[00:00:02] Speaker A: Welcome to the Gardify Real Evidence podcast, where we cover the digital evidence landscape and how people, processes, and technology unite towards restorative justice and social impact. My name is Myron.
[00:00:14] Speaker B: And I'm Ashley. And in today's episode, we had a chance to talk to Shelly Kurtz. Among many different accomplishments to her roster, she is an award winning marketer. She's a social entrepreneur who has founded numerous social innovation organizations and initiatives. But she's also an author and has an amazing new book coming out on August 6 called this little a how to Guide for Social innovators. So today we talked through what social innovation means to her social impact and about her new book.
So, social innovation is a really big topic in our company, but also in general, it's a very broad thing that covers a lot of different organizations and different companies that are progressive in that way. But what does social innovation mean to you, and how did that influence the writing of this book?
[00:01:04] Speaker C: Okay, well, first of all, there's sort of two pieces of that social impact which, you know, we look at as the outcomes of the benefits to the well being of people and the planet, things that can improve, you know, either the, you know, the speed, the delivery, the, you know, the system in a really meaningful, quantifiable way. The innovation is the process. So, you know, anything can be innovated upon. It doesn't necessarily have to be technology. And I think that one of the things that is sort of a miscalculation in the broader sense of social innovation is that it's always about the technology. And the reality is that a lot of times, it's just putting the pieces together in a way that is a more efficient, effective process to have that social impact and be able to do things cheaper, faster, better in the process. So, in terms of social innovation, the reason that we wrote this book is to really demystify this space where it has become a convergence zone that isn't just about the nonprofit space or about traditional fields that may seem to have a more aligned social impact trajectory, whether it's in healthcare or in environmental services. It's really a way that you can think differently about the work you do at any type of organization process that has a little bit of, you know, a recipe that I think hasn't been documented fully until now. And we really came together to write the book because my co author is a professor of history and innovation studies, and he looks at the world through these sort of larger, really shifts in time and space to think about what is happening at a macro level that is different than, you know, generations before. And I think this sort of movement towards. Towards this messier definition about how to work towards impact has really provided an opportunity for us to say, let's take a time out and really start documenting the playbooks and the way in which we can think about social impact in the way to help people move forward. And we didn't start out in the work that I did creating Gardify and other companies saying, we're going to create a social innovation. It was really looking at, is there an opportunity to help people to have better outcomes? And through that process, it becomes a social innovation. So there's lots to talk about. But really, the reason that we wrote the book was to hopefully help create a bigger party, let people know, hey, the water's fine. Come on in. And whether you are a technologist or a business person or a nonprofit leader or a student coming out of college or a mid career professional, this is actually a path that has a lot of on ramps, and you just need to have the map. It's not something you need to have a particular degree in or a particular resume. Anyone can be a social innovator. And that's really the message for the book.
[00:04:17] Speaker A: Yeah, I think it is awesome. And one of the things I loved having read through it is it's not to your point, it's kind of like, hey, come to. Come in. The water's warm. This is for everyone. But the book also provides a lot of frameworks and tools, not only for thinking through it on an organization level or on, like, sort of a macro level, but also on an individual level. Like, what does this mean for you and how do you align, you know, the things you believe in and the things you want to make impact in with the places that you're going to put your time, effort, and energy into. So I thought that was really cool. Can you maybe speak to that part just a little bit more? I'm kind of, you know, really curious about it because even things like the ikagai and some of the other frameworks that as a product person, which I thought was really interesting, there's product management frameworks that I'm familiar with and agile methodology methodologies that are talked about. But, yeah, just this overlap of the individual and how you align yourself to the bigger thing. Maybe riff on that for a little bit.
[00:05:06] Speaker C: Sure. Yeah. Well, you know, I think 50 years ago, 100 years ago, it would have been a luxury to do what you love. You needed to put food on the table, you got a job because that was how you provided for your family, and the options of what those jobs were were pretty finite. You know, when I was growing up, it was, you're going to be a police officer or a teacher or a doctor or a lawyer. You know, they're very defined prescriptive pathways. And so the idea that you could do purposeful work was usually aligned to something you did in your off hours, you know, as a volunteer at, you know, an animal shelter or, you know, putting together, you know, some sort of program in your community with your church on a very personal basis. And there really wasn't this tie in to do purpose driven work that you were getting paid for, unless you're also really sacrificing, usually on the financial side. Or there was this idea, I think, even, you know, 20 years ago, that you could go work for the man, go in your corporate job and hate it and grind through it, and then later you'll go travel or do the things that you really love. And the concept of ikigai is something that really drove us to create companies that really blended the opportunity to be excited to go to work every day, not just because the work was interesting, but because it did give you that purpose. And the framing for ikigai is a japanese concept that basically means your reason for being the thing that gets you up in the morning ready to go. And it's usually represented online as a Venn diagram with sort of, you know, four concentric, overlapping circles. And that sort of squishy center is the answer to the four questions. What am I good at? What do I love to do? What can I get paid for? And what does the world need? And there's a lot of discussion in the sort of ikigai world about really how literal the japanese concept was intended to be applied in this sort of paid environment. Even Sam Ushio, who's featured in our book and has a company called ikigai Lab, you know, really talks about, well, it's not really about the payment, the sort of, you know, financial side of it. You could be living your ikigai, having a garden or, you know, being in community or doing things you love. But in the framing of sort of a career path or an opportunity to blend these things, it seems very simple. And I use the example with students or even mid career professionals a lot, that if you actually think about it, it's a little bit more complicated because, for example, there are lots of things that I love to do, like cooking and dancing and singing, and I'm terrible at all of those things from all traditional methods. My husband would tell you, I am a messy cook. There's no, you know, same dish twice. It's a little of this and a little of that. So I love it. Not very good at it. Definitely couldn't get paid for it. Definitely not