Katherine Cerda knows what it is like to have every door slammed shut.
Like her, thousands of women in Chile who leave prison experience the same thing: nearly half reoffend before completing a year of freedom, not because they want to, but because no one gives them a chance. Rodrigo Agliati and Paolo Garbarini understood that in 2018, when they founded Las Condenadas, a cookie factory in the Independencia commune of Santiago, created to employ women who had served their sentences or were still serving them.
Today, eight people work under the same roof, guided by a four-word philosophy: laughter, respect, responsibility, and reintegration. Their butter, coconut, and almond cookies are no longer sold only at their own shop: they have reached the shelves of Líder supermarkets, and the brand has become a strategic supplier to Walmart Chile. Every package that leaves that warehouse is proof that a second chance, when it is real, can change everything.
