A prison sentence can become the point where someone's story stops. Jessica Roberts decided hers would not.
Today, Roberts is an author, speaker, reentry advocate, nonprofit founder, and CEO of Your Second Chance Inc., a Metro Atlanta organization helping justice-impacted people rebuild their lives.
Her journey is the subject of her book, Triumphant! One Woman's Journey from Prison to Purpose.
But what caught our attention at PrisonProject.net was not simply that Roberts wrote a book about surviving incarceration.
It is what she did afterward.
Roberts transformed her own experience into work focused on the problems people face when they come home: housing, employment, transportation, identification, healthcare, education, clothing, food, and the basic stability necessary to begin again.
Through Your Second Chance Inc., she provides supportive housing for men while helping both men and women connect with practical reentry resources.
A person can leave prison determined to change and still encounter a wall of practical barriers.
No stable housing. No transportation. No identification. No employer willing to take a chance. No healthcare. No support system.
Second chances require more than telling someone to make better choices.
Sometimes they require someone willing to help build the conditions in which better choices can actually lead somewhere.
One Woman's Journey from Prison to Purpose tells Roberts' story of incarceration, responsibility, faith, rebuilding, and the discovery of a new purpose.
Roberts also continues taking that message back inside correctional facilities and reentry programs.
One recent effort placed that message directly into the hands of incarcerated women when supporters funded 50 copies of Triumphant! for women at Lowell Prison.
Her work has also received broader community recognition. Roberts was named a 2026 finalist for the Gwinnett Chamber Moxie Awards.
Roberts has lived both sides of that equation.
She knows what incarceration can take from a person, and she knows what rebuilding can demand once the gates open.
Instead of allowing incarceration to become the end of her story, she turned that experience into work designed to help somebody else write a different ending.
Read Jessica Roberts' full story, learn more about Your Second Chance Inc., explore the work she is doing in reentry, and learn about the book carrying her story back inside.
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