Pageant Queen to Drug QueenPin to Purpose — Jennifer Rogers' Fenced In No More
What happens when you interrupt a job interview to confess you just walked out of federal prison?
When I sat down with Jennifer Rogers for the Nightmare Success podcast, I expected a tough story. What I got was something that left me sitting in my car afterward, just processing. Jennifer went from homecoming queen and cheerleader to federal inmate—and somehow fought her way back to build a life helping others do the same.
”I Just Got Out of a Maximum Security Federal Prison”
Jennifer’s job interview should have been straightforward. Fresh start. New life. The interviewer was in a suit and tie, everything going well. Then she did something most people would never have the courage to do.
“I just need to interrupt this interview because I want to be honest with you about who I am,” she told him. “I just got out of a maximum security federal prison. I was a drug dealer and a drug addict and I’m not that person anymore.”
His mouth hung open. She didn’t know what to say. He definitely didn’t know what to say. The silence stretched until he finally broke it: “Holy shit, I wasn’t expecting that.”
They laughed. He talked to the company owner. They hired her.
That moment captures everything about Jennifer—the willingness to own her past without letting it own her future. But getting to that interview took a journey through hell that started in the most unlikely place.
From Cheerleader to the Most Wanted List
Growing up in Somerville, Georgia, Jennifer had the kind of small-town life people write country songs about. Church every Sunday. Lunch at grandma’s house. Sports, cheer competitions, beauty pageants. Her older sister was the rule-follower. Jennifer came in “second born just on fire”—the kid with the larger-than-life personality who never met a stranger.
But beneath the surface, something was building. Her parents’ divorce hit when she was a teenager, shattering the illusion of the “perfect family” everyone saw. She moved schools, won the Miss Armuchee High School pageant as the new girl (which didn’t win her any friends), and started partying on weekends. Nothing serious at first—just drinking and smoking weed with the country boys.
Then came Tracy, her manager at Claire’s in the mall. Tracy had this wild hair stacked with scrunchies, and she was stealing merchandise to trade for methamphetamine. When she brought a young, attractive guy from Atlanta to the store—someone who looked like he had his life together—Jennifer’s curiosity won.
At 17, she tried meth for the first time.
The drug made her stomach hurt initially. But after another attempt with different people, she was hooked. The feeling of being able to conquer anything, the weight loss (which fed into her existing body image issues), the illusion of control—it all clicked into place for someone already living a double life.
Forty-five days before her senior graduation, Jennifer fell asleep at the wheel and crashed into a privacy fence. When the police searched her car, they found meth. The arrest made the front page: “Miss Armuchee High School arrested for felony possession of methamphetamine, says she’s going to school on a Sunday.”
Her parents showed up at the jail as a united front for the first time in years. Their deal: we’ll bond you out if you go to Wynwood, a psychiatric hospital. Jennifer refused, got bonded out by friends instead, and the downward spiral accelerated.
She got pregnant. Dropped out of school. Got her GED. Married her daughter Madison’s father when he joined the military. Moved to Washington state and got clean for almost a year—until their marriage started failing and she came home for Easter.
One hit turned into full relapse.
Dancing in Atlanta, Dealing in Rome
With rent to pay and a daughter to support, Jennifer walked into a strip club in Atlanta having never been inside one in her life. “I need a job,” she told them. They hired her on the spot.
The first table dance? She didn’t even know what that meant. Was she supposed to dance on top of the table? One of the other dancers explained it was a lap dance. Embarrassed and overwhelmed, she asked the bartender for Valium. Once that kicked in, she danced all around that club and walked out with $700 from one shift.
For a year and a half, she drove back and forth between Rome and Atlanta, living in a luxury apartment, leaving Madison with babysitters, and using more frequently. The double life expanded—now she wasn’t just using, she was dealing to support her habit and lifestyle.
The Feds were watching.
When they finally arrested her, they had everything. Recorded phone calls. Surveillance. Bank records. She was looking at significant time in federal prison, and this time there was no talking her way out of it.
The woman who once panicked about being called a number in county jail was heading to maximum security.
Prison broke her down in ways that finally forced Jennifer to see what everyone else had been seeing for years. She wasn’t the person managing a secret. She was an addict who had lost everything—her freedom, years with her daughter, the future she’d once imagined.
But something shifted inside those walls. She made a decision that her life was about to start over.
When she got out, she didn’t hide. She didn’t make excuses. She walked into that job interview and laid it all out because she knew that the only way forward was through complete honesty—first with herself, then with everyone else.
Today, Jennifer is the founder of the National Women’s Prison Reform Coalition, the visionary behind Rise Up Media, and the host of the podcast Fenced In. She does sales training, speaks at events, and wrote a book called The You Within. She’s helping other women find their way out of the same nightmare she survived.
That moment in the job interview—the willingness to risk rejection for authenticity—that’s the real Jennifer. Not the homecoming queen. Not the addict. Not the inmate. The woman who owned every piece of her story and decided that her past would become her platform instead of her prison.
For more, watch the full episode: