Tom Vozzo, who joined Homeboy Industries as CEO in 2012, retired in February. Before joining Homeboy, Vozzo was executive vice president of Aramark and an executive of two other companies.
Shirley Torres and Steve Delgado, two long time members of Homeboy’s executive leadership team, have taken his place as co-CEOs. We decided to talk with Vozzo about his experience at Homeboy and what it meant to him. His responses have been edited.
Can you tell us briefly how it came about that you became involved with Homeboy Industries?
A friend of mine knew that I had retired in the corporate world. We were on the board of the Salvation Army, and he got me involved volunteering at Homeboy. I wanted to use my business skills in a new way, and a couple of months later Father Greg asked me to be CEO. I thought I’d come in for six months and help Homeboy get organized and get out, but it gets in your blood, and I stayed much longer.
We understand there were a lot of challenges when you first joined Homeboy. What were the most serious ones, and how did you overcome them?
Finances was the biggest one. We were running short on money, and more and more people needed our help. We needed to get the senior staff more focused on finding grant funding and social enterprise revenue.
How did the challenges you faced change over the years that you were CEO of Homeboy?
Each day new people come in looking for help, and you have to find the resources to do that. We’re four times the size as when I started. We needed to grow to help more people. We’re leading with love and kinship, and we’re living that every day. At any one time we have over 500 people that we pay who are our trainees.
I’m sure that the employees were quite different than what you were used to. How did your approach to supporting team members evolve over time at Homeboy? What did you learn about connecting with them compared to your earlier experiences? And how did your leadership style grow as you became more established there?
Homeboy is a mission-driven organization. Other places were the for-profit business model. Here your mission is to help people. There’s a higher value in being compassionate. It’s more of a team-oriented approach in how to help people. When I came to Homeboy I wasn’t an expert on how people reenter back into society after prison. I was forced to actively listen and not be talking and making decisions all the time.
Can you tell me about Homeboy Capital, the impact fund that you helped to create?
Homeboy Capital is our effort to grow or acquire more Homeboy businesses to employ our program graduates. We now have 13 social enterprise businesses but want to create more. Our people do very well working in our businesses, and 90% of our managers are former clients who went through the program.
I wanted to create businesses that pay more than minimum wage. Quality jobs with a decent level of pay, health benefits and upward mobility. We’ve raised $12 million dollars from about a dozen donors who wanted to invest in a business model like this one.
How many businesses has the money helped start and what are they?
The money we raised has helped some of our existing businesses, like our bakery business and electronics recycling business, expand. We also have gained seed funding for our food service business at the Martin Luther King Behavioral Health Center in Los Angeles. The food service business is already in operation with about 20 Homeboy employees.
This month we opened our first dog grooming business and want to open three more locations. We’re also contemplating a business which would focus on growing hydroponic greens in warehouses.
A florist is another possibility. All of these businesses supply jobs for people who have graduated from the Homeboy program and want permanent jobs.
What’s the most important thing you learned by working at Homeboy?
There are so many things. There are people in our society who need help and resources and trust. God is too busy loving us to be judgmental. An important lesson is to think about that every day and not be judgmental.
What was your greatest success at Homeboy?
Homeboy was successful before I came. It was successful while I was there. And it will be successful after I go. It is very successful as an organization, because it helps people in a very real way. What I’ve been able to bring to Homeboy is to help it flourish and grow, and to develop former clients into two thirds of our managers. Our folks have great natural leadership skills, but having never worked in an organization somewhere else, they don’t have managerial skills. They needed management training and to fill out their skill set. And I helped provide that.
What was the biggest challenge?
One of the most stressful challenges was finding the money and resources to do what we’re doing. If we don’t have the money to employ people, they’ll be back on the streets running with the gangs. The program is not successful for everybody, however. People are traumatized and damaged, and It’s hard for some of them to heal.
What do you hope that the two people taking over your leadership will achieve?
I hope that they will be able to move the organization into the future. You can’t face being static as an organization. You need to ask, “What does our population need, and how do you supply it?” It’s not about how many people we serve but about helping the people in front of us today.
What’s your next step in life?
I still want to be involved in Homeboy. I’m going to be a senior manager and work on some projects with them and mentor some of the managers along the way.
What’s the most important thing that other businesses can learn from Homeboy?
I’ve said all along to the business world that this is a good population to hire. They’re loyal and hard-working. Two-thirds of our managers are former gang members, and our businesses are thriving.
Editor’s note: Tom Vozzo, CEO of Homeboy Industries, experienced a profound transformation when he stepped into the margins. Initially, he arrived with his familiar sense of self, driven by ego, determination and a desire to enact change. However, he soon realized that going to the margins is not about changing others but about being changed himself.
Guided by the wisdom of Father Greg Boyle, who founded Homeboy Industries on the principles of kinship and radical compassion, Tom began to see his work differently. Father Greg often advises that true leadership begins with listening, learning and becoming part of the community – not as an outsider looking to fix, but as someone willing to stand alongside, support and uplift. Taking this to heart, Tom set aside preconceived notions of success and instead embraced the power of presence and relationship. As he also learned from Father Greg, “The ego thrives on success, but the soul finds vitality in meaning.”
As he immersed himself in the work, something deeper took hold – an awareness of the interconnectedness that binds us all. This realization softened his heart and opened him to a greater purpose. He found that true change came through relationships, by tending to his own brokenness with acceptance and engaging in community – just as we all must confront and embrace our own wounds to find healing. He came to see the shared brokenness that unites us all, revealing that transformation is not about fixing others but about standing together in mutual care and understanding.
Through this interconnectedness, he discovered joy — an essential pursuit that reshaped his path forward. The burdens of responsibility that once weighed heavily on him became secondary to the profound joy he now felt. He learned that joy is a powerful state, one that requires time, reflection and openness to cultivate. And once found, it has the power to realign everything else in life.
These experiences and more are shared in his book, The Homeboy Way: A Radical Approach to Business and Life. His hope is to reach corporate executives and others, inspiring them to truly see those in the “Forgotten America” and to join him where joy resides. This joy, once embraced, can permeate all things. He also highlights the overlooked potential of this community, emphasizing that they make dedicated, loyal and hardworking employees and offer a meaningful answer to America’s labor shortage. If you haven’t already read his book, we recommend doing so. The publisher has also made a Discussion Guide available for Vozzo’s book to facilitate further conversation on this important topic.
We also encourage you to consider attending the two-day Global Homeboy Network Gathering held at the end of July or in early August each year (2025 July 27-29). At the Gathering, you’ll gain both concrete strategies and heartfelt motivation to create or strengthen job programs for individuals reconstructing their lives following incarceration. You’ll connect with others who understand the challenges and rewards of this work, learning from their successes and leaving with actionable approaches you can implement in your own community.
