Chris Goodwin, my friend and the founder of Exonerated Movers, sits at a white table behind a microphone, headphones on, in a black cap and a black shirt that both say EXONERATED. His right hand is open in the middle of a sentence. That is the frame at the top of this post, taken from the recording of The Looking Forward Show, and I was not in the room. Behind him hangs a wall of show posters from PhillyCAM, the community media center at 699 Ranstead Street in Philadelphia. I’m Harry Hayman, and I made the introduction that put Chris in that chair, then missed the taping because I had to be somewhere by five. In my September 30 post about the launch I wrote that I would rather Chris tell his case in his own words than have me summarize it. For an hour, he did.

How the Hour Came Together

On Monday, October 5, I sent Jeffrey Abramowitz, who hosts the show, the company’s website. Jeff wrote back that same morning. He would love to have Chris on, and a cancellation had just opened a taping slot for the next afternoon at four. I connected the two of them and told them I thought it would be good exposure all around. I planned to be in the studio to support them both, but I had to be somewhere by five and could not make it. Jeff told me afterward it was a great show.

The episode aired in October on PhillyCAM TV and WPPM 106.5 FM, which is how the company’s In the News page lists it. On October 21, Jeff sent me the StreamYard recording of the show, about an hour long, and I forwarded it with a single request: can we all please share this man’s incredible personal journey? This post is my attempt to do that properly, with the story the way Chris told it.

Twelve Years, in His Own Words

Chris grew up in South Philadelphia, went to Southern, which is South Philadelphia High School, and told Jeff he is an Eagles fan. Then he got to where the story turns. Around 2011, he said, he was locked up for a homicide he did not commit. “Falsely accused.” It took him twelve years to fight for his innocence, and he won his freedom in February 2023. His own Our Story page says it the same way: “I spent twelve years fighting to prove my innocence.”

Jeff asked him what the word exonerated means. “It means you’re innocent, you’re free.” A second chance at life, Chris added.

He lost his trial in 2013, he told Jeff, and was sentenced to life without parole. His family was in the courtroom. He took notes through the whole trial, and he knew it was not fair. “My whole thing was I need to fight.” A few seconds later: “I was on a mission.” The mission started in the law library.

His Our Story page fills in what came next. Once his court appointed appeals were exhausted, he writes, he honestly believed he would spend the rest of his life behind bars, but he refused to give up, taught himself the law and kept fighting. On the show he added that when his case reached federal court, a lawyer from the Federal Defender Association wrote to him right away and came to see him, and it felt like he had help.

He refused to let anger set the pace, because anger pulls you off the one goal that counts, which was coming home. “I always looked at the system like it’s a business.” Asked how he got through it, he said, “I did my time like I was coming home.” The day it ended, he said, a judge told him he was free to go. He was released that same day, and he told Jeff he could not believe it.

Coming Home Is Its Own Fight

The biggest challenges, he said, were money, housing and figuring out where you fit in. No fund is waiting to pay you for the years you lost, he told Jeff, and you have to fight for that too. He lived with family and started looking for work right away. An advocate helped him get every document back: his ID, his birth certificate, his Social Security card, his driver’s license and his passport. Anyone who has replaced one of those knows what it means to need all five at once.

His first job was cleaning airplane cabins at the airport. The airport’s background check flagged him anyway, and his lawyer had to send proof of the exoneration. That detail stays with me. Even with his name cleared, the paperwork followed him to his first job. His first paycheck was about $400 a week. “It felt good, ‘cause I earned it.” I would put that sentence in front of every hiring manager in Philadelphia. The first thing he ate when he got home was a cheesesteak, and the first game he wanted to see was the Phillies.

What came next is the part I find most useful, because it is not dramatic. He spent about a year as a helper on trucks for a food distribution company, learning how the trucking business works, then did an internship, then started his own company. He formed an LLC, got his EIN, the right licenses and the insurance, started on gig apps, and then reached out to companies for steady work. He learned from Instagram, from asking questions, and from a friend who had started a company and showed him the steps instead of doing them for him. The pattern I notice is that Chris studies first: the law in a law library, then the trucking business from the inside before he started a company of his own.

