Elizabeth Holmes Says What She'll Do. Where's the Beef?

I'm cautiously optimistic.

Like a lot of you, I saw the Elizabeth Holmes clip this morning from her upcoming documentary, and two things hit my mind. One, is this AI generated and fake? If it is, the joke's on me.

Then I realized prison can really change you in a very good way. You appreciate all you've lost. You recognize opportunities that you had and you squandered.

The toilets, the showers, the visitation

The toilets, the showers, the visitation, being away from your husband and baby. That can force you to introspect and say, I want to use this experience as an asset to improve the lives of other people.

That helped me emerge stronger. It did not happen the week I got to Taft. I wasted the first three or four months running that dusty track and telling myself I was being productive. It took Michael Santos asking me what I was actually building before I wrote anything down, and that was October 12, 2008.

Where's the beef?

So is she doing it? Where's the beef? The old Wendy's commercial.

In the documentary I presume she's talking about what she intends to do and how she wants to help people. Fine. She has been in prison for a while now, which means there's enough time on the clock to look and see.

I said something similar last September about her post from prison, the one about 4,000 hours into an apprenticeship program working on legal cases for women who never saw the presumption of innocence. Great message. It is very easy to tweet. It is harder to implement and follow through.

Why putting it on camera can help her

Why would she film a doc about what she's going to do and then not do it? Then you look inconsistent, and it confirms the way so many people already perceive you: saying one thing and doing another.

When you get it on the record, when you put it out for the world to see, it's a chance for them to hold you accountable. That's the upside of announcing it. It's also the risk, and I think she knows that.

Where the work would show up

In April, my partner Michael Santos presented at Bryan and Ms. Holmes was in the audience. He talked about earning freedom instead of watching calendar pages turn, and about building a record a case manager or a judge can actually read.

More than 9,000 people have created a profile at Prison Professors and put their work on it. A biography. Book reports with what they learned and how they'll use it. Journal entries. A release plan that grows. It's free and it's timestamped.

That's what I mean by beef. Dated. Specific. Something a stranger can open and read without taking your word for anything.

If you're the one making the promise

You don't need a documentary to have this problem. Men and women tell their families every week what they're going to do inside.

Say it in words somebody can check. "I'm going to be better" can't be checked. "I'm teaching a class on Tuesdays and writing a book report every two weeks" can be.

Date everything. Put it where your case manager, your probation officer, or an employer can find it later.

Then expect people to go look. That's the whole point of saying it out loud.

While others mock and criticize her for doing it, I'm curious to see the follow through.

I hope she has followed through.

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