Christian Venture Capitalist Defies Sex Scandal With God's Calling

The Christian founder of the nationally acclaimed Prison Entrepreneurship Program had found herself deep in the throes of a sex scandal that collided with everything she was supposed to believe and she just wanted to end it all.

"I hated my guts. I tried to kill myself. I was covered in the thickest wall of shame in my life. I could not even believe it," said Hoke, after delving uncomfortably into her past to tell the mostly Christian audience gazing at her svelte frame about what she had done.
Inside the
Grand Ballroom at the Hilton Midtown Hotel in Manhattan where the Movement Day 2015 conference was well underway on Thursday, Hoke had inspired the audience with the success of the PEP program.

An Inc report highlights that success in more detail. When she was 25, while she was still Mrs. Rohr, Hoke found God and she began attending church in California's Bay Area with her then husband Steve, a lawyer. She was working as an associate at Summit Partners, a venture capital firm in Palo Alto.

A few years later she moved to New York City after landing a job with private equity firm American Securities Capital Partners. After traveling to a number of prisons in Texas as a part of a Christian outreach program, Hoke got the idea for PEP and in 2004 she launched the organization to teach inmates basic business skills.

"I realized so many gang leaders and drug dealers shared a lot of common traits with successful executives and CEOs. And I wondered if their soul was transformed, if they were equipped to go legit. … So a few months later I jumped ship from my New York private equity job, I moved out to Texas and I launched what became known as Prison Entrepreneurship Program. And it's still going on in Texas today now almost 12 years later," she said proudly.

Hoke's work changed a lot of lives and helped give a lot of ex-cons a sustainable second shot at life.
She was convinced this is what God had called her to do and after months of operating the program remotely she and her husband moved to Texas to focus on the program full time. The program was so successful she received several honors for public service, including awards from then Texas Gov. Rick Perry and President George W. Bush, according to Inc.

Then everything came crashing down in 2009.
"I wish I didn't have to tell you the next part of my story. But I asked you what would it be like if you were only known for the worst thing you've ever done? And that became my story," she told the audience.
"When I was 31, I'm 38 and a half now. When I was 31, I was divorced, it came unexpectedly to me. I had been married for nine years. In the wake of my divorce, I made some decisions that I am not proud of," she continued.

"I ended up having some relationships with people who had been released from the Texas prison system. My own graduates. It went against my own spiritual values. It went against every good leadership decision," she said.

Hoke was forced to resign from the job she felt was her calling. Here she was, once known for helping others find second chances, she was now in need of one herself. And she found it in the church.
"The best thing that happened to me was that after I made my mistakes, my coming clean process is what started to heal me," she said.

"The first person that I went to was a pastor. And you know what he said to me? 'That's child's play. That's what the cross is for. Do you believe that? Our sins are like scarlet but they will be as white as snow. Do you believe that? Do you believe that for me? Do you believe that for you? Do you believe that for the people that we serve?'" she asked.

"Well, I wanted to believe that. But then the news of my crisis went out nationally and then it went out internationally. And so, I was known for this. Everywhere people were blogging and saying really ugly things about me. And that's when I didn't want to live anymore because I felt like I had ruined God's calling for my life," said Hoke.

"It was people like yourselves, people from the church who said we stand with you, we believe in you and what are you doing next? And I had no answer. People loved me back to life and that was six years ago," she said.
Hoke said she was lured back to New York City with a job offer in the venture capital industry.

"[I] felt like a sell-out the minute I got the offer because I know why God has put me on Earth even though I have made a lot of mistakes," she said.
That decision, however, led her to start
Defy Ventures which she calls "my 2.0 effort to make a difference in this sector."

Defy Ventures, according to the
organization's website, is an entrepreneurship, employment, and character training blended online program for people with criminal histories.

"We defy the odds every single day. And what we do is we transform the hustle of America's biggest underdogs. We teach them employment training and readiness. Place them in jobs, entrepreneurship, where we actually get them to start their businesses and extensive character and personal development which includes spiritual training even though we are not a faith-based organization. They get tons of amazing training," said Hoke.

Now five years since starting Defy Ventures, Hoke and her team have helped more than 700 people with criminal histories. They have a 95 percent employment rate for graduates of the program and a 3 percent recidivism rate.

In the last couple of years she said "we have incubated and funded now 112 businesses started by our graduates."
One of those graduates, Coss Marte, who founded a company located in New York City's Lower East Side called conbody, is touted as a prison-style boot camp.
"I served a total of five years in prison. I went to prison for running one of the largest drug delivery services in the city. Around the age of 19 I was making over $2 million a year," said Marte.

"Toward the end of my incarceration, I ended up in solitary confinement. All that was given to me was my Bible and I read Psalm 91. Psalm 91 really helped me learn how to trust the process. And from trusting that process it gave me my calling to trust the mission I [am] following today," he added.

He explained that through his unique fitness regimen he managed to lose more than 70 pounds in six months in prison after doctors told him he could die due to weight-related health issues.

"I helped over 20 inmates in prison lose over 1,000 pounds combined. And I brought that program from the prison yards to the streets of New York, and now we have a studio in the Lower East Side of Manhattan and we hire formerly incarcerated [people] to teach our programs," he said.

Thanks to his partnership with Defy Ventures, conbody now has more than 4,000 customers, seven employees and the business has been featured on major networks such as MSNBC and FOX.
Hoke says she is now looking to serve 10,000 people in the program nationwide and is appealing for volunteers and other investors to help her on her mission to pursue God's calling on her life to give ex-cons second chances like she found herself.

"Two years ago I was remarried. And I have my second chance as a wife. I have my second chance at life, I have my second chance to extend second chances to others. This would not be the case if it weren't for the grace of God and the grace of amazing people like yourself," she said.

BY LEONARDO BLAIR