After being released from prison in 2013, Bryan Winters wanted something different for himself. 

More than 10 years later, Winters, 42, is now a single dad who has primary custody of his four children. He has a house and a full-time job as a community health worker.

And Winters has found numerous ways to use his skills and experience to help people who are where he has been.   

A new path

“They say ‘pull yourself up by your bootstraps’ – but then give me some boots. I don’t have any boots,” Winters said.

“I’m in no way saying everything that happened in my life is my fault,” Winters said. “But at the same time, there are some things that I could’ve done differently."

For about two years, Winters has worked for a Milwaukee-area hospital, helping connect those soon to be released from prison to medical care in the community as well as other resources, including food, clothing and housing.

His journey has not been without challenges. 

Winters excelled in grade school, skipping the last half of seventh grade and going straight to eighth grade. But he hid this side of himself to fit in, acting one way at school and another way with friends and neighbors back home. 

“It was like I had to be two different people,” he said. 

Winters and his siblings lived in various neighborhoods on the North Side. Poverty was a constant. 

Winters and one sister were the only ones among his siblings to graduate from high school.

"I decided to struggle"

Within a couple of years of graduating – 10 days after turning 20 – a decade’s worth of stints in prison began. 

Looking back, Winters said things should have been different.

“Even though academically I did great, the guidance counselor did not pull me aside and say, ‘You should go to college,’” he said.

But in 2013, “instead of getting back into the things that I previously was doing, I decided to struggle,” said Winters. 

After being released, “it took some time for me to really expose myself to society, because I still had the experience kind of like PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder), and certain things would trigger those thoughts and make me feel less than a human being,” Winters said.   

“So I had to try to figure out what it was that I wanted out of life and who I was as an individual and not who society portrayed me as,” he said.    

A desire to help others

Eventually, Winters decided to pursue his passion for helping people and began working with adults with physical and cognitive disabilities. 

In 2015, he earned an associate degree in human services at Milwaukee Area Technical College. Shortly after, he received a substance abuse counselor-in-training certificate.     

There is a serious and ongoing need for this work, Winters said. 

When people leave incarceration, they often report inadequate medical care during their time inside as well as a poor understanding of their medical needs, Winters said.    

“Quite often, these individuals use the emergency room as a form of primary care,” he said.

He also serves as a “circle keeper” at Project RETURN (Returning Ex-incarcerated People To Urban Realities and Neighborhoods), a nonprofit that supports and provides resources to returning citizens.

“His passion really drives how he interacts with people,” said Amanda Smit, program coordinator at Project RETURN. “He also has a calming, peaceful spirit that I feel is very important in this work.”

Dr. Laura Hawks, a primary care doctor and health equity researcher at Froedtert & the Medical College of Wisconsin, sees the same passion and concern.

Hawks met Winters about a year ago, and they continue to meet informally to discuss their work.

“He has really good ideas about what people need in terms of basic material needs but also how a community health worker is best suited to help train, lift up other people and actually be the person in the center of that re-entry process,” she said.  

Winters is working to create a model in which services are designed and provided by those who have the lived experience of incarceration.

By doing so, said Winters, people returning from incarceration will be able to “stand on their physical and mental health ... and not be giving up because society is looking at you, saying ‘oh you did this.’”