something that's making the world a better place, and that's okay. And on the other side, there are things that we're all good at that we may not love. You know, I can do my taxes. I can, you know, do a lot of financial analysis. I don't like that part of the work. I'm really driven by people and connecting people to each other. And to use my sort of social capital is the way that I feel most alive in the world. And so you can sort of drill down and start recognizing it's not actually the same. There are very few things that we're all sort of coded to have as superpowers that we both love and are good at. So I think that's really the focus of ikigai. And if we can think about it that way and really be honest with ourselves, and certainly it's a luxury that others may not have. Sometimes you just have to go grid it out and do work that you don't necessarily get a lot of joy. And there are a lot of trade offs and learning. But if we can start teaching kids and employees and employers to start thinking about what is someone good at and what do they love? And also seeing that that can be a journey and an evolution. When we were creating, giving tech labs, and in the early days of building the digital evidence platform, we had certain people that were in roles that they were really good at. And over time, the joy wasn't there or what we needed changed. And so if you were a graphic designer and you loved building ux and prototypes, and then we were in the phase where there was no longer a lot of whiteboarding and sort of, you know, wire frames to build, and you're sort of in the maintenance mode that is probably no longer the right fit for you at that time. And so sometimes it was an opportunity to help people find a their ikigai, whether it was in our company or somewhere else, because I just feel like, especially as a business owner, I want everyone in my organization to be in their IK guy, and it changes. And so having those check ins with yourself, and I think as a company, if you can start looking at what are Myron's superpowers, what are Ashley's superpowers? And Ashley could probably do a whole lot of things, could probably run the whole company. However, there are going to be other people that are better suited for those things and just, you know, checking in on that. So ikigai is a framework that I think has helped us build companies, find people and putting them in the right place, and also sometimes saying, we're going to give you an opportunity to succeed somewhere else, which is going to ultimately unlock your path to ikigai. And it's a lesson sometimes people learn the hard way, including myself, where maybe, you know, you're part of a corporate layoff or in some other way are caught to a place where you go, oh, my gosh, but this is what I am. This was my identity. And now what? And I think having that grounding of saying, what am I good at? What do I love to do, and how can I make the world a better place doing it? That's really the unlock.
[00:11:23] Speaker A: I think that's really, really interesting, and it's what I like about it, too, is it kind of seems like it sets the groundwork for, like, conversations being an invitation. Like, I'm inviting you into thinking through this deeply. I'm inviting you into sort of the freedom to evaluate is what I'm doing right now. Bringing me joy is what I'm doing right now, what I think also putting.
[00:11:45] Speaker C: Guardrails on what and being honest about what you really aren't good at or you don't like. I have a friend that I've mentored and encouraged through her career, and she hates strategy work, and I love strategy. I really am not all that happy doing execution on a long term basis, and I can do both. But I know that if given the opportunity, I would love doing all the strategic planning. For her. Strategy is like, a bad word. And so she kept applying for these jobs that were always looking for strategic thinking and strategic planning. And finally I just told her, stop, and let's just instead put on your resume and your framing, you know, a master of executioner, you know, not now. We can't use words like that. I try to use them that aren't as maybe violent, but, you know, turning it into something that's really positive and being really clear about what you're good at, because she's the kind of person I could say, okay, this is where we're headed, and this is what I need. Got it? Yep. Perfect. And I'm the person that really needs to have the freedom to have those big ideas and have the partnership of someone that I know I can trust to get it done. So it's also one of those things that you can flip. It's easy to talk about the positives, but I think being honest about what we really just don't, you know, sort of love and what doesn't come naturally also creates, I think, a level of psychological safety in the workplace, because then you're suddenly not put in situations where you are stressed and bringing anxiety or just feeling overwhelmed. So, yeah, I just think some of those things, it can sound really sort of woo woo, but if you think about and apply it, it's different. And also, for our listeners, you might want to spell that word that came out of your mouth. It's not intuitive, but maybe you can type it in the notes for the episode on Ikigai, japanese word ikigai.
[00:13:48] Speaker A: Yeah. We'll actually drop a link into the show notes for you to check out if you wanted to go look into that one.
[00:13:52] Speaker B: For a lot of times, like you talked about with your friend who's not very strategic, it's hard to be self aware about the things that you don't enjoy or, you know, what you're good at, but don't realize that you're not getting anything from it, like internally, you know, so. But on top of that, what do you think are some of the qualities that go into being somebody that makes changes like that in a culture or it's a change maker in general in a social impact space?
[00:14:20] Speaker C: Well, first, I think having the intention to do good, being really intentional about that all the way through. If you want to be a change maker, it's got to come from the right place for the right reasons. And it's not to be up on stage somewhere or to check a box in your organization and say that, you know, you've donated x amount of dollars or that you've changed a system. It really needs to come from a Place where you're. The single truth is about the intention to make that impact. So I think change making is for everyone, but getting really clear about that, and there's different ways to look at it. It can be issue based. If you're really passionate about education or gender equality, you can really sort of stay in that lane and then break it down further and say, at what level is it really the right match for the kind of impact I want to have? You can have an impact at an individual level. Let's take the example of gender equality. You know, I could hire more women. I could mentor more young women. I can offer my networks. It's a very individual impact that can be quantified both in the quantity of people but also maybe in other levels of pay equity or advancement. There are different ways that you can frame that. There's an organizational level that some people will align with a particular nonprofit or charity or create their own organization, and you're really looking at it from that perspective. There's also system change, which often involves policy and thinking at a really macro level about even going upstream, perhaps on prevention, in the work that Gardify does and in child advocacy centers and even in the issue of justice, you know, you can think about, how do we reduce the incidences in the first place, and how can we look at prevention as an ultimate goal, as well as, you know, the impact of the work and, you know, protecting victims and enabling faster healing? So I think the way that changemakers need to sort of start is thinking about, is it an issue?
