connect and bring people together from all walks of the world. Everyone is aligned and walking in Father Greg’s Jesuit mission of ‘I can do good for this world.’”
In her view, Kelly Strait (MBA ‘13), right, snapping a photo with Chapman in Father Greg's office, sees Homeboy as the happiest place on earth (apologies to the theme park just south of LA). She served as an advisor for the first Homeboy team and the most recent in 2024. For all the difficulties and trauma the homies have lived through, the place itself “is such a warm and happy and open space. You can walk up and say good morning to anybody and you'll be received with a smile; you're constantly being hugged,” she said.
A section of Tom Vozzo’s book The Homeboy Way points to a possible explanation. Homeboy’s culture embraces humor in the face of great sadness. Father Greg’s sermons and writings evoke tears and laughter to make sense of an often senseless world. “That laughter disarms resistance or fear of judgment – or even judgment itself – and is a great equalizer,” said Strait.
Another factor is Homeboy’s trauma-informed, radical acceptance, which means everyone always has a home there. “But you need to be ready, which I think is really powerful,” she said. “That is what makes them so successful: that they don't give up on anyone. Only you can give up on yourself. They'll always be there to welcome you back with open arms and they won't judge.”
Dan Chapman says there's a mindset shift that makes this Notre Dame-Homeboy partnership so special. “We are not trying to fix, but to serve. Leading up to the in-person portion of my first engagement, I was hyper-focused on making an impact. But it didn’t take long after stepping through the doors on Bruno Street to realize that the greatest opportunity before me was how I could be impacted by the experience. That mindset shift has been critical to unlocking my ability to create the impact I was originally seeking at Homeboy Industries and in my career.”
As Father Greg says, “We go to the margins so that the folks at the margins make us different. We stand at the margins because that’s the only way they get erased.”
Caption: At Homeboy Threads, where the 2023 and the 2024 teams worked, two trainees sorts, grade and pre-process textiles for resale or repurposing.
Ibby Hartley, center, director of operations for Homeboy Threads, walks the 2024 team of Sean Catarina (MBA '25), Femia Tonelli (JD '26), Divya Manda (MBA '25) and Ryan Egan (MBA '25) through their sorting and pricing process at Homeboy Threads wearhouse in LA's Commerce District. This team, with Chapman and Strait as advisors, analyzed top apparel resale platforms and made marketing recommendations for Homeboy Threads ecommerce site.
Frontlines in America student Femia Tonelli interviews Linda Corrado, business development manager for Homeboy Threads.
Homeboy trainee Dominic reads Fr. Greg Boyle’s book Tattoos on the Heart while on break from work at Homeboy Threads.
Credits:
Photos: Matt Cashore (ND '94) and Thomas Vangel