Galvanize coworking campuses are home to a wide variety of entrepreneurs, start-ups, and established companies. In our member company spotlight, we highlight some of the noteworthy companies that work at Galvanize.
Today, we had a conversation with Stacey Putka, Program Director of Defy Colorado.
What is Defy Colorado?
Defy Colorado is a local Colorado nonprofit. We do entrepreneurial education and character development training for folks with criminal histories and start working with them while they’re incarcerated. Then, we continue to work with them once they’re released back into our communities.
What does Defy’s Educational Component Look Like for Folks in the Program?
We teach entrepreneurial skills and business skills as tools for transformation and change. The curriculum itself is four textbooks that are delivered over a period of eight months inside prisons and the curriculum covers three major areas: character development, job readiness training, and business planning. Entrepreneurship is used as a common theme throughout those three topics to encourage lasting transformation and change. One of the biggest deliverables each of our program participants create during the educational program is a 52-page business plan.

What are some of the Most Commonly Chosen Career Paths? Has this Changed Over Time?
There are two paths that our participants go into: either a more traditional career path, or the entrepreneurial path.
For our participants who go the traditional career path, a lot of them are in the service industry and work their way up into management positions within their businesses. We had a gentleman start in road construction as one of the sign holders and very quickly worked his way up. He actually manages a whole road crew now.
Some common focuses of the entrepreneurial path include the food industry, service industry, automobile industry, landscaping, construction, roofing, repair shops, and car detailing services. It includes a lot of service-oriented and customer-related businesses with a couple of tech companies thrown in there as well. The biggest business that one of our participants has started is comparable to Etsy, but it is specifically for prison art.
How Does Defy work with Other Companies?
Defy is really focused on collaborating in order to provide additional mentorship to the people that we work with. We collaborate with companies to bring in large employee groups into prison with us.
For example, we’ve had over thirty-six folks from Techstars, which is based out of Boulder, come into prison with us. We’ve had a ton of people from Google come in with us as well. We collaborate with them to create events where they’re providing their own content and their own curriculum in addition to what we provide.
We’ve also plugged them in to come with us to existing events and provide mentorship on whatever topic we’re working on that day. Any time mentors come in, they influence and change the way entrepreneurs-in-training (EITs) are thinking about their business or their career. The EITs are constantly pivoting their plans based on the feedback they get from mentors, whether it’s mentors from companies or individual mentors that come in to work with them.
From Your Perspective, What is the Most Impactful Aspect of Defy Colorado?
It’s funny- this relates so much to the question before because the community that we create is the most impactful component. It’s creating a sense of hope and that redemption is possible. A lot of the people who are incarcerated, after being so removed from society, start to believe that society doesn’t want them. They think it doesn’t make a difference to society whether they’re there or not.
For these individuals to learn from community members that they are valuable, wanted, and needed in our communities is huge for them. I think it’s the same for the community members that come in: the community members realize that there are some really special people in prisons that we need to pay attention to; people who would make our communities better off with them being in it.
How has Defy Ventures Benefited from Being Part of a Coworking Space?
It’s having a sense of community. I went to the G Women luncheon the other day and just got to meet a bunch of women (and allies to women) that work at Galvanize. It was really fun to hear about the projects that they’re working on and for them to hear about Defy. I think we now have another mentor group that’s probably going to come in. Also, all of the resources at Galvanize are just wonderful, so we’re very grateful.

How Can Other People Volunteer with Defy Colorado?
Anyone interested can email me at sputka@defycolorado.org and I can inform them what the volunteer process is. Right now, most of our volunteering happens in prisons, so there’s a commitment of a drive and a couple of hours inside of a correctional facility (which is kind of a bucket list item, anyway).
To learn more about Defy Colorado, please click here.
To learn more about becoming a coworking member at Galvanize, please click here.

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