CLEVELAND – A felony conviction can stay with a person long after they’ve served their time, creating a roadblock to everything from finding a job to reliable housing.
Sterling Braden has experienced that struggle and is now working to make a change for others.
Braden said he grew up on the east side of Cleveland with dreams of playing professional basketball.
“I was the annoying kid dribbling the basketball around eight o’clock in the morning,” he said.
At 14, Braden’s family moved to a new neighborhood where he didn’t know anyone, so he said he made some bad choices to fit in.
“It kind of just was like an eat or get ate mentality,” he said. “So, I just basically didn’t get ate. I was doing the eating.”
Still, Braden said he was a good kid in high school, working toward his goal of playing basketball in college.
He said when he was 18, a split-second decision while leaving a party changed his life forever.
“I’m walking to the car and hear gunshots coming towards me,” he said. “And I had a gun on me, which I shouldn’t have had a gun on me, but coming from where I come from, you have a gun on you. So, I turned around, and I fired back.”
Braden was charged with a felony for “improperly discharging a firearm at or into a habitation.”
His conviction created a series of barriers, starting with getting into college for basketball.
“It’s no opportunities,” he said. “They look at you like you the scum of the earth when you come home.”
Eventually, Braden was able to get into Columbus State, but he said for the first time, he had bills to pay and no money.
That’s when he began the search for a job.
“If you come home to nothing, you either you start a business or you work for $7.90 and pray you can find somebody to sleep on they couch,” Braden said.
Braden said after failing to find employment because of his conviction, he started feeling like a felon for the first time.
“When I was doing all wrong, I didn’t care that I had a felony,” he said. “But once I started trying to change my life, build my credit, find a home, like, anything that a regular citizen does? That’s when I started feeling the effects of having a felony.”
But then something happened that Braden said changed his life for the better.
“Once I found that I had a kid, I was just like, I cannot even be living like this,” he said. “Because I have to be breathing for her. I have to be out here free for her.”
Finding out his daughter, Quin, was on the way was the switch Braden said motivated him to start a new lifestyle.
He decided to start a nonprofit called “Friend a Felon” to help other people like him.
“I help them find opportunities and resources and stuff like that,” he said. “And do stuff in the community.”
Braden has now expanded the project by creating a nation-wide app to help connect felons everywhere with job opportunities and other resources.
He said he did it by watching YouTube videos and learning how to build the app on his own.
“A million code errors later, we had a product,” he said.
For the past couple of months, Braden has been working with the Bounce Innovation Hub in Akron to take the app to the next level.
Adrian Chestnut, an entrepreneur in residence at Bounce, said he and Braden connected immediately.
“You ever meet somebody you like and you’re like, ‘Did I meet this person a month ago or a couple of years ago?’ Because it was that instant connection, that instant bond,” Chestnut said.
Braden said the folks at Bounce are the first to give serious support to his project.
“He has such a great tool, which I wholeheartedly believe in it,” said Chestnut. “I told him the same thing, that because I believe in it so much, I’m gonna push you even harder.”
The Friend a Felon app is up and running, already enrolling more than 5,000 felons across the country who are looking for work.
“I look in every nook and cranny, we talking about Alaska to Hawaii,” Braden said. “I’m looking everywhere, like anybody who’s looking to hire a felon. I want them on a platform.”
Braden said the goal is to save time for both parties by making it clear what charges former felons have and what charges employers and landlords are willing to accept.
While he says the short-term goal is to help felons get the resources they need, he also hopes his story shows other felons like him that there is hope.
“Just having an opportunity to see people’s faces after you make a change in their life, it just, it feels amazing,” he said. “I cannot lie to you. It feels better than having a million dollars.”
