Joseph Shaw

Joseph Shaw age 37 is the current executive director at a local nonprofit in Albuquerque called  Fathers Building Futures. Their mission  is “to ensure parents experiencing barriers from incarceration have the best opportunities for stability: emotionally, socially, and financially”, the project is training men with tremendous barriers to succeed in New Mexico’s workforce. Joseph Shaw is a proud father of three children Joseph 14 Destani 5 & Adrian 1 and has been married to his wife Kayleigh for the past 6 years

Joseph started with Fathers Building Futures in December 2012 as a client. Fathers Building Futures is a local nonprofit that focuses on providing on the job training individuals (Fathers) returning home from prison. While incarcerated he started taking the parent reentry classes through Fathers Building Futures to be eligible to participate in the incubator program upon his release.

Upon his release from incarceration Joseph knew he needed to make a decision to change his life around to get away from the drugs and crime that he was used to. A former Heroin / Meth Joseph knew he had to make a change, and make it fast as he was looking at doing  8 1/2 years in prison. So he committed his life to working with fathers building futures to make a better person out of himself and a father to his son at the time (Joseph) Fathers Building Futures provided him every opportunity to get the work skills needed to re-enter back into New Mexico’s workforce he participated in mobile power washing, auto detailing, furniture upholstery, small engine repair, but found his calling in the custom wood shop after about 2 years in 2014 Joseph was offered a position as Woodshop supervisor then Fathers Building Futures started offering a fast track CDL program in 2015 in partnership with Roadrunner Food Bank where Joseph then was able to obtain his Class A commercial driver’s license which enabled him to be eligible to drive routes for Roadrunner Food Bank across the state taking food to our local food pantries, storehouses, and picking up and dropping off donations. After that in 2016 Joseph felt like he needed more to grow so he got his OSHA 10 and then got an OSHA 30 supervisor level training along with NCCER basic construction safety training (40 hours) he is also a certified CPR first aid AED instructor and has a certificate from DOT certifying him as a train the trainer in passenger securement. In 2017 a position became available for Operations Manager Joseph graciously excepted it as his growth with Fathers Building Futures seemed to be going pretty rapidly. He was still working with his wife to get their family in a better place of sustainability being that he and his wife are both convicted felons they were not eligible to find a decent place to live. So they decided to do something about it and participate in Fathers Building Futures 12 week financial education class in partnership with WESST they were able to participate in an ID a program (individual development account) it is a 4 to 1 savings match towards education, school, or purchasing a home, of course, they decided to purchase a home. In March 2018 Kayleigh and Joseph closed on buying their first home A couple months later the Founder and past Executive Director  of Fathers Building Futures Emet J Ma’ayan had decided to follow his vision of always wanting to fathers building futures to be ran by felons supporting felons and decided to step down as Executive Director and handed off the position to Joseph and with his team who all have a felony backgrounds now run the organization.

When asked why Joseph decided to volunteer his time to be a Board Advisor he said “I believe in VIANTE’s mission because as New Mexicans it is important that we hold each other accountable and wants New Mexico to be a place where his kids get quality education He wants our neighborhoods to be safe and he wants her state to be recognized equal to the attention that other states get.