Fit To Navigate

Year Founded: 2018

Fit To Navigate’s creates lasting change for women within the criminal justice system by providing tools and training to increase their well-being and develop an entrepreneurial mindset. 

Fit to Navigate (FTN) addresses the entrenched “poverty-to-prison pipeline” that disproportionately affects women, the fastest-growing segment of the U.S. prison population.

Without trauma-informed support, unaddressed trauma, poverty, and post-release discrimination send two-thirds of formerly incarcerated people back within three years. FTN intervenes with an 10-week evidence-based curriculum integrating mindful movement, meditation, and trauma-responsive coaching that shifts mental models from “inmate” to “architect of economic freedom.”

It professionalizes wellness by preparing participants for nationally recognized fitness credentials, while its “Train-the-Trainer” model develops Navigators who lead programming from within the prison walls. Demonstrating savings of $3.3 million annually to Ohio, FTN advocates for wellness-centered entrepreneurship as a standard for national rehabilitation.

Fit to Navigate (FTN) grew out of Personal Fitness Navigators when founder Racquel “Rokki” Bonner stepped inside the Ohio Reformatory for Women to answer a challenge: Erica Row, a “Lifer,” alongside other incarcerated women, had written hundreds of proposals advocating for fitness-based entrepreneurship inside the facility. Recognizing her own past in these women and realizing how easily she could have been in their position, Rokki showed up authentically to build a holistic wellness program tailored to their needs. What began as a response to Erica’s persistence has evolved into a movement: FTN now delivers evidence-based wellness education and national certification pathways that foster an entrepreneurial mindset, achieving  0% recidivism rate among graduates.