Why He Started a Company Called Exonerated

In 2026, he told Jeff, while he was doing a lot of moving jobs, people coming home kept calling him and asking for work. He saw how much people coming home need a way to earn, so he started a company specifically for them. The numbers behind those calls are old but blunt. In a 2018 analysis of federal survey data from 2008, the Prison Policy Initiative put unemployment among formerly incarcerated people above 27 percent, higher than the total U.S. rate in any historical period, the Great Depression included.

He hires by referral, and new hires run their own background checks. He has had no trouble hiring people who are coming home. “They actually showed me that they want to work.” Jeff asked whether the name scares customers off. Chris said he has never heard that, and his answer to the stigma is plain: “I try to show up, do the work good, communicate good, be professional.”

Success, he said, is about the people who work with him. “Success to me is that they keep working and keep trying.” He knows many people from his background who started their own companies and never went back. Community support is extremely important, he said, so that people coming home do not feel like outcasts with nowhere to go. His goal is to take Exonerated nationwide, and looking five years out he sketched partnerships with reentry programs, work with the city and more jobs.

What He Told the People Still Inside

Chris had advice for two audiences at once, the people still inside and the people just coming home. The system will not do it for you, he said, so work on yourself, improve yourself, teach yourself. “Find your lane and run it.” For people just home, he said time moves fast out here, take your family’s help but do not overburden them, and use it as a stepping stone. He talked to his daughter every day while he was inside, and he recorded himself reading books to her.

He rarely gives media interviews, and he told Jeff why he said yes to this one. “Because the people need to know what’s going on. They need to see that there’s a company out here that’s trying to contribute and trying to help the community.” His last words on the show were thanks: to me, for helping him push the company, to his family, and to “the people that’s still incarcerated fighting to come home.” I will take the thanks, but the work is his.

The Host, the Station and the Question

Jeffrey Abramowitz, JD, is the founder and CEO of And Then What Consulting Group and the host of The Looking Forward Show, which its own site describes as Reentry Radio Philadelphia. His U.S. Chamber forum speaker bio lists reentry roles in Philadelphia and across Pennsylvania. His firm’s about page says every accomplishment should be followed by one question, “And Then What?”, and its examples include a person who returns home from incarceration. It also says his lived experience within the criminal justice system gives him a perspective that is uncommon among consultants.

The setting fits. PhillyCAM is a nonprofit community media center dedicated to expanding access to media tools, training and platforms so more people can tell their own stories, and WPPM 106.5 FM is its noncommercial low power community radio station. PhillyCAM describes the Looking Forward series as bringing justice to the airwaves, Tuesdays at four, with guests who work in or are affected by the criminal justice system. PhillyCAM’s episode listing, “83 Exonerated Moving”, names Jeff as host and Chris as the featured guest, and asks what happens after an exoneration. The same question links the two men’s work. The Exonerated Movers launch page says, “We will be working with And Then What Consulting to help support the whole person, on the job and beyond it.”

Watch It, Then Hire Him: A Note From Harry Hayman

Start with the hour. The StreamYard recording is where you can watch it, about an hour with Chris from start to finish. Then send it to one person who ought to hear Chris say these things in his own voice.

Then hire him. Exonerated Movers, formally Exonerated Movers: Moving and Logistics, is a Philadelphia company. The Exonerated Movers services page lists office and commercial moving, junk removal and cleanouts, same day courier, hourly labor and property services for landlords. Of the labor service it says, “You rent the truck, we bring the crew.” Every job starts with a free written estimate, and there is no deposit to get a quote. You can book a free estimate by picking a day and an arrival window, call or text (484) 441-6197, or email [email protected].

A court can give a man his freedom. What happens next is up to the rest of us. In Chris’s case, what happens next has a phone number: (484) 441-6197.

Chris Goodwin Tells His Own Story on The Looking Forward Show