Susan Olesek and The Enneagram Prison Project (EPP)

The Enneagram Prison Project, founded by Susan Olesek, is getting at the root of these structural issues to combat high recidivism rates and help prisoners actually heal through personal transformation.  Working in San Mateo County jails and San Quentin State Prison, EEP blends meditation and mindfulness practices along with deep personal inquiry facilitated by a particular framework for self-understanding called the Enneagram.  Their program works to help prisoners come to terms with their crimes and transform any childhood trauma, abuse or neglect that underlies their life choices. Inmates learn the underlying reasons for their anger, how to regulate emotion and ways to manage emotional stress. By working comprehensively with inmates’ inner pain, the societal failures they suffer, and their current justice system treatment, EPP is simultaneously intervening to stop the cycle of violence and move the culture of prisons from exclusively punitive to one of greater compassion and care. 

Website: www.enneagramprisonproject.org

TEDx Talk

BIO

Born outside of Boston, Susan spent her formative years in Asia with occasional forays into places of extreme suffering like The Walled City of Hong Kong and the streets of Bombay. These experiences made deep impressions on her Enneagram Type 1, ideological heart. By the time she entered Occidental College to study sociology, Susan’s resolve to somehow make a contribution to the world was embedded in who she was becoming. This determination percolated while she raised three boys and began to study the Enneagram, a process that took her deeply into herself and a life changing trauma suffered in her own childhood when her mother took her own life. In 2009, Susan emerged hopeful and certified, full of ideals, and with just enough self-belief to accept the challenging invitation to teach the Enneagram to 100 inmates in a little prison outside of Houston, Texas. This decision changed the trajectory of her personal and professional life, forever. With a burgeoning career that moved her from HR to teaching this fascinating system to “any and every one brave enough to admit to having a personality,” Susan delights in the unknown yet vast unfolding of the Enneagram Prison Project. A project with a mission that is now growing her, and the lives of anyone it seems to touch.