JACKSONVILLE / RETHREADED / INSPIRATION
Kristin Keen
A future
of her own.
The working life of Rethreaded.
By Rob Urban
The first
ninety days.
The first ninety days at a new job can feel awkward under the best circumstances. There are names to remember, procedures to learn and some mysterious communal agreement about which refrigerator shelf is available.
At Rethreaded in Jacksonville, the first ninety days carry different stakes. The organization employs survivors of human trafficking, and its introductory period is designed around the practical demands of beginning again. A three-day working week leaves room for appointments and other obligations. Training accompanies employment. There is an option to move into full-time work after that initial period.
I admire the care in that arrangement, and in founder Kristin Keen’s decision to build a workplace around it. A job can be a significant opportunity, but a person still needs a way to take it. Rethreaded puts attention into the transition itself.
In an August 2026 account of the program, the organization described five women joining its new cohort. It also reported a waiting list of more than fifty survivors. Those two numbers put the mission into focus: meaningful progress for particular people, alongside much more work to do.
Before
Jacksonville,
Kolkata.
Keen’s experience with employment as a response to exploitation began overseas. Rethreaded’s organizational history records a 2002 trip to India with Word Made Flesh and her co-founding of Sari Bari with Sarah Lance in Kolkata in 2006. She later established Mukti Imports in Jacksonville, connecting customers with goods produced by organizations including Sari Bari.
Rethreaded emerged from that experience and from relationships in Jacksonville. Its timeline places the organization’s beginning in 2011. In 2012, Load King donated a 2,600-square-foot building for offices, production and warehousing. The first round of survivor hiring and training followed that November.
Those details give the early enterprise a useful shape. There were goods to sell, customers to reach, space to prepare and employees to hire. The work required the ordinary machinery of a business, organized around a social purpose.
The organization’s account of its beginnings also describes Keen building relationships with women locally, including through prison visits. The need she identified was a supportive workplace in which women could earn money and develop skills.
Work worth
buying and using.
Rethreaded’s work includes textile products, retail, operations and toffee production. These are different forms of employment, with different skills and responsibilities. They also connect the organization to customers whose purchase creates another piece of work to be done.
That exchange is part of what makes the model interesting. A customer receives an actual object. Someone has made it, checked it, moved it through inventory and prepared it for sale. The person doing that work contributes skill and judgment to something with a purpose beyond the workplace itself.
Rethreaded accepts donated T-shirts for use in handmade products and describes volunteers helping prepare upcycled materials. There is a satisfying practical quality to that process: something already in circulation becomes material for another use. The transformation involves labor that deserves to be recognized as labor.
That expectation can be respectful. It recognizes the makers as people with abilities, whose work is worth buying and using. The most compelling part of a social enterprise is often found in that ordinary transaction.
A kitchen
in Springfield.
Rethreaded moved into its Delores Barr Weaver Campus of Hope in Jacksonville’s Springfield neighborhood in October 2021, after purchasing and renovating the main building. An industrial and training kitchen opened in 2024, creating another setting for production and learning.
An industrial kitchen is a particularly concrete investment. It means equipment, preparation areas and the capacity to make food as an organized operation. The cheerful finished box of toffee comes after a series of tasks that have to be done carefully and in sequence.
The campus page also describes further rehabilitation and expansion as an ongoing ambition. The place has developed in stages. Each completed part creates possibilities for the next, while also creating responsibilities for maintaining what already exists.
Listen to the people
who know the work.
Rethreaded’s employment program extends over three to five years. Its August 2026 account describes individual and group therapy, departmental training and survivor feedback used to improve the program. That last element deserves particular attention. People who have experienced the program can identify what new participants may need.
In a 2017 interview with Karen Brune Mathis, Keen described employees bringing friends into the organization. She recognized that a survivor’s recommendation carried an authority her own invitation could not.
Expertise comes from several directions inside Rethreaded. Survivors have knowledge of their own lives. Staff members bring professional skills. Experienced employees can help people arriving after them understand the workplace.
Rethreaded also shares some of its learning outside its own walls. A December 2025 description of its training work distinguishes Keen’s presentations on purpose and potential from Gloria Love’s training on trauma-informed workplaces. The distinction gives each person’s contribution its proper place.
Love’s work asks employers to consider how experiences of trauma may affect workplace interactions. Keen brings the perspective of someone who has spent years combining nonprofit work with business activity. Together, those subjects reach beyond a single production floor.
An organization can become a place where knowledge accumulates. The practical questions recur, people try approaches, and experience helps improve the response. Sharing that learning is another form of contribution, especially when the people doing the teaching remain connected to the daily work.
She could sit back
and see it growing.
One of Keen’s favorite memories, shared in a 2025 anniversary interview, came during a staff meeting. Other leaders were discussing an idea. Sitting back, she realized how many people now held the mission with the same care she did.
I find that moving. When something matters intensely to you, sharing responsibility can feel risky. There is a particular generosity in being delighted that other people can carry it forward, including people whose experience gives them insights you could never supply.
In the same conversation, she credited hiring Jason Jones with bringing the corporate experience she lacked. Her pride was in the strength of the team. That helps explain why the workplace matters: people can arrive needing an opportunity and grow into people the organization needs.
The future
belongs to her.
In a March 2026 essay, Keen described her purpose as helping people recognize and act on their potential. Her account connects her years in India with the work in Jacksonville and with her more recent speaking and teaching.
Potential can be an airy word. In this setting, it has useful company: employment, training, support, a place to work and time to develop. Those concrete arrangements give the larger aspiration something to stand on.
The waiting list still matters. Growth involves several linked responsibilities. More opportunity requires customers, operational capacity and support services that can keep pace.
In Jacksonville, that attention has taken the form of a workplace. People arrive with histories that cannot be reduced to a hiring form. They learn, contribute, earn and develop plans of their own. The future belongs to them. Rethreaded’s work is to help make room for it.
About Kristin Keen and Rethreaded
What is Kristin Keen’s role at Rethreaded?
Kristin Keen is Rethreaded’s founder and chief executive officer. The Jacksonville organization combines employment with training and supportive services for survivors of human trafficking.
Where is Rethreaded based?
Rethreaded operates from the Delores Barr Weaver Campus of Hope in Jacksonville’s Springfield neighborhood. The organization moved its operations there in October 2021.
What kinds of work does Rethreaded do?
Rethreaded’s work includes making and selling textile products, operating retail and inventory functions, and producing toffee. Its campus includes an industrial and training kitchen.
Sources: Rethreaded’s history, program descriptions, campus information and published interviews; Kristin Keen’s March 2026 essay; and Karen Brune Mathis’ December 2017 Jacksonville Daily Record interview. The cohort and waiting-list figures refer to Rethreaded’s August 2026 account. Reflections on work, dignity and leadership are Rob Urban’s.
For more of my writing, or a conversation about the story your organization wants to tell, meet Rob.