The White Collar Conference Returns With a Mission: Pardons, Expungement, and Restoring Dignity

There is a particular kind of silence that settles over someone who has served a federal sentence. It is not the silence of having nothing to say. It is the silence of having said too much already — in courtrooms, in intake interviews, in the small hours of a bunk where you replayed every decision that brought you there. It is the silence of wondering whether the world will ever let you be anything other than the worst thing you have done.

On October 11, the second annual White Collar Conference will break that silence in a way that matters. Organized by the White Collar Support Group and hosted on Zoom from 9:00 AM to noon, the event carries a subtitle that doubles as a thesis: Pardons, Expungement, and Restoring Our Dignity.

It is free. It is virtual. And it might be the most honest three hours of criminal justice programming you will encounter this year.

A Lineup That Takes the Subject Seriously

The conference opens with a keynote from Jeffrey Toobin, the CNN legal analyst and author whose latest book, The Pardon: The Politics of Presidential Mercy, published by Simon & Schuster, examines the history and politics of presidential clemency in America. Toobin is not a casual observer of this topic. His work traces the clemency power from its constitutional origins through its modern politicization, and his presence signals that this conference is not interested in soft platitudes about second chances. It is interested in the mechanics of how mercy actually works — and how often it doesn’t.

From there, the program moves into territory that is both legally significant and deeply personal. Brent Cassity, host of the Nightmare Success Podcast, sits down for a fireside chat with Joe Bankman, a Stanford Law School professor whose life became global news when his son, Sam Bankman-Fried, was convicted in one of the largest financial fraud cases in American history. Bankman will discuss the impact of his son’s prosecution on his family and his own experience navigating public scrutiny — a conversation that promises to be raw, uncomfortable, and necessary.

The midmorning panel on pardons and expungement brings together three of the most respected voices in clemency scholarship. Professor Mark Osler of the University of St. Thomas School of Law, a former federal prosecutor who co-founded the Clemency Resource Center, will be joined by Professor Rachel Barkow of NYU School of Law and Professor Doug Berman of Ohio State’s Moritz College of Law. Moderated by Jeff Grant, the panel will examine the critical distinction between presidential pardons and expungement and make the case for federal expungement legislation — a conversation that has gained urgency as the collateral consequences of conviction continue to follow people decades after they have completed their sentences.

The conference closes with a panel titled “Restoring Our Dignity,” moderated by Drew Chapin of The Discoverability Company, featuring Pamela Winn, Michael Gaines, and Gina Pendergraph — individuals who have lived the experience and are now working to help others rebuild. Dr. Erin Frey of the Yale School of Management will also present early findings from her Professional and Personal Restoration Study, conducted in partnership with the White Collar Support Group, adding an empirical dimension to what is often treated as purely anecdotal.

Why This Conference Matters

There is a growing body of evidence that the consequences of a white-collar conviction extend far beyond the prison sentence. Employment discrimination, housing barriers, professional license revocations, and the quiet social exile that follows a federal case — these are not theoretical harms. They are the daily reality for tens of thousands of Americans who have completed their sentences and are trying to move forward.

What makes the White Collar Conference unusual is not that it acknowledges these challenges. Plenty of advocacy organizations do that. What makes it unusual is who is in the room. This is not a conference about formerly incarcerated people. It is a conference with them. The White Collar Support Group, founded by attorney Jeff Grant, operates as a peer support community for individuals who have been through the federal system. Its members include former executives, professionals, business owners, and ordinary people who made decisions they cannot undo and are now doing the work of rebuilding their lives.

That distinction matters. Criminal justice reform discussions too often treat the people most affected by the system as subjects rather than participants. The White Collar Conference inverts that dynamic. The scholars bring the legal frameworks. The advocates bring the policy proposals. But the people who have actually lived through the system bring something that neither scholarship nor advocacy can replicate: the knowledge of what it actually feels like to try to put a life back together when every institution seems designed to prevent it.

The Harder Conversation

It would be easy to frame this conference as a feel-good exercise in redemption narratives. It is not. The people involved are clear-eyed about the fact that the individuals in this community made serious mistakes — in many cases, decisions that harmed real people and real institutions. There is no minimizing that. The conference does not ask anyone to forget what happened. It asks a different question: Is a person’s worst decision the final word on who they are?

That question has legal dimensions — pardons, expungement, collateral consequences. It has practical dimensions — employment, housing, professional licensing. And it has a dimension that is harder to quantify but no less real: the psychological and social experience of trying to rebuild an identity when the world has already decided who you are.

The fact that a Stanford law professor, a CNN legal analyst, and scholars from NYU and Ohio State are willing to sit in that conversation alongside people who have worn federal khakis says something about where criminal justice discourse is heading. It is heading toward a recognition that reentry is not a niche issue. It is a systemic one. And it requires systemic responses.

Attending

The 2025 White Collar Conference takes place on Saturday, October 11, from 9:00 AM to 12:00 PM ET on Zoom. Attendance is free. The event is presented by the White Collar Support Group and Progressive Prison Ministries, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit, with sponsorship from Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison LLP, the ABA Criminal Justice Section, the Women’s White Collar Defense Association, the Association of Certified Fraud Examiners, and more than a dozen other legal and advocacy organizations.

For those who work in criminal justice, practice white-collar defense, or simply believe that the conversation about what happens after conviction deserves more oxygen, this is three hours well spent.