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Hello and welcome to Tony martignetti non-profit Radio. Big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent. I’m your aptly named host. Oh, I’m glad you’re with me. I’d get slapped with a diagnosis of silicosis if you mentioned the bird brained idea that you missed today’s show grip succeeding as a woman in tech, Our panel takes on the common challenges facing women in tech as they share their own stories and reveal lots of strategies for succeeding in this overwhelmingly male dominated career. They’re Marissa Lopez, Sarah Chico, Tammy Lau and Aparna Kothari that’s recorded at the twenty nineteen non-profit Technology Conference and Great Ideas, also from nineteen ninety Sea. We get methods for generating strong, even breakthrough ideas every day with help on how to choose and implement the best ones. Our panel is God’s piela Jackson and Morsi ry. I’m Tony Steak to thank you. We’re sponsored by pursuing full service fund-raising, data driven and technology enabled Tony dahna slash pursuing by where you see Oppa is guiding you beyond the numbers regular cps dot com by tell us turning credit card processing into your passive revenue stream. Tony dahna slash tony tell us, and by text to give mobile donations made easy Text. NPR to four four four nine nine nine Here is grit succeeding as a woman in Tech. Welcome to Tony martignetti non-profit Radio coverage of nineteen ninety Sea. That’s the non-profit technology Conference coming to you from Portland, Oregon, at the Convention Center. This interview, like all our nineteen ninety si interviews, is brought to you by our partners at Act Blue Free fund-raising Tools to help non-profits make an impact. This topic is grit. Succeeding as a woman in tech panel is all tech leadership. Women beginning with Closer to me is Marissa Lopez. She’s director of account management, presents product group, then. Sarah Chico is director of technology. Social Impact of Presidents Prat Presence Product Group. Tommy Lau is senior self sales force. Energy engineer Tommy Lau is a senior sales force engineer. Social Impact Presents product group and Aparna Qatari is director of technology operations, a global citizen year. Technology. Women Welcome. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Technology leadership with women. Welcome. That’s what way women in Texas. They’re succeeding as a woman in tech. This’s not. This is not a panel of lackluster professionals. A panel of successful professionals Important to make the difference makes a distinction. All right, um, let’s talk down the end there. A partner. Thank you for sharing Tammy in a partner. Thank you for sharing Mike’s. The panel is so big, but I didn’t want to exclude anybody, So let’s start with a partner, you know, Give us Give us the headline. Give us the headline in the lead. What is it? What does it take to be, uh, to remain as a successful woman in tech not to get there We’ll get we’LL get to the get there But what does it take to remain st Stay, Stay as successful as you have been I think because you know where you are, right? I think we’Ll probably have slightly different answers with this, but probably with an underlying theme of community and finding a community that you resonate with that you could be comfortable with. One of those communities for us is amplifying. We are working with people with underrepresented voices in tech and so we have in person groups, online groups. But the fact of having a group of people who you can be yourself within share yer challenges with I think something about being an underrepresented voice and tigers when you’re in the workplace. You sometimes don’t want to show that you don’t understand something. Don’t know something are are kind of not faltering but are struggling a little bit. And so it’s been really nice to have a community of people where you can show those struggles, get support, get riel. Resource is without judgment, without judgment, with pretense. So that has to me that has been kind of a game changer. Tammy, would you want to add anything to the community? Sense of the importance of community? Yeah, absolutely. I think I wholeheartedly agree with what partner said. Just finding this community specifically amplified. But other women in tech communities as well has really made my life as a woman in tech so much easier, so much more fulfilling and has really helped me to get to where I am today. Andi organization is amplify. Is that right? Yes, amplify were amplified out, or ge amplified dot org’s okay there. Pointing to Marissa was where assuring the amplify shirt. But everybody doesn’t have the advantage of the video. Yeah, most of our audience is podcast, right? So So what’s that make sure? Amplify. It says amplifying. Yeah, that’s right. We are amplified out. Organs are website in the name of the group. Example. Five. Okay. Okay. Um so, Sara, let’s let’s get you in on the headline. Anything more than community? Uh, probably. I think perseverance and hard work and diligence are are kind of traits that I feel I’ve