Catherine Hoke

Catherine Hoke is a writer, entrepreneur, and the founder & CEO of Defy Ventures, a non-profit organization that helps formerly incarcerated entrepreneurs gain the guidance and resources they need to become successful leaders in their communities. With an expansive background in non-profit management, fundraising, motivational speaking and storytelling, Hoke is a passionate advocate for criminal justice reform and economic opportunity for those released from prison.

Hoke began her career in public relations and marketing before founding Defy Ventures in 2010. Working in partnership with the criminal justice system, Defy Ventures provides free training, resources and services to individuals who were recently incarcerated but want to build a better life for themselves. Their goal is to provide entrepreneurial skills and experiences in order to help former inmates to make good choices, own their stories and create options for success through entrepreneurship.

In 2020, Hoke released her much-anticipated memoir Forgive Everyone: A Prisoner’s Path to Freedom, which follows her journey from her early days teaching yoga in a maximum-security prison to becoming the founder of a successful organization that provides a bridge back to society to many men and women after they’ve paid their debt to it.
Hoke’s core message in the book is that while everyone experiences hardship, everyone is capable of breaking out of cycles of adversity and finding a pathway to joy and purpose in life. She shares her personal journey of recovery and redemption, including reflections on her past as a first-time felon, as a way to inspire others to start living their true life’s purpose.

Throughout the memoir, Hoke emphasizes how important it is to forgive oneself and others. Through her experiences both as a young woman serving a nine-month prison sentence and as the leader of a non-profit organization, Hoke advocates for a mix of self-care, forgiveness and redemption as it relates to finding true happiness.

The success of Hoke’s memoir has helped to raise awareness of her work with Defy Ventures. More recently, she has partnered with New Profit, an organization that invests in bold leaders to catalyze change, to launch the Prison-to-Prosperity Project. This project seeks to combine the platform of Defy Ventures and their mission to provide economic opportunities for the formerly incarcerated with the platform of New Profit’s disruption-minded strategy and its network of philanthropists and investors.

Hoke is a shining example of how one person can make a difference in the world. She draws on her experiences of adversity, failure and resilience to make a positive change for those transitioning out of prisons and into the world. Her dedication to this cause is inspiring, and through the success of her new memoir, she has the potential to reach a larger audience with her message of forgiveness and redemption.