Our Vision

We envision a world where people who face systemic barriers to employment achieve personal, economic, and collective empowerment through self-employment.

Self-employment can be empowering. The benefits include making your own schedule and having greater choice and control over the work you do.

But people need support to get there, especially when challenges like trauma, discrimination, and different learning needs are part of your reality.

Using real-world wisdom, peer support, and the science of online learning, we help users achieve their vision of success.

Our Mission

To empower individuals with mental health challenges around work to achieve economic independence and personal recovery through self-employment.

At Reclaiming Employment, our goal is to help prepare you for the logistics and emotional ups and downs of business ownership. Furthermore, entrepreneurs with diverse perspectives create meaningful employment opportunities for others in their community, helping to promote prosperity, equity, and inclusion.

Voices of the RE Community

  • Success!

    I have a business plan! When I started, I never would have believed I could do it.

  • Goal:

    I would like to feel less alone in the difficulties and process of starting a unique and societally-complicated business, alongside health and mental health struggles. I hope to have a real plan that can actually work and feels like I might survive actually doing it.

  • Success 💖

    I did not know there was this much support out there

  • Goal.

    Finding meaningful work that is spiritually based and flexible has not been the easiest to find. I aim to create an atmosphere similar to the one that has helped me in my own recovery because I know that it works and has worked for many people searching for hope and an end to addictive cycles.

  • Success!

    Enjoyable and educational content that hit it right on the mark for what i need to learn and grow to evolve and start my own business

  • Success 💖

    Because everything gets easily scattered in my brain, especially something as overwhelming as all the things that need to get done to be successful in starting a business. RE was helpful because it kept me focused on small chunks of information over the last several weeks. I now have a stronger foundation for this, and am less easily scattered because of that.

  • Success 💖

    I found the individual and group coaching to be so helpful. As someone with ADHD, I do better with a person, rather than a self paced course. In general, I don’t do well with self paced courses.

  • Goal:

    My goal is to create a business plan that supports the community, my soul care, and my ability to generate income to support independent living.

  • Success.

    I managed to already start my business with the information and support given, when before I felt intimidated and unsure about how to do so.

  • Goal.

    I need a business plan to move forward. That will allow me to establish goals and direction. I have the name, know what I want to do, have my license, but no direction. I'm a CPSS and I've been struggling with some mental health issues here lately and feeling overwhelmed.

  • Goal.

    I am looking to provide services for peers who may not be able to go out in public to receive peer support. I would like to create a business plan that offer services that people could be in their own comfort zone and receive personalized services which peer support would provide.

  • Success!

    I know that I would not have gotten this far into the process and come up with this business plan without the course.

  • Success.

    It had a lot of information that I didn’t even think of. I had no clue how to even start a business plan before this course

  • Success 💖

    I have the confidence that I was lacking moving forward with my business now. I had the knowledge but overthought everything making it far more difficult than it needs to be. I really just needed someone to tell me that I truly can do this and how to make it all a reality; and this course did that.

  • Success 💖

    It wasn't just the steps but how the steps related to my personal story I found most helpful. For example getting capital is a challenge of its own, but exploring how asking for capital related to myself and my personal story allowed me to start getting a better plan to remove barriers internally as well as externally.

Business support from people who have been there.

Reclaiming Employment is run by a California corporation called Live & Learn, Inc., which is owned by Dr. Laysha Ostrow. Since 2017, we have received multiple grants from U.S. Department of Health and Human Services/Administration for Community Living to develop and test Reclaiming Employment. You can read more about the research we have conducted below.

Meet the Team
Meet the Team

Reclaiming Employment was created by a team of people with expertise in self-employment, vocational rehabilitation, instructional design, and social policy. The majority of these team members also have lived expertise through their own struggles to sustain meaningful employment and redefine success according to shared values of inclusion, empowerment, self-determination, and peer support.

Laysha Ostrow -

Pat Nemec -

Joana Arcangel -

Lynnae Brown -

Juan Velez Court -

Tracy Green -

Keisha Patterson -

Kila Robinett -

Giovan Bazan -

Vince Caimano -

Iden Campbell -

Rita Cronise -

Chris Hansen -

Leah Harris -

Ke Kai Kealoha -

Chacku Mathai -

Daryl McGraw -

Emiley Morton -

Gary Shaheen -

Laysha Ostrow - Pat Nemec - Joana Arcangel - Lynnae Brown - Juan Velez Court - Tracy Green - Keisha Patterson - Kila Robinett - Giovan Bazan - Vince Caimano - Iden Campbell - Rita Cronise - Chris Hansen - Leah Harris - Ke Kai Kealoha - Chacku Mathai - Daryl McGraw - Emiley Morton - Gary Shaheen -

Backed by rigorous research.

Because of Reclaiming Employment, I feel more emotionally prepared for self-employment.

Reclaiming Employment has been shown in multiple, federally-funded research studies to improve Entrepreneurial Self-Efficacy and to help users achieve their business goals, including completing a business plan. Entrepreneurial self-efficacy is the belief that “I can run a business.” It was created using participatory action research and curriculum co-development strategies, which center lived experience and diverse stakeholder perspectives in the research and development process.

Identifying needs using research and lived experience

In 2017, we conducted an environmental scan, interviews, and a survey of business owners. Most survey respondents were operating very small, unincorporated home-based businesses on a part-time basis. We found that people chose self-employment seeking freedom and work-life balance, and identified needs related to lack of basic business information and access institutional support to operate a business. Reclaiming Employment came out of this research, and the lived experiences of our stakeholder advisory group.

Developing and testing a go-at-your-own pace prototype

After we created a working prototype, we conducted a pilot study with 97 users in 2022. In the pilot study, active engagement with the platform was significantly associated with increases in entrepreneurial self-efficacy (confidence in your ability to perform business tasks), particularly in areas like planning and gathering resources. Higher self-efficacy is linked to better employment outcomes. Participants expressed a desire for more face-to-face interactions with mentors and peers, and so with this knowledge we created the REcoach Peer Business Coaching curriculum.

Environmental Scan Results
Environmental Scan Results

Creating manualized peer business coaching and ‘gold-standard’ evidence

In 2025, we conducted a randomized trial with 165 users who experience disability and health-related challenges. They were assigned to either use the Reclaiming Employment program on their own, or work with a Peer Business Coach through our 12 week REcoach curriculum. About a third were also given no services, and placed in a control group so we could look at the impact of Reclaiming Employment compared to the usual conditions people face in the community.

While full results are forthcoming, preliminary analyses indicate that both groups - those who accessed Reclaiming Employment on their own, and those who worked with a REcoach - had superior gains in Entrepreneurial Self-Efficacy compared to the control group.

The REcoach participants also experienced enhanced willingness to ask for help, and to feel that support supports outside of Reclaiming Employment were helpful.

Pilot Study Results
Pilot Study Results