Ken Oliver

Ken Oliver is the VP of Checkr.org and Executive Director of the Checkr Foundation.   Checkr.org was formed to operationalize Checkr’s Pledge 1% commitments and social impact initiatives.  Checkkr.org’s mission is to Build a Fairer Future of Work: One Job at a Time by redefining the narrative around the 77M Americans who suffer from an arrest and conviction history.   Ken’s work focuses on record clearance, talent development through reskilling and upskilling programs, employer development through DEIJ practice, change management, and public policy. As a proximate leader, Ken’s own remarkable journey started in 1996 when he was sentenced to 52 years to life in prison under California’s three-strikes law for “joyriding” as a passenger in a stolen car. He spent close to 24 years in prison, 8 of them in solitary confinement, for reading a book written by a former member of the Black Panther Party. With the support of Stanford University and the Corporate law firm Mayer Brown, Ken won a civil rights lawsuit against the state resulting in a monetary settlement and his release from prison in 2019. Shortly after his release, Ken became a paralegal at a public interest law firm and, shortly thereafter, a state policy director. In 2020, Ken became a co-founder and the Executive Director of a nonprofit reentry organization created to provide justice impacted people with meaningful pathways into the technology and knowledge-based economy, where he secured a historic investment of $28.5M