WHO WE ARE

Our Mission

Domestically produced high-quality, sustainable panels that
create jobs, life skills and opportunities for released felons

Crossroads Solar is built on the belief that otherwise good people make colossally bad mistakes. Time spent in prison and criminal records can ostracize people from opportunities. Jobs and housing become a daily struggle, leading many prior inmates to return to crime and prison.

At Crossroads Solar, we aim to break this cycle. Our goal is to produce perfect solar modules with imperfect people, and in the process revolutionize the way we think about crime and punishment and US manufacturing capabilities.

Our employees are released felons who have served their time and earned the opportunity to reenter the workforce with dignity. Many of our team pursued a college degree in prison through the Moreau College Initiative, and demonstrated that they can function as good productive members of society. The videos below provide a sense of who benefits from opportunities like Crossroads Solar.

Core Values

Crossroads Solar was founded on the idea that a business can maximize on three Ps: People, Planet, Profit.

While our company's primary focus is on the people, we recognize that profitability provides the means to focus on the people, and without a stable planet, little else matters.

People
At Crossroads Solar, people matter most. We provide our employees the necessary income and life skills to successfully earn their way back into society. Making a strong living wage with benefits, our team is empowered by the opportunity for work and the dignity that comes with skilled labor.

Of equal importance to us are our customers. As a small, American-based team, we are committed to personal detail and stand behind our product with a 25 year performance warranty.

Planet
Crossroads Solar produces solar panels for the alternative energy industry because we understand the importance of safeguarding the plant. Our company is committed to supporting the transition from a carbon to a non-carbon society as a means to make our planet a little less warm and more environmentally and socially secure. This puts us at the forefront of many faith based and international initiatives to secure the planet for our children.

Profit
At Crossroads Solar, we believe that the income hierarchy between the top of the company and the bottom should be close to flat. As such, our President's salary will remain within 5% of what an employee on the factory floor makes. Our profit is in the employees that we help; therefore, as part of our people commitment, financial profits are shared across the workforce.

M E E T

Our Founders

Patrick Regan
President

Martin Whalen
Vice President

Patrick Regan has spent a career in academia as a professor of political science and peace studies. Pat ended his academic career as a professor at the University of Notre Dame; he started it as an assistant professor at Canterbury University in Christchurch, New Zealand. In between, Pat worked at Binghamton University in Upstate New York.

Teaching with the Moreau College Initiative in the Westville prison for several years reshaped Pat's role as an academic. Throughout his career, Pat has written five books and 50 or 60 academic articles. One book focuses on the politics of climate change and in many ways the research for that book developed his thinking about the importance of solar energy and laid the foundation for Crossroads Solar.

Pat is also a hobbyist furniture maker. Most of his furniture comes from the Arts and Crafts tradition (Stickely, Green and Green; some Shaker). Before diving into the solar business, Pat made a couple solar modules in his basement, just so that he could fully understand the process.

Marty Whalen worked at his family-owned third-generation business in the office technology field. The business was sold in 2012 and he continued to run the business for five more years, eventually retiring in 2017. He is presently working at the University of Notre Dame as the Career Program Manager for the College of Arts and Letters.

Marty graduated from Notre Dame in 1982 and earned an MBA from Olivet Nazarene University in 1991.

Marty and his wife Kathleen have a passion for social justice. Kathleen runs the yoga and meditation program at the Moreau College Initiative within Westville's prison, and Marty has taught at the prison since 2015.

In some ways, society hands prisoners a life sentence making life difficult for them even after they have paid their debt and are released. Looking for a way to positively impact men after their release, Marty and Kathleen became involved in Crossroads Solar.

Together, Marty and Pat are complements on the business and the social aspects of Crossroads Solar. They each come with the verve that drives the mission; Marty has the business acumen that builds on Pat’s Ivory Tower ideas.