is a cofounder of the Good Men Project and a coeditor of the book "The Good Men Project: Real Stories From the Front Lines of Modern Manhood"

I'm sitting in a 100-year-old, concrete-slabbed classroom, deep within the bowels of Sing Sing maximum-security prison in New York. I have just met Jose, Orlando, "Shorty," and 11 other men dressed in green uniforms. Each has served between 15 and 32 years.

I recount my story - the moment that defined me as a man - and how it led me to the Good Men Project, an initiative my business partner and I began to foster a national discussion about what it means to be a good man.

I have come to Sing Sing to make a point. Whether you are in shackles or trying to deal with a kid with autism or tell your hard-boiled dad that you love him, the struggle to be a good man is the same. It requires facing the truth about ourselves, no matter how painful, and then doing something about it.

When I have finished telling my story, each inmate reflects on his own turning point as a father, son, husband, and man.

One inmate recounts how he shuffled down a hospital hallway in shackles, two heavily armed guards on each side, to see his mom for the last time.

The nurses begged the guards to take the shackles off so he could hug his mother goodbye, he whispers with tears in his eyes. When they wouldn't do it, the nurses put a towel over his wrists. Not being able to hug his mother goodbye on her deathbed became a defining moment for him, he says, causing him to go back to school and become a better man even while incarcerated.

When I first walked into the room, paralyzed by fear, an inmate had kindly brought me a cup of coffee and smiled. Now I notice his wedding ring and wonder how you stay married when you are in Sing Sing for life. He talks about the day his wife brought their 3-day-old son to the visiting room. He held the baby for a fleeting moment before going back to his 10-by-5-foot cell. Just the smell of his baby changed him, he says. He has dedicated himself to his son, who is now 12, by getting an education and refusing to succumb to prison culture. He understands this cannot make amends for the people he killed, but it's all he can do.

In a previous lifetime, I would have recoiled from these men. I was chief financial officer of a huge company, rarely contemplating what kind of man I was. But that was before I learned the hard way that a big house and a big job don't mean jack. My mistakes weren't criminal. They were personal. I got thrown out of the house for being a drunk and a bad father of two baby children. That was the moment when shame caused me to consider suicide rather than facing what I had done wrong.

I'm in Sing Sing because of Julio Medina. We have 31 contributors in our book from all walks of life: black, white, rich, poor, gay, straight, famous, and ordinary. All are an inspiration to me, but Julio inspires me most.

Julio explained when we first met that in Sing Sing, violence surrounds you. When someone is stabbed, your life depends on getting away from him. Blood on your uniform means you have two options: Talk and then be killed by another inmate, or go to solitary for refusing to talk.

Six years into a life sentence, after witnessing man after man get stabbed, Julio was changed forever by an attack.

"Guys were jumping over the body and the pool of blood. When I got to the man, he was bleeding out onto the floor and, I swear to God, I could not walk over that blood. It was like something was pushing me to look at this man, look at what was happening here."

Julio got out after 12 years and started the Exodus Transitional Community, the most successful program in the country to keep men coming out of maximum-security prison from going back. In the 10 years since his release, he has touched the lives of more than 5,000 men. Count me among them. Meeting Julio changed my view of inmates and manhood.

I have seen firsthand the power of men telling the truth, spilling their guts. Talking about that moment when everything changed and they had to face a new reality because their child died or their wife left them or they lost a job or they watched men killed in Iraq. What does it mean to be a good father, a good husband, a good son, and a good man even under the most extreme circumstances?

As I stand to leave, these men with stories to tell approach to ask that I inscribe a copy of The Good Men Project. They have wept openly in the last three hours. And so have I.

The married father is the last to approach. My final thought before leaving is that we are not different, this murderer I am hugging and I, the former CFO.