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White Collar Conference

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The White Collar Conference is an annual online event for people who have been prosecuted for white-collar crimes, their families, and the professionals who work with them. It is organized by the White Collar Support Group, a peer support nonprofit founded in 2016. The first conference was held in October 2024. It runs once a year on a Saturday morning in October over Zoom.[1]

The conference is built around a single idea. People who go through a white-collar case often lose their jobs, their professional standing, and many of their relationships, sometimes before they are ever sentenced. The program treats that isolation as the central problem and uses the event to connect people who have lived through it. Most of the speakers and panelists have been prosecuted or incarcerated themselves.[2]

Overview

The White Collar Conference grew out of the weekly meetings run by the White Collar Support Group. The support group was founded in 2016 by Jeff Grant, a lawyer who served federal time for an SBA loan fraud connected to the 2001 period.[2] After his release he was ordained and began running a peer group for others facing similar cases. The group meets every week by video and has held hundreds of meetings since it started.[3]

The conference is the group's main public event. A regular legal conference covers the practice of law or corporate compliance. This one does not. It covers what happens to a person after the case is over. Sessions deal with employment, professional licensing, banking access, mental health, family strain, and the paths back to ordinary life.[4]

Organizers have pointed to federal recidivism data as part of the reason the event exists. Studies have found that roughly half of released federal offenders are rearrested within eight years. The conference treats reentry barriers, unemployment, stigma, and untreated mental health as factors behind those numbers.[4]

Format

The conference is free to attend and held over Zoom. It runs on a Saturday morning in October, from 9:00 a.m. to noon Eastern Time.[5] The three-hour program mixes a keynote, a fireside chat, panel discussions, and short video segments. Audience members include people with their own cases, family members, defense attorneys, academics, policymakers, and members of the public.[1]

Focus

A few themes come up at the conference every year.

Isolation and community. The program returns again and again to the loneliness that follows an indictment. Jeff Grant has said the isolation often starts well before any prison time, when people lose work, friends, and sometimes family after an arrest.[2]

Employment and professional restoration. Sessions cover the practical wall that people hit when they look for work with a record. That includes losing professional licenses, getting cut off from banking services, and employers who will not hire someone with a conviction.[6]

Legal reform. The conference promotes the idea of a federal expungement law. There is no statutory way to clear a federal conviction at present, and the event has hosted scholars working on legislation to change that.[1]

Accountability. The support group asks members to take responsibility for what they did. Its stated mission is to help people make amends and move forward.[7]

White Collar Conference 2024

The first conference took place on October 19, 2024. Its theme was "Starting Over: Out of Isolation and Into Community." Hundreds of people attended.[7]

Author and coach Craig Stanland hosted the event as emcee, with opening remarks from Jeff Grant.[8] The keynote was a fireside chat with David Israel, founder and CEO of GOOD PLANeT Foods, interviewed by Brent Cassity of the Nightmare Success podcast. Israel talked about going from incarceration to running a fast-growing plant-based cheese company.[2]

Three panels filled out the rest of the program. The first, "Out of Isolation," was moderated by Bill Baroni, the former New Jersey state senator whose "Bridgegate" conviction was overturned by the U.S. Supreme Court in 2020. Its panelists included Theranos whistleblower Erika Cheung, defense attorney Elizabeth Kelley, and Seth Williams, the former Philadelphia district attorney who served federal time for bribery.[8] The second panel, "Healing Through a Supportive Community," was led by counselor William Sansing and focused on emotional recovery.[8] The third, "Careers and Reintegrating into Society," was moderated by Grant and dealt with finding work after a conviction.[8]

The conference also premiered short video segments, including one on reputation management and another on starting a business after prison.[8] The law firm Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison LLP sponsored the event.[4]

White Collar Conference 2025

The second conference was held on October 11, 2025. It kept the focus on personal restoration and added more sessions on federal expungement and presidential clemency.[1]

CNN legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin gave the keynote. He spoke about his book The Pardon: The Politics of Presidential Mercy (Simon & Schuster, 2025), which looks at the history of the presidential clemency power.[1] Brent Cassity then interviewed Joe Bankman, a Stanford Law School professor and the father of FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried. Bankman spoke about what his son's prosecution did to their family.[1]

One panel, moderated by Grant, brought together scholars from the Federal Expungement Initiative, a coalition pushing Congress for a federal expungement statute. Its members included Mark Osler of the University of St. Thomas, Doug Berman of Ohio State, and Todd Haugh of Indiana University.[5] The discussion drew a line between a pardon, which forgives but leaves the record in place, and expungement, which would remove the record. Federal law currently offers no expungement path.[1]

A second panel, "Restoring Our Dignity," featured support group members talking about rebuilding their lives. Its panelists included Pamela Winn, Michael Gaines, and Gina Pendergraph.[1] Erin Frey of the Yale School of Management also presented early results from a study on how people recover personally and professionally after a justice-related setback, conducted with the support group.[6]

Paul, Weiss returned as lead sponsor. The American Bar Association Criminal Justice Section, the Women's White Collar Defense Association, the Association of Certified Fraud Examiners, and the Legal Action Center also signed on.[1]

White Collar Conference 2026

In late 2025 the White Collar Support Group announced that the third conference would be held on October 10, 2026. Speakers and panels had not been named at the time of the announcement.[7]

Who attends

The conference is open to anyone, and it draws a mix of people. Some are facing charges or have already served time. Others are family members trying to understand a relative's case. The rest are professionals with a stake in the field, including defense lawyers, prison consultants, academics, and reform advocates. Because the speakers tend to have personal experience with prosecution, the program functions partly as a public-facing extension of the support group's weekly meetings.[1][3]

Frequently Asked Questions

Q: What is the White Collar Conference?

The White Collar Conference is an annual online event for people prosecuted for white-collar crimes, their families, and the professionals who work with them. It is run by the White Collar Support Group and is held each October over Zoom. The first conference took place in 2024.


Q: Who organizes the White Collar Conference?

The conference is organized by the White Collar Support Group, a peer support nonprofit founded in 2016 by Jeff Grant, a lawyer who served federal prison time for loan fraud. The group runs weekly video meetings and uses the conference as its main public event.


Q: When is the White Collar Conference held?

The conference runs on a Saturday morning in October, from 9:00 a.m. to noon Eastern Time. The 2024 event was held on October 19, the 2025 event on October 11, and the 2026 event is set for October 10.


Q: How much does it cost to attend?

The conference is free and held over Zoom. It is open to people with their own cases, family members, attorneys, academics, policymakers, and the general public.


Q: Who has spoken at the White Collar Conference?

Past speakers include GOOD PLANeT Foods CEO David Israel, former New Jersey senator Bill Baroni, Theranos whistleblower Erika Cheung, CNN legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin, and Stanford Law professor Joe Bankman, the father of FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried.


Q: What topics does the conference cover?

The program focuses on what happens after a white-collar case ends. Sessions cover employment barriers, professional licensing, banking access, mental health, family strain, federal expungement, and presidential clemency.


See also

Nightmare Success Guides

References

  1. ↑ 1.00 1.01 1.02 1.03 1.04 1.05 1.06 1.07 1.08 1.09 "White Collar Conference Set for October 11 Featuring Jeffrey Toobin and Joe Bankman". Corporate Crime Reporter. Retrieved June 3, 2026.
  2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 2.3 "First-Ever Conference for White Collar Justice Community to be Held on October 19, 2024". EIN Presswire. Retrieved June 3, 2026.
  3. ↑ 3.0 3.1 "White Collar Support Group to Hold Historic 500th Weekly Meeting, Mon., Jan. 19, 2026". PRWeb. Retrieved June 3, 2026.
  4. ↑ 4.0 4.1 4.2 "New Conference Seeks Better Outcomes for White Collar Offenders". The Daily Caller. Retrieved June 3, 2026.
  5. ↑ 5.0 5.1 "White Collar Conference 2025". Eventbrite. Retrieved June 3, 2026.
  6. ↑ 6.0 6.1 "White Collar Support Group Launches New Criminal Justice Reform Initiatives". EIN Presswire. Retrieved June 3, 2026.
  7. ↑ 7.0 7.1 7.2 "White Collar Conference". White Collar Support Group. Retrieved June 3, 2026.
  8. ↑ 8.0 8.1 8.2 8.3 8.4 "White Collar Support Group to Host White Collar Conference 2024". EIN Presswire. Retrieved June 3, 2026.


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