Before I tell you the story of Brandon Flood and how he became the most unlikely secretary of the Board of Pardons ever appointed in Pennsylvania, just meet him.

I've heard you call yourself Urkel Brandon.

Yeah, the two personas.

So it's the regular Brandon who can be profane and

has his natural foibles, and then it's Erkel Brandon. You remember Erkel, right? From that 90s sitcom,

Family Matters, the nerd, the guy with glasses and suspenders. You wear a bow tie like every day, right?

Yeah, yeah.

Ironically, every day except Sunday, the day where I should probably have a bow tie on.

For years, these bow ties helped Brandon keep a secret.

People usually perceive that my true background is completely different than what it is.

The secret was Brandon's rap sheet, the decade he spent in prison for selling drugs and carrying guns.

When Brandon talks about having two personas, he doesn't just mean on-the-clock Brandon and off-the-clock Brandon.

He's talking about the tension

between the mild-mannered bureaucrat he is now

and the fiery teenager he was before.

It's a side of himself he's only just started to talk about,

even though he's been in state government for nearly a decade.

I want to be judged based on the quality of my work, content, and my character. We all harbor our own biases.

So when you hear something about someone that completely blows your socks off

or causes you to view them to a different lens, you tend to treat them differently.

So the objective was always to get as deep in the state government before I revealed my story.

Now this pardoned ex-Kahn has become the secretary of the board of pardons in his home state,

...