Is it a broader environment? Sometimes it's not issue specific. Maybe it is a certain demographic, you know, whether that is older workers or, you know, people in the global south that are furthest from opportunity. And then looking at it across issues, there's a lot of intersectionality. So I think being intentional and being specific and getting clear about what feels right and where and how you want to lean in. And then I think, you know, the ability to collaborate and create this sort of multidisciplinary approach, those are obviously words you use every day in your work, and the creation of a multidisciplinary team that is usually, you know, working cases together with prosecutors and investigators and mental health professionals. But I think in an environment where you're thinking about innovation and really changing things for the better, it's not just a business problem or a technology problem or human resources. It really means everyone working together. And some of the most fun that I ever had was being able to be around a whiteboard in a room where we had our chief scientist and our head of engineering and Dave on product or me on go to market, and all of us coming with our special secret sauce and being able to work through it together as opposed to a more hierarchical approach, to sort of saying, okay, we're gonna, you know, we're gonna build this statue, and first someone's going to create the blueprint, and the next person's going to go get the stone. It's like, what if we thought about things in a completely different way? And that's really what I think change making is in the essence, in recognizing that not all change is good. And sometimes, you know, change, for the sake of change can actually set back an organization. And so I think also being clear about those KPI's and the way that you're going to measure impact and being willing to walk away from opportunities that ultimately are not going to serve the organization or the cause in the way that you thought it was. I think that ability to be flexible, being, you know, not afraid to fail and then documenting the work and what you've tried and why it worked or didn't work. And Jeff Raikes is someone that we admire. And he and his wife Tricia wrote the forward of the book. They have their own philanthropy, the Raikes foundation. But he's someone who taught us early on that it's only a failure if you don't learn. And to go one step further, we would say, if you don't document the failure for others to learn from, and that's really a different way, especially in the western culture, for us to serve of be raw and vulnerable. Usually you want to talk about the successes or people want to write in their annual reports all the good things. And I'm just starting to now see this trend. An organization that is doing really incredible work in this space is called BRAC, and they're actually the world's largest ngo. They started in Bangladesh, and they started publishing a failure report every year. And you think about the power that comes from something like that to say, hey, here's what we tried, and it didn't work. And this is how we've learned from it and how we're going to move forward. And sometimes it's, you know, the approach, sometimes it's, you know, the people. And there are a lot of different reasons why, you know, changes sometimes don't always happen in the way you want to. But I think that ability to be humble and to learn and to help others is, is something that I think is table stakes if you're going to be in this work for the right reason.
[00:20:43] Speaker A: Have you seen in this space, examples or instances where somebody has documented something, other people have come and picked it back up and then taken it to a different. The next phase or the next thing.
[00:20:55] Speaker C: Yeah. So interesting that you asked that question. It's actually one of the products that we created after what became Gardify through that process, Louis Salazar and I, which we had created a social impact innovation lab in Seattle to basically incubate different social innovations to test and learn and try to make an impact, whether that was, you know, a specific solution for a particular problem an organization was facing that could scale to help others or just a new model. And one of the things that we wanted to do was to help guide people to have more resources than we did when we started. We had to sort of collect the data the old fashioned way. I was making calls early on and learning from forensic interviewers and learning about the market. I didn't even know the name of the market segment that we were getting into that had a name, digital evidence management, and had CAGR and stats in terms of the size of the overall addressable market. So what we wanted to do was create a platform to help future social innovators to be able to have a place where they could research what problems exist that need someone to come in and to innovate.
What are the competitive services or products? What was the existing landscape out there? So you're not recreating the wheel or putting a lot of time and energy into something, only to realize that someone else, bigger, smarter, more resourced, is already, you know, coming to market with that and then really looking at could we create a collaborative environment that took off all of this sort of pride in authorship and just looked at how to solve. And so it's now called X four I.org, which is part of Giving Compass network, which is called Giving Compass insights. And we talk about it in the book. But if you go to X four I.org today, what you'll find is a lot of data around the social impact space, which is about a $3 trillion industry.
And we talk about that in context of other markets, like software as a service or the global banking industry.
But we also have a tech for good solutions directory there. Now, early on, the very first iteration of the product, which at the time was called X for impact, there was also an ability to take these problem statements or these sort of early starter dough approaches to solve that other organizations had tried. Or even if you think about some of the innovation competitions, there's usually one winner or maybe a few grantees or awarded opportunities to move forward, like 100 and change the Macarthur foundation does, or some of these other world changing ideas. But there's usually a long tail of a bunch of work that people had put in to try to get to that top prize that could be taken forward if there was a more collaborative approach. And so we created a whole database of problems that you could search by impact area or geography and really look at what was out there. And then we wanted it to be able to be co authored. And so we created the MVP of that, where any organization could sort of say, hey, here's a problem we have, or here's as far as we got, or if we have the money or the resources. This is what we would do and that everyone could publish in real time and actually add on to that additional stats and collaborative abilities to work together.
And we thought this was going to be such a great gift to the world that, you know, you don't have to start from scratch. You could already sort of see with the white papers or the research, or even students do this a lot in college. They'll do something for a capstone project that's sort of theoretical, or perhaps they have worked with a community organization or have done research in the field. They just weren't going to actually take the next step to create the application or the innovation. It was sort of all of the pre work on the business plan and, you know, the specs. But unfortunately, what we found out is that it was a little soon, and I think we're starting to see some of that, you know, some of the LinkedIn sort of co authored posts that will sort of throw out a question and everyone can sort of collaborate and sort of co author, but it seems to be more, I think, of a private sector approach, perhaps, that we're all a little bit more willing to just sort of, you know, throw it out there. Where I think in academic circles, coming from the universities or working with college professors or even non profit organizations, there's still a little bit of like, eh, I'm not quite ready to publish out in the world. These, these things that are still sort of hypotheses where I think maybe in ten years or in the future generations, there will be this more collaborative problem solving. And fortunately, I think there's also, you know, real constraints around IP that tends to feel to me a little bit inappropriate. I'm going to say that because I think if you really are designed to solve a problem, I must say this to all the nonprofits out there, your opportunity should be to put yourself out of business because you solved the problem. And unfortunately, the economics and the incentives and the way that a lot of these organizations are structured is they don't want to work with the other organizations that are in the same issue area because they're competing for funding or resources. And so I do think that there are some opportunities that are more of a mindset shift. But specific examples, you know, I think there was one that we had featured where years before COVID a group out of University of Washington, had been working on kind of an artificial lung. It was called auto lung. And they were looking at ways that they could have a low cost ventilator in areas that were last mile areas think about, you know, rural communities or even places in Africa or very distant places where they just don't have hospitals and even personal devices to be able to readily help people that have, you know, breathing problems, you know, lung issues. And it only got to a certain point and was just sort of abandoned as sort of a concept that never really took flight. And then once Covid hit, suddenly there was this huge global demand for ventilators, right, and ways to be able to get access to people in low cost ways. And so we were able to help pull the pieces together, and they were able to dive in and get some funding and take it further. So there are some examples, but I think there needs to be a lot more of that collaboration and say, forget who started it, whose logos on it, you know, the IP in an environment of social impact, I think really needs to be looked at differently in, you know, we're not monetizing for shareholders in, you know, the same way that a private sector company needs to be thinking about IP. I think we need to really sort of open the kimono and say, hey, let's all get to work and bring our best parts of this. And there are a lot of great ideas that are just sitting on a shelf somewhere.
[00:28:41] Speaker A: Yeah, that's super interesting. I think that's a good word. And it also makes me think, like, right, there's external factors, and even in the instances you say, like, timing is one of them, sometimes it's not even. It's like, timing seems like a big.
[00:28:54] Speaker C: You can be too early and you can be too late. And I think, you know, a lot of the work that we did early on with Vita Nix, now Gardify, was a little early for the market because what we knew that technology was capable of in terms of cloud based infrastructure and a lot of the different levels of security, like multi factor authentication and even some of the biometrics, took a lot of education for the customers, you know, for these government agencies and nonprofit organizations to really feel comfortable with the cloud or with, you know, software as a service. And so I had to take a lot of those early years in really getting the market ready for what the technology had already been able to do. So it's often the right product at the wrong time. You could be ahead of it or behind it, or sometimes it's not the right product and it is the right time and it's something else. And often the other thing that I see is that sometimes you're digitizing a system that was broken in the first place. And when I talk to customers or organizations that are looking to bring in technology. Even my husband is a chief information officer at a company that is challenged with a lot of really unique opportunities to scale, and the focus tends to go directly on the solution instead of really understanding. Have you mapped the manual process or the existing process in a way that's optimal? Let's look at reengineering that for maximum impact. Then you can really supercharge it with technology and also think about what if these constraints that you're operating under now are a condition of, you know, other things that could be unlocked. So when I think about forensic interviews or the sort of chain of custody that, you know, piece of evidence goes through in our legal system, it's the way that it is because it was mandated that way, because of the constraints of an organization working in one part, needing to then drive to another place, and then these handoffs, and maybe the organization of the future looks very different. And I think there are some places that you're familiar with, like Project harmony, that are starting to co locate some of the pieces of the puzzle so that you're reducing the friction of even different interagency sort of constraints. Like what if we're all under the same tent to begin with? And so re imagining things in an offline experience can often really change the impact of the technology?
[00:31:49] Speaker B: I think something that we're seeing a lot of with, I mean, in workflows with Gardify too, is there's a broadening curiosity in a digital evidence management space or in forensic interview sharing. And I think a lot of that has to do with focus shifts on AI. And because of that, people are getting more curious about how they can leverage technology for what they do.
I get questions all the time about what else can I do with this platform that I might not be thinking about. So I do think that that's a little bit of a timing thing where people are more receptive to those changes because of just how it's changed in the landscape over the last, even year or so.
[00:32:28] Speaker C: Yeah, I mean, there was a time where you could bury your head in the sand and sort of say, nope, this is the way we always do it. We put this paper in this file folder and then we give it to Jan, and then Jan, you know, and I think with the proliferation of AI and the ubiquity of, you know, our mobile connected worlds, a sort of 24/7 environment that people are paying for their groceries, their food, their entertainment through digital handshake transactions, and they're starting to create this sense that anything is possible, which is a really good way to be able to then clear the space, because usually it's a mental challenge. The human genome inside an organization is the bigger problem, usually these mindsets. And so I love that AI is creating some seamless advancements in organizations or even industries that may have for 50 years operated very similarly. I think about agriculture, Myron, you're just saying that you have a farm, and the way that AI has changed farming is incredible. It's its own podcast, it's its own story to be written. And I can only imagine, you know, out on the range 100 years ago, you know, if they would have been able to see a time machine, you know, that Bill and Ted's excellent adventure, you know, zooming that in the future, that their fields would be plowed and their crops would be optimized from someone, you know, sitting back watching the Olympics and their, you know, in their living room, it would be mind blowing. So it's an exciting time to be part of social change and harnessing the power of technology. And like you said, the market is doing some of the work for you because you're getting people excited in a way that I think ten years ago there was a lot of fear and uncertainty, and now I think there's a lot of optimism.
[00:34:30] Speaker A: Let's talk about the importance of what I'm going to say. Messaging, but storytelling. So there's a chapter in the book that was really interesting to me, talked about embedding purpose into projects. Sort of one of the things that I recall from that is purpose driven companies have much more to do than sell products and services. And I think that this elaborates on a lot of it. What really stood out to me is, yes, because when you're going into a space and you're purpose driven at some level, if, you know, depending on where you're at in the maturity sort of spectrum, you have a product or service to sell. But really helping with the messaging, we've kind of hovered around that. Even with just talking to the market and kind of getting ahead of that. Can you talk more about how to message as a purpose driven company or what you're doing, like what should be considered when you're talking about that message or speaking to that narrative?
[00:35:19] Speaker C: Yeah, language matters, and it's often a lot more complex to simplify a message, as I'm sure you can appreciate. And one of the things that's, that we often reference was when Steve Jobs launched the iPhone. He didn't say, here's a tiny computer that can, you know, show your email, make sure you get your appointments on time, where you can message with your friends, where you can listen to music. You know, it sort of was like, hey, here's this phone that also plays music. You know, very simple. Of course, it did a million other things, but, like, what are those sort of very poignant sort of value propositions that are going to sort of bring. Bring someone to where you're at and not over complicating the message? And a lot of the times, I think, in social impact work, a unique opportunity is how to translate what, what the technology in the private sector sort of calls something or, you know, the sort of use case and traditional language with sort of the customer segment that speaks a different language. And that was also sort of one of the pieces that we tried to do with X for impact with X for I is, you know, maybe an immigration organization is looking for a way to get in touch with their constituents, to keep in touch around milestone moments. This was a real situation that happened when we were building technology.
They wanted us to build a solution for them where they could keep in touch with refugees and immigrant clients that were trying to get naturalized. And you have a five year waiting period. And often those customers had a very specific way they wanted to be contacted. Maybe it was through their aunt on Facebook or because of privacy and really fear based issues. You know, there are a lot of different ways that they needed to sort of be sensitive around contact information, and they wanted us to build a system for them. And really, the translation of what they needed, it was just an off the shelf CRM system. But they're not going to Google CRM if you don't know what a CRM is or what it could do or all of the different use cases. So to them, it's, you know, maybe a, you know, a keep in touch immigrant database or, you know, it might be called something different. And so how do you use language in a way that's powerful and the storytelling behind it? You know, I think the chapter you're referring to, which, by the way, I just got the book, so it's a real physical hard copy. You can get yours, too. But the chapter you were talking about with, you know, looking at the sort of embedding purpose into projects, we talked about a woman who created a company that was on shark tank called no limits, and there was a, you know, creative play on words. It's spelled l I m b, like a limb, because the proprietor and the entrepreneur herself needed prosthetics and wanted to be able to find clothing that she could easily put on and take off with her prosthetics. And so it's obviously then that message of no limits, of not limiting yourself and that you could do anything. You could wear jeans and you could wear high fashion clothing and do other things. So just that sort of nuanced spelling and sort of pun also kind of helps communicate the ethos of the brand and helps connect that audience that, you know, whatever they are creating or came to the brand to find, you know, a pair of pants, they're now engaged in understanding this is not, you know, a for profit company that just sort of said, hey, let me create a line of easily accessible clothing. This is in the storytelling of the message. And the person that built the company experienced the problem very close to that problem because she herself, you know, needed the solution. And so when you think about the messaging in organizations that have purpose embedded, I think you want to be really clear about the impact without it sounding fuzzy. You need to also find that ability to communicate directly because it can get overwhelming. If you listed all the features and benefit of having a mobile phone, it has nothing to do with the phone. I don't think kids even use the phone to, to call a human very often unless one of us sort of force them to. So, yeah, I think it's an evolving landscape. And, you know, certainly, you know, in all of the work from sort of a social justice perspective and the changing nature of language that we see culturally around Dei, language changes and words matter. And I think even if you start with sort of one thesis of impact or, you know, sort of a purpose that that's built around a particular problem, you want to be able to have the ability to grow and shift and change. And so it brought us to our name change. So I think you guys might have talked about it in one of your other episodes, but when I created the company with Luis Salazar, my co founder, who is a former Microsoft just technologist and product strategist and serial entrepreneur, we had to find a name. And the names, if you've never created a company, let me tell you, it's really easy to sit back and laugh at the names of companies on tv, particularly in all of the pharma, right? All of these bizarre sounding names. Name is hard because it's real estate that is usually taken. So you can come up with a thousand names and go ahead and go on GoDaddy or look at a domain search, and they're usually taken whether they're in use or pirated or someone's holding them because it was a great name, and their future idea is going to be called that. Naming is tough. So we called it Vida Nix. Vida meaning life in Spanish. And my co founder is from Venezuela. My father was a cuban immigrant, so there was a little bit of that protecting life. And Nix is a, you know, a greek nod, but it was a hard word. It didn't mean anything to anyone and became, I think, you know, problematic when you're really trying to have an understanding from the beginning about the purpose of the work, and you shouldn't need to have someone like me explain it. So I think the move to creating, you know, a broader storytelling element in the name of guardify, that you're guarding evidence that you're protecting, you know, these sort of sacred pieces of justice was a great move. But it's also tricky, too, because, you know, you can be misaligned and other, other things.
There are a few other stories that people have told me about how they feel about the name. But, yeah, names are hard. Storytelling is important, though, because once you understand the mission behind the organization, the purpose of the work, it, I think, really changes the relationship you have with a customer. And you don't want to lose that just because you have scale and have grown. And I just listened to a podcast. Have you ever listened to acquired? I don't know if you ever have done that one, but acquired is a really cool podcast. I don't know if you're allowed to promote one podcast when you're on another podcast, but I don't think there's any.
It tells the history and the story of companies. And I was just listening to the one on Starbucks, and obviously, Starbucks is a name that, you know, kind of doesn't mean anything to anyone. But. But the purpose of the Starbucks experience and the way that Howard Schultz tells it was to create this sense of community, that it was never about sort of serving beverages. It was always about connecting people in a way that he saw was happening in Europe and these little coffee houses in Italy, that the romance of the experience that is shared by people. So there are a few different ways to look at it, but I think storytelling is really important. You also need to make sure that as your company grows and new employees come on like both of you, that those stories continue. And the reason why things are the way they are is passed down. And now you can document it. But I think it's also important to hear from leadership and from founders and that the ethos of the company is in everybody's DNA. And I think clients feel that, yep.
[00:44:04] Speaker A: Which is really interesting, because there's just a really human centric thing to that. Right. There was. There was a point in time in history where stories were how generations learned from past generations just passing stories, passing stories, passing stories. So there's a lot of power in.
[00:44:18] Speaker C: Stories, and I still think it's how we learn best. You know, I think even some of the work that AI has done, Luis certainly has been a really big proponent. He's now the CEO and founder of a company called AI for social progress and, you know, using stories to help explain complex subjects, whether it's thinking about how kids could learn in school about math or complex theories, but through the lens of storytelling. And he's kind of created some prototypes where if you like science fiction and your favorite book is, you know, X Men, and you like the Color purple, and, you know, your favorite flower is, you know, a Gerber Daisy, that AI can create a story and teach you about, you know, any subject that will somehow be then told through the superhero X Men, Gerber Daisy, you know, whatever that is. And I think that's a really, really cool way to use technology and bring in the art of storytelling. But, yeah, we never want to leave out the human part of the work. It's paramount.
[00:45:29] Speaker B: So, on the topic of AI, can you just speak a little bit about what the AI for good movement is and what that kind of looks like in your work, what you do?
[00:45:39] Speaker C: Sure.
AI for good is much like tech for good. It's a tricky framing, because it assumes then, that the tool itself has the opposite effect. AI for good means there's AI for bad. And the reality is, you know, a hammer can be used to build a house or to hurt. Right. It's a tool, and it's, in the case of AI, what we talk about in the book is really the definition that I think is most closely aligned, is that AI is a life cycle. It's an approach, right. It's actually not, in and of itself, a thing. And so AI for good is a large landscape that is similar to tech for good. Some of it includes purpose built products and companies that are solving for a particular social issue. I think about chatbots in a way that could deliver mental health support to maybe kids or environments that don't have access to go to a behavioral health clinic or some of the other really nuanced, interesting ways that AI are being deployed for very specific use cases. And then there's also the ability to have a purpose built organization, whether you're a nonprofit or an organization like Gardify, implementing AI in a manner that helps you be able to deliver additional value or benefits or customization or personalization. So some of it is, you know, still sort of in development, but I think AI in and of itself is neither good nor bad. And the exciting part about AI is now anyone could have sort of the power of an engineering team behind them, which I think is really exciting when you think about access and opportunity for people that may not write code. Well, now, guess what? You don't have to write code, you know, may not have the ability to localize and customize for languages. You think about the ability for AI to speak every language where ten years ago you were building technology or even writing a website, you were having to translate every single item into the native language and work with local language speakers and all those nuances that now can be instantly ubiquitous. So we talk in the book, we actually end the book on a chapter with AI for good. And obviously, most people, I think, over the last year have become familiar with AI in the chat GPT world. And the reality is that AI has been around for decades. It's not new. What was really the unlock for AI and for people to sort of suddenly realize what we had was this consumer user interface that made it very approachable to be able to ask a question and retrieve information. And so it's really exciting to think about how AI will fundamentally change the work. But we do feature some specific case studies and obviously gardify, you're using AI for a lot of the different elements. So maybe you can talk about how are you guys using AI right now?
[00:49:05] Speaker A: Yeah, that's a great question. So right now, it's actually really interesting, too, because as a product person who's sort of been building SaaS products for the last ten years as well, the evolution happened quick, even from how the people building would think of the technology. So it used to be the big umbrella of AI. There was machine learning, there was computer vision, and that's still the case. But to your point, it's now much more complex than that. So from a gardify standpoint, we're looking at things like, how do we reduce the time it takes for somebody to review a case?
How do we, you know, from a video file or from an audio file, how do we use AI and leverage AI to help get a really accurate transcription so that somebody who's preparing for court can look at something pretty, you know, and that's going to decrease their time or their efficiency in how they're preparing for court. And then you can start to think of ways. We have a lot of ideas, and this space is moving fast. Actually, I think I had read Goldman Sachs said, and, you know, this is an adjacent type thing, but Goldman Sachs had published what are the top industries to get disrupted by AI? And this was maybe a couple years ago, and it was administrative work, and legal tech was right underneath it. Those were the top two. And so you can imagine all the workflows in all the ways, whether it's reviewing things like videos and being able to track and use object recognition to track different specific things in a video, whether that's an object itself, whether that's redacting, seeing things automatically. So there's a lot of fun right now going on, as well as a lot of trying to be very human centric on what are the most important problems that we have. Ashley, I would be curious to hear what you would add on to that.
[00:50:44] Speaker B: Yeah, I think there's also an element of we are kind of taking some of the responsibility of helping people feel like it's an approachable topic. We are helping them understand how we are using that technology to improve their workflow in a way that makes sense to them. Like, they know what a transcript is. They know how many hours it takes to manage their cases. So when we are giving them those tools in a really digestible way on a platform that in a lot of ways they already trust, it's helping them segue into a very broad landscape that they maybe don't realize they're already working in.
[00:51:20] Speaker A: Right.
[00:51:21] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:51:21] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:51:22] Speaker C: Well, I also think about one of the sort of early understandings that we had when we were looking at creating the company was that often the most challenging part is that it was human error. That would be, you know, just unintentional. Someone leaves their laptop open, or the filing cabinet that, you know, had the case files or the videos that were compromised. And so if you can reduce human error using technology like Aihdenk, it's a really nice backstop. And I think about, you know, even language. We were talking about storytelling and the importance of language. And one of the case studies that we feature in the book is a company called Wittiworks. And even just how to look at the emails that you're writing and before you send it, having the AI kind of say, hey, like, that actually is not. Is nothing an appropriate way to refer to that group of people? Or did you mean to do this instead of using a lot of masculine language, or even the one I sort of inadvertently used earlier? Hey, this has a violent undertone. When you say things like execution, maybe we could say implementation or finding other ways to use the technology to protect you from yourself. Or did you really mean John Smith instead of John Smythe or whatever those sort of nudges are that the technology can help people actually, from inadvertent human error. I think that's really exciting, right?
[00:53:02] Speaker A: Yeah, it's. It's ways that you can, it's, you know, enhance. Right. Like take what I'm doing and help. Help me make it a little bit better.
[00:53:09] Speaker C: And then I want to analytics. I mean, that's really exciting, too. When you start looking at the big data and the ability to then start seeing trends and insights in a way that could have taken humans much longer. And it's just very complex. But using AI to be able to see, are there now warning signs or similar scenarios, you think about how that could potentially change investigative policing when you could start understanding patterns and start thinking about how you can get ahead of, you know, the crime in the first place. And so there's a lot of really, really exciting developments.
[00:53:52] Speaker A: Yep. And to Ashley's point earlier, too, I just think this is worth noting. It's really interesting to think, too, because there is a timing thing, for sure, especially in sort of the spaces that garda fies in where, you know, tech aversion or, you know, the bit of like, hey, where's Skynet at in AI? And when is that coming? You know, there's always a bit of that fear, but also it speaks to the importance, and this is something we talk about a lot at Gartify, of being transparent, being principled, and then being transparent. So principally saying, hey, part of our principles are, this should be a help, this should be an assistant. This should come alongside something that you're doing and help make that better and more effective and more efficient in whatever way that looks like. And then in whatever ways that's necessary, we're going to be transparent about how that's being leveraged. Where's that data going? How's that data being used? What are we actually able to do? What are we not able to do? And then holding to the principles, even if that means where, you know, in certain situations where, you know, oh, yeah, there probably is something we can solve there, but that crosses a principle that we're not going to actually leverage data that way. So we won't do it.
[00:54:56] Speaker C: Yeah, I mean, you talk about, Ben.
[00:54:57] Speaker A: Talked a little bit about the governance.
[00:54:58] Speaker C: Part of it, you know, that transparency. And I think that it is something that we all need to be aware of how our data is being used, but also if we're not contributing to the data, we're not going to be represented in it. And so I think there is an opportunity that we want to be informed and educated about how we're engaging with technology and tools, but if we're not using it at all, it's not going to be able to have our insight, our training of the data. AI, like I said, is not a thing, it's a life cycle. But humans need to train the data and the algorithms. And so you want to understand how companies are engaging it. And it's still early days, they're going to get a lot of things wrong. And so I think we want to make sure that people also understand that this is not just to sort of check out and let machines do our work for us, that we absolutely have a role to play.
There's no replacement for the human connection and the way that we can sort of think critically about the work that we're doing.
[00:56:09] Speaker B: I came to gardify very intentionally looking for a way to integrate social impact into what I do. I have a lot of experience in the type of role that I'm in, which is customer success, support, helping customers, things like that. But I wanted to find a way to use what I know and the skills that I have that I wasn't necessarily using in my previous roles in a startup environment, in a social impact environment, in a way where I could feel like I was doing something beyond just doing my nine to five job. Like it needed to matter, it needed to make me feel fulfilled in a different way because I'm motivated by those things, by impact and helping and problem solving. So it was very much a, this is exactly what I'm looking for. I'm going to get this job and it just worked out.
[00:56:59] Speaker C: Oh, a little manifestation. I love that I'm going to get this job. Have you been seeing on the Olympics, the athletes, the way that they do their little hype up self talk? I love that you're like going to get this job.
[00:57:10] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:57:10] Speaker C: Yes. I love that. I love that.
[00:57:12] Speaker A: That's awesome.
[00:57:13] Speaker B: It's very important. I'm a very, very much of a manifest, like, look forward, see what you want, and do actual actions to get that for yourself. For sure.
[00:57:24] Speaker C: Love that. That's Ashley's playbook. I love it. Okay, Myron, what was your, yeah, the world of social impact.
[00:57:33] Speaker A: Well, here's, I guess, here's what's interesting. So by craft, I've been in product management for a decade and I kind of fell into that. That wasn't what I thought I would be doing.
But the narrative that's consistent throughout my life is I've had, I really love teamwork. I love accomplishing, accomplishing things as a team and everybody feeling like I know my role and I'm on the team, and when it's my turn to get the ball or whatever analogy you want to use, I know what I need to do and I know how to help push it and then win, lose, or whatever the outcome, that experience matters, and that's something that I can look back on and be proud of. So with that consistent thread, honestly, I had hit a point where it's kind of interesting because I think the book talked a little bit about this, but there's a lot of people in tech right now who've been laid off shifts in different things. I came from a job that I was laid off, and I had a lot of things I had interest in in terms of spaces and things I wanted to maybe pursue. But what I know now, and I didn't know then, was what I was really looking for is where can I be a part of a team where what we're chasing is something big? So I think there's, there's probably an analogy in there, but I think of it as like, what's the biggest wave to catch in terms of making an impact and where can I go? And for me, that means a few things. It means where can I go where I can talk to people who are on the front lines, where I can understand the very day to day real things. What's, what, how's this really impacting a person or a set of people or group and then, yeah, be a part of a team where it's like, we care about that and we want to go, we want to go jump on a big wave or make the wave happen, if you will, and see a better outcome. And so that in some way, like I said, I know that now, but at the time, I had laid off and I had a conversation with somebody and, and didn't really know about the company. And then once I heard about it, I was like, you know, and there's some shared experiences in my life with what Gardify stands for. And so for me, that was a very, it's kind of a no brainer. It's kind of like a, yeah, I'm done. That's cool. We're going to do that.
[00:59:45] Speaker C: That's where I'm at now. Well, I think, you know, often it forces us to move differently when opportunities change. And I know so many people that have been laid off and had their roles eliminated or, you know, companies, you know, go in a different direction. And I think that we need to change the way we talk about that in our culture. I think that it's really an opportunity to say, who do I want to be when I grow up? And now I've been given the opportunity to think differently. And sometimes you can get sort of stuck on a boat going to a place that you no longer want to go, and you sort of forgot that you had the choice to just sort of grab a life vest and move off. And so I think about that sometimes that, you know, things happen for a reason. And if I wouldn't have had a situation in, you know, the private sector that left me thinking about new opportunities, I never would have started giving tech labs. I never would have created what is now Gardify. I never would have done these things that have completely altered the sort of, you know, trajectory of my life. And hopefully, you know, had an impact on others. I know certainly the data shows the impact, but I think what matters to me is to hear stories like yours and to know that we've created places where people can find their purpose and also build some really cool technology and really have world class customer success. You're not having to trade off being in a company that really is exceeding expectations and delivering value because it has social impact. And that's one of the key messages of the book, that you can have return on investment and return on social impact, and you can do it both. So I love that you both made your way here, and I hope that we can bring a lot of others to this work. And PSA for anyone who is interested in continuing the impact that Gartify started, one of my big dreams. We call them bhags, you know, big, hairy, audacious goals. Everyone should have one. So I'm going to use Ashley's framing of manifestation. If anyone wants to join me. I would love to have a digital evidence Protection act in the US and really start codifying what we already know is missing, which is the modernization of our court system and the protection of digital evidence. And I don't care which companies you use or how you do it, it's time that we have this on the books because we have such archaic systems. It's the wild, wild west. As you know, every state and municipality does things differently. And in the time when, you know, a lot of the laws were put in place, it was early days of the Internet, and we're in a very different place now. And I would love to start with a red state and a blue state co authoring legislation to have digital evidence protection and eventually have this as a federal law. So stay tuned, boys and girls, young people of the world, and if you are interested in the Digital Evidence Protection act, let's make some change.
[01:03:05] Speaker A: Awesome. Is there a spot, Shelley, just related to that? Is this something? Are there any resources that you've already established or that you're looking to establish for people to go connect or do anything like that related to this?
[01:03:16] Speaker C: Oh, a little call to action, if you will, Myron. Well, yes, write to me. No, there's no formalized plan, but I definitely done my part in having conversations on Capitol Hill and with different legislators. And it really was just a timing initiative. But the best way to get legislation passed is to have a broad base of support and to be able to have sponsorship, you know, philosophically, not financially, but by people that represent different parts of the ecosystem. So in the world of digital evidence, you know, prosecutors and nonprofit organizations like child advocacy centers and other affiliated groups, but also victims and even those that have been, you know, justice impacted, I think that we can look at this as an issue that is protecting, you know, and safeguarding evidence, which is ultimately people's stories, people's truth, and also saving time and money that can free up, you know, our government to be able to focus on other areas of impact. And so, no, there's not a formal process. I probably just need to take the time to write down the elements and then, you know, work with, you know, my local senators. But I would like this to be an opportunity for all, again, in eating my own dog food. I do not need to be the author. So if someone out there listening, if you're a senator or, you know, a representative and would like to sponsor a bill, call me up, send me an email, connect on LinkedIn, go to thislittleworld.org, send me a note. Let's find a way. So stay tuned. That could be our next podcast talk maybe, you know, in here, I'll say we did it.
[01:05:08] Speaker A: Yep.
[01:05:09] Speaker C: Absolutely.
[01:05:09] Speaker A: Manifest it. Make it happen. That's wonderful.
[01:05:12] Speaker B: This has been so awesome, Shelley.
[01:05:14] Speaker C: Yes, of course. And I just want the face of technology to represent what we all know is true, which is that anyone can make an impact. We can all do this. You don't need to have an engineering degree, although we want to continue to have really smart engineers, but that we don't have to feel othered if, you know, we didn't come from this space, anyone can jump in and make an impact. And if you love to write or you're an accountant or you're a physician, anything can happen when we work together. And I would just say that, you know, it's really this place now where we have blurred lines between private sector companies and nonprofit. The social impact ecosystem is broad, and it takes all of us. And I love the diversity that's coming and that it's not just happening in Silicon Valley or from, you know, guys in an ivory tower, that a lot of this work is coming from people that see something that needs to change, give a damn and do something about it.
[01:06:19] Speaker A: That's wonderful. Shelley. Thanks so much for taking the time to speak with us today.
It's just been awesome, and the book is amazing. So thanks for documenting your learning and your knowledge and your experience over the years and sharing it with everyone.
[01:06:33] Speaker C: Thank you so much.
[01:06:34] Speaker A: Thank you so much for listening to today's episode. We hope you really enjoyed it. Shelley was great. We highly recommend that you pick up a copy of Shelley's book again. It's called this little World, a how to guide for social innovators. It'll be available August 6 everywhere. You can pre order it now through Amazon or wherever you want to go look for your books. You can visit thislittleworld.org to learn more about the book and everything that Shelley's up to. Please consider subscribing to this podcast, liking it on whatever platform you listen to. Please check out YouTube and if you're a youtuber, go there. You can find us. Subscribe to our channel there where you'll get updates as well. And if you're interested, for whatever reason, gartify as a solution for your office. You can also reach out to us. We'd love to at least have a conversation with you. You can do that by emailing
[email protected] or just reach out to us on LinkedIn. We're happy to meet you on whatever platform.
[01:07:25] Speaker C: You're Athenae.
