January 10, 2025 – As Acivilate, Inc. celebrates its TENTH ANNIVERSARY, it’s been quite a journey with many new opportunities ahead. Ten years ago, tablets were new and controversial in jails and prisons. Many supervision staff didn’t have an agency-approved mobile device. The idea of “an offender” having even read-only access to any of their information, let alone a voice, was shocking to many. So much has changed, and we are so thankful to the visionary agency leaders who joined us and guided us and shared their needs and wisdom with us along the way. We are still combining technology, psychology, and compassion, as our first ever website said; we’ve just learned so much more about how that can be done.
This year, we’ll spotlight the work of partner agencies and other courageous leaders and share learnings from our experience, but I want to take a moment now to recognize our original core team. While everyone has moved on to other opportunities or retirement, we wouldn’t be here without that firm foundation. They deserve a huge thank you!
Darryl DeFreese, CTO, conceived the information architecture and brought tremendous wisdom from his prior experience as a company founder who successfully sold that company. He also led the team and established our SOC-2 compliance and security architecture.
Terry Wolf, Dir. Agency Relations, applied his decades of experience in public safety, corrections, IT, and government administration to instill a culture that understands our customers’ operating environment and mindset. The law enforcement accountability model he shared was always balanced with the human services empowerment mindset of Dr. John, so Pokket became not “Either / Or” but “Both / And.”
Dr. John W. Smith wore many hats - educational, technical, and clinical - and forever shaped our thinking around the evolving relationship between staff and clients. Because of Dr John, Pokket is built to support the Tex Sample transition model from “things done to me, to things done for me, to things done with me,” and ultimately, using Vygotsky’s Scaffolding, to allow a person to do things by themselves. The model of growth through empowerment remains foundational in Pokket’s design. The goal is responsible self-sufficiency in thought, decision, and action, not just of finances.
Murali Narasimhan was our first developer, willing to tackle anything, and with strong backend skills. His ingenuity allowed us to cover much more ground than larger teams commonly achieve. Murali worked remotely, so wasn’t in the photos, but was always present. He provided honest assessments of the effort something was likely to take, and established realistic expectations. That is such a precious talent in a development leader.
Ilya Polyakov was our lead frontend developer, having joined us as a designer. In addition to writing code, Ilya is a kindred spirit with Dr. John in always considering deeply the impact on the participant’s privacy and freedoms. He was never afraid to speak up if he thought something might conflict with a policy or design objective.
As a team, we developed tremendous respect and appreciation for each other, our different viewpoints and experiences. We were united in our mission to Transform Second Chances through empowerment, accountability, and information-sharing.
Congratulations Team!!