had to exhibit and had to be strong at in order to succeed and continue succeeding more, though more so than male counterparts, do you feel on the persevere inside, Absolutely absent, really persevering over what persevering over the challenges that come as being a woman in technology, in having managers that don’t understand necessarily how to relate to you or how to speak to you properly, or how to kind of bring out the best in you being having to do that on your own essentially and kind of overlooking, you know, various slights and or obstacles that are put in your way because you’re a woman and not similar to your male counterparts. What are some of those obstacles? Pay disparity, promotion disparity? You know, I was once told, yes, it’s true that you’re better than your male counterparts. And yes, it’s true that they all are making more than you. But it would just be too hard to re calculate the pay scale at this point in time. So we’re just going to leave it as is when this is done. That’s your trouble line. Herbal example. Yeah, too much trouble. It’s just one minor example, but it’s been like that. I have a master’s degree in computer science. I’ve been in Tech since the nineties, and it’s gotten better, but it’s still definitely not all the way better. Okay, because there is a stereotype that people are guys. Yes, guys become computer scientists. Yes, I was a graduate teaching fellow and out of a class of one hundred twenty six students, one was a woman. Reza. Yes. What do you want to say to introduce this? What do you want with the headliner? So what comes to mind for me is the title of the session, and so it’s it’s really what Sarah said around perseverance like to be the word grit, little shorter little fun, more fun and a little more edgy, but really is about the same thing, right? So to be gritty. I mean, if you think about Grigg, you’re thinking about, like, a piece of sand in your eye you’re thinking about, like, you know, biting your tongue. You’re thinking about surviving something they, you know you’d rather just bail out on. I think all of that, really. You know, they’re analogies for the experience of being a woman in technology. Um, some of the common challenges other. Certainly. Sarah listed a couple of poignant and illegal leased. The pain started challenges, Uh, other challenges. Are you willing to open up to any personal I mean, get personal, But what’s happened to you personally as a professional, uh, that I don’t feel comfortable talking about on this radio cast, but I will say that toe piggyback on what they all were saying about community, I think one of the big challenges is also just around being vulnerable and not being able to be vulnerable in the workplace. And that is one of the reasons we need our community. The vulnerability aspect. Yeah. All right. All right. Okay. Anybody wantto respond to what I you know? Like what? What you faced Shuriken in general. So as you mentioned Yes, the stereotype of programmers and developers. Being men is a constant challenge. I’m fighting whenever I’m in a space with other developers. I always have to to feel like I have to prove that I am also a programmer. And over that, yes, I do belong there. Yes, I don’t look like you. Yes, I do indeed. Write code, you know, so that constant mental energy of having to prove myself and altum to convince others I belong, you know? So there’s that that costs to my tio, my energy and my time that there’s that men don’t have to do, don’t have to expend Yeah, partner, I think for me I think a lot about the role of assumptions, both assumptions that are placed on us. But once that we have placed on ourselves just based on how way have been raised in a society as such. And so I think about how we were talking about how your first job out of college, that salary really sets you on a path of, you know, Sal er, promotions and salary raises and how you start off when I think about the wage gap. We’re starting off at a disadvantage for no reason other than our gender perceived gender. And I just get the assumptions role of has really made it made it more challenging, but also made it harder. Tio Excavate what the challenges for? Because it’s so ingrained in my own. Have you, uh have you done your session yet tonight? Coming up. Okay, so now I know a lot of what you’re gonna do is spend time listening to with stories are coming from the audience. Okay. Are you not? Yeah, I thought you were some but we’re also going to talk about our stories. OK? Yeah. We’ll be telling stories. Okay. Uh I guess in more detail. Alright, Thin. You want thirteen thousand strangers to here? Ok, I understand. It’s not a perfectly safe space. It’s time for a break. Pursuant. The art of first impressions. How to combine strategy analytics and creative to captivate new donors and keep them coming back That is there a book on dahna acquisition and how to make a smashing first impression. You’LL find it at the listener landing page which, as always, is that Tony dahna may slash pursuant with the capital P for please let’s do the live love live love goes out. I don’t know where you are because we’re pre recorded, But you’re listening live. And I love that you are. It seems like strips that I love you. I love that year. I hardly know you. I don’t know you at all. So I love that you are listening and the live love goes out. Let’s just Let’s just keep it at that. Let’s not get carried away. And the podcast Pleasantries. Of course. The pleasantries have to come on the heels of the love first love. Then the pleasantries tow our podcast audience. Thank you for listening via podcast pleasantries. So from here we go back to Marissa Lopez, Sarah Chico, Tammy Lau and a partner Kothari. You think I could say all those names? Here they are. We’re not quite halfway, but let’s move to the positive. Okay, Okay. I’m gonna put you on the spot. Although you did say you’re willing, but yeah, I think we’ve We’ve covered the challenge is sufficiently. I think I think the guys there’s a lot more to talk about. Guys, we’re listening, Tio. All right, Go ahead. Teresa. You wanted Teo won’t do one more. Well, I just think. I think the pay in salary is actually really huge and really a big deal and really a really problem. And it it goes deeper than the workplace. I mean, when you’re getting played last year, disadvantage of the world, your children at our disadvantage. Some people are a disadvantage to their partner. I mean, that’s like a huge, huge power issue that women have to deal with. I say I would say myself specifically I was. I kayman attack about a quarter way through my career and I was severely underpaid. I didn’t know that I should be getting paid more. There wasn’t a lot of salary studies out of the time, and I didn’t come from a tech background. I wasn’t part of the network. The good old Boys network for folks know how much people are getting paid so again without that community, that network in that background, I got underpaid for many, many years and I will never be able to make that up, you know, like Aparna said, like you can’t make up for being underpaid early in your career affects your the rest of your life. Yeah, home holds you back and that’s it’s all based on the beginning. All right. You want to Sara? Sure. I can give you an example. So I worked at a start up in San Francisco down your South Park maybe almost twenty years ago. And though it was, you know who’d strap warehouse, whatever. And it was just it was one person who kind of ran the office and the company at operations. And then there were five software engineers and I was the only woman in the company, and I didn’t often open. We didn’t have, You know, anybody who opened the door had kind of an office role. Occasionally I did. Mostly, I didn’t. But whenever I would get up to answer the door, sure enough, the guy who was standing at the door would ask me to get him coffee. Never once did any of my male counterparts get asked to bring coffee too, you know, I mean, it’s just little things like that that happened throughout your career. Kind of perpetually. But I don’t even drink coffee, nor do I know how to make it. So you know, I know I do know how to make it, but I don’t like you drinking? That’s irrelevant to the boy. Almost. Why were you hired in that company? Uh, because I was a good software engineer. So they so they were open. They recognized your your professional talent. But then it was the visitors who ask this now. I don’t know. I’m sorry. These air. Oh, that’s right. You were opening the door of the visitor’s presuming that you’re the office secretary. I’m the secretary, makes the coffee. Women and minorities will deal with micro questions like that every single day. I will tell you every single day in the workplace, and it is very exhausting. And I I think that that is part of the reason that folks with underrepresented voices do not get promoted to leadership is they don’t have the additional band, wants to do all the networking and all the snoozing and all the extra work. Sometimes and all the things. All the things you have to do to move up the ladder because they’re already being overburdened with all these little aggressions. And it is every day still Okay, I see. Let’s let’s let’s talk about let’s talk about overcoming, okay? Overcoming these obstacles and challenges. Um, Tammy Tammy, you have Ah, kick us off the first first tip. I mean, the whole community’s been said so check out, amplify if you’re if you’re among the oppressed. Well, I guess all female. So if you are, if you are the oppressed that we’re talking about, check out, amplify amplify dot or ge is that we are amplified dot org’s okay for under represented folks. Okay. Underrepresented in any in any respect. Okay. In tech. Okay. Exactly. So strategies. Tammy Teacher. So I think I’m going back to the issue I talked about which was the mental energy of explaining yourself. Is that yes. Take the opportunity to explain you know the issues and to explain your story and to try to educate people using the venues that you have, but sometimes just say no. Just walk away and save that energy for another fight. So you don’t have to fight every battle, make it fight. It were accounts, so that’s that’s made him okay. Um go ahead apartment. Have a real simple find a mentor and be a mentor. Yeah, I hear that commonly, for women especially needing to support each other Umm, how about when you’re you’re getting started in your career, is there? Is there anything unique too? To suppose u s o Unlike Sarah, Suppose you are aware that you’re being grossly underpaid. You know who was who was underwear? Who was away? That Morris Resa unaware that you were grossly underpaid. Suppose you are aware. Uh, you go to your boss. Let’s assume that that’s Ah, guy. Worst case scenario. Uh, all the women can be difficult to eye, right? It’s not. It’s not only men, although I’m not gonna let me off the hook. But women can be difficult to women also, let’s assume, let’s assume it’s a male supervisor. You know, you’re being terribly underpaid, but you’re new in your career. Maybe you’re just a year or two out of school, and this has come become aware to you. You become aware of it. Uh, who wants to? What do you What do you think? What? You said you can stay a couple of things so that we could move on. So so once someone else’s dancer. But I would say one thing. First of all, don’t be afraid to go look at a different top if they’re not going to give you a raise at your job. You do not have to stay. If there was a lot of opportunity for smart people up and hardworking people and that is a really thing. And I feel like maybe my generation or maybe who am or maybe who I was raised always like. You have to stick with this and you have to make it work or whatever, but you actually don’t. So that’s one thing. Don’t be afraid to go somewhere else, that sort of do it all the time. Two. I really believe in accomplices and acts in accomplices, meaning like allies that could be male allies that could be other co workers. I could be your friends, but I think it is important to find people that you can trust that can help toe advocate for you. Yeah, and sometimes it’s like Tammy. Wising sometimes is not the fight pick. It’s not the battle Tau Tau battle against, but sometimes someone else can do it for you. And you could either call them in and you could establish that relationship so they could do it. Okay, help from others. Anybody else for the early first couple of years of work, uh, strategies for that For that phase of career. I am pretty far removed from that phase of my career at this point. So why would you remember? Because you were mentoring somebody who right who is in that? Well, I was underpaid when I was in that phase, and I wound up having to have other job offers in hand twice to get raises, because both times they claimed there was not any additional money, which was not true. And then when I, as Marissa said, you have to be willing to look elsewhere. One thing I would recommend not doing is don’t threaten to quit somewhere if you’re not actually really ready to leave and have another good opportunity. That’s possible because I think idle threats are probably not together, completely counterproductive. But so I did actually have other job offers in hand and got matching raises twice and then left when I felt like what I wanted to do. There was done because I was never going to stay in a place that didn’t value my worth. So as a as a you know, I was a director of technology. I managed about ten people now and I always bring people in at what I feel is a is a higher than you. No base salary, because I want people starting off on the right foot. And I want people happy with what they’re making and not feeling like they’re already behind the eight ball to start. You know, a lot of times people kind of like negotiate down with you when you’re doing your initial salary negotiations. And I just don’t believe in doing that. Tammy three of you are with Presidents Product Group, so we may as well disclosed. What? What’s the work of President’s presence? Product group? Sure. So, actually, I was with a non-profit until about six weeks ago. And you’re the only one. You have No one there. Yeah, masking the newest employee. All right, Will you still know? You still know what they do. So what do they do? S o? We build digital products, whether that’s mobile APS o our products on sales force. And specifically our team works with social impact ordered. So non-profits be corporation. Is anybody making a difference in the world building self source products for them? Because you have seen your sales force engineer Yes, you’re correct. Okay. Okay. Uh, all right. Let’s Let’s progress in our career were beyond the first two to three years. Um, for any for any phase of any phase of career. What are apart? You haven’t spoken for a while. What? What is some strategy would give us another strategy for coping overcoming these obstacles. I mean, I think I go back to what I said about being a mentor. I think having a mentor outside of your organisation, but in your industry, because I think often what we do is we tie our salary to ourselves. To our sense, our self worth. Really, this is what we are worth in the work place. This is what we should be paid and that I guess it’s fine. And without having someone to see toe like, understand the industry and understand the work that you’re doing and understand what comparison’s across the industry, I think oftentimes we’re just way are not aware. We’ve convinced ourselves like Oh, yeah, way always justified, right? I’m only fears into my career. This seems like an appropriate salary, because this is what they’ve given me. So I just I think that like building you’re what? I’ve heard someone call like your own board of advisors. We’re kind of your own council of advisers. Teo, give you advice. I think I need to work on that. But I keep keeps coming back to me as a strategy. Okay. And as you said earlier, also, when you are more senior, be willing to be a mentor, seek a mentor and be a mentor. Yeah, All right. We still have lots of time together, right? Go ahead. What else we’re doing? Well, I have something that was really hard for me. That I have learned to do is shamelessly is to toot my own horn. Publicized things on social media linked in I mean linked in this huge, you should be putting updates on lengthen. You should be putting like articles. You should be putting events. You’re going, Tio, that is actually really important. And I always thought that it was more like the work that I am doing for this company and if I am doing my job really well, but actually, publicizing that, especially in this day and age, is actually really important in whatever your networks are. So I think that is a piece of advice that applies to any stage of the A career, but particularly mid career and think it’s easy to get lost in the actual have your head down and focus on what you’re doing. But you need to talk about it and you need to get up in person and you need to write block post and nobody really has time for that. But it actually makes a huge difference. The quality, not just what you’re making or the opportunities, but actually the quality of your career experience used on DH. Your point about Lincoln well taken before that, you said tooting your own horn. Well, how do you do that? You go into your How do you do that with your with your boss with like like, Quarterly? Is that you? You, uh, do you rely on the annual or the semi annual performance review to do that? Or there are other times you’re doing it? Yes, so that proactively, that’s a fair question, I think for me personally, the closer I am with someone, the harder it is. Tio toot, my own horn, so to speak. It’s easier to do it more publicly in generically, but I think that I need to do that a lot more, and it just comes down to communication. You win a big deal. You have a great conversation with a client. You call him, you text them, you slack them. You sent him an email, whatever kind of way you mentioned it during a sales meeting, you mentioned it. Turn whatever meeting you’re having being vocal and meetings again. An area that I need to work on and sayings what’s going on. Hey, I had this great day or even I met this great connection that would be really beneficial to our company. Whatever it is, that’s positive talking about it, you know, not holding it in latto things. Nobody knows unless you say it. This is the This is the great panel. And a couple of you have already said I need to be better at this, you know? But it’s hard. It’s hard to actually take the take the steps on. And it’s you know, it’s probably exhausting, too, starting at a disadvantage, but But you’re the great panel and and you’re even saying you know, I need to be I need to be better at this for myself. But consciousnesses know that women are very self critical of themselves. Yeah, that’s true. Wasting no more time. I’m, uh Are there other subjects you’re going to cover that weren’t Maybe we’re not in your session description, which is what I got my notes from. I saw the common challenges. I know we did that personal challenges from the audiences and talk about your own and then strategies for overcoming obstacles. Is there more that you’re doing? Don’t hold back on non-profit radio listeners. Well, like we’re saying, I think we’re going to dive a little bit deeper into our story. So I think everybody here has a really interesting story of how they got to this point. Three of the four of us started off in the nonprofit sector. Part is still in the nonprofit sector. Tammy just crossed over to the dark side. Um, Tammy also comes from an environmental background. I come from a background in conservation. So Sarah’s actually the only one on this panel that came from a real computer science background. Yet we’re all in technology, so I think there’s some interesting points within that. Okay. Yeah. You want to flush some of them out there. Go ahead. Yeah. So I will say, coming from a non-profit background. And we’ve talked about this amongst ourselves again. Sort of the culture of tech. Just so you have glitter eye shadow. That’s right. Just your glasses. Where I didn’t notice it. Even though you’re sitting there like it, it’s Ah, striking. Yeah, Thank you. I just I only because I was lifting up until now. Your eyeglasses covering here? Well, they just write out the eye shadow. Yeah, you could show it off your for those who don’t have the benefit of video, they’re not going to see that. So Marissa has Yes, literally. I’ve been dreamforce twelve or thirteen times. I actually don’t know. In Dream Force is the global sales worth extravaganza, right? And so, you know, like maybe eleven, twelve years into it. You kind of have to like, you really, really have to have fun with it or else you are not happy. So I was going to just bring the glitter for the evenings out, but I figured I could just wear it anywhere. And then I just realized I could wear it to other conferences to nobody here knows me and knows whether I worked litter all the time aren’t hot. All right, So you were flushing something out? Yeah, the difference backgrounds that you bring to today. So I brought you to non-profit, Released lives or culminating this moment Don’t radio. That’s right. And so I would say that like for younger generations So it might not be applicable if you’re a millennial or if your generation z but for my generation sales lorts and exist. When I went to college, the Internet barely existed. I definitely didn’t use a window in high school. You know, a lot of this stuff is new, and so there’s this term of accidental techie that folks like to take on, but I actually think that that term should not be used right. And folks like myself that come from the non-profit backgrounds are usedto lower pays and usedto working for the mission rather than for the money. I also have this. This might applied to folks that are listening to non-profit radio like inclination that once you go into the tech space, you still have to stay at the non-profit salaries. You’re still working for a mission. And so I think that and the culture is frankly grittier. Once you get into the space and I would say it sze rougher. It’s more fast paced. It’s more masculine. And from my experience, then the non-profit fate space, which is often more feminine and so that cultural change for me was really challenging. And I think it can be for a lot of people. And I think it’s also very normal to cross over from one sector into tech because so many people are working attacked. There’s so much need for that. And there’s need for folks intact and people getting poached in to check all of the time. So there is this transitional, a thing that can happen that some of us have experience that can be fairly challenging. Yeah, and Tio Tio, I think, as someone without a tech background who’s now a tech, and this happens to some extent to everybody. But that feeling imposter syndrome can be much stronger when you don’t have a tech background and you’re surrounded by other people who you feel like, Oh my God, Everyone knows what they’re doing. I don’t know what I’m doing. I’m a fraud. I shouldn’t be here that could just make it really hard coming from a different background into the space and then being underrepresented person on top of that. So I got to imagine that in any phase of our life we imitate and sort of we look at other people where social people are social, right by nature. And so when you look up and you see that only three percent of the CEOs in the tech space or Latino you assume that you don’t belong in leadership. It’s just a natural human assumption. So there’s a very big disparity and leadership that we’re also dealing with here. OK, we’ve got about a minute or so left. Uh, Sarah, a partner. You haven’t spoken most recently. Uh, somebody want toe, give us sort of a wrap up and optimism. Uh, either one of you. I tell you what. A partner. You I let you open. I should session say, like you opened. I asked youto open. I did ask you, uh, Sarah, do you feel comfortable with Cem Porting words, Some parting words? Yeah, I think that, you know, it’s I mean, it may sound cheesy, but, you know, you should do what you are drawn to do and what makes you feel good doing it. And if that’s being in technology, whether you’re under represented or not, you know, go forth and be strong and doing it. Look to your mentors. Look to your community. Don’t be afraid. Women. A lot of times they’re really afraid to ask for help because they feel like it makes them seem weak. Do not be afraid to ask for help. You know, ask for help along the way. It’s actually it’s a really great trait to be able to do that, and I think it’s also well respected. So I would say, You know, go forth. Don’t be put off by the fact that it is more difficult. This is the great panel. We gotta leave it. There they are. Marissa Lopez, director of account management at Presence Product Group. Sarah Chico, director of technology Social Impact Presents Product group. Tommy Lau, Senior Sales Force Engineers, Social Impact Presents Product Group and Aparna Kothari, director of technology operations at Global Citizen year. Thank you very much of each of you. Thanks for telling so much. This is Tony martignetti non-profit radio coverage of the nineteen twenty nineteen non non-profit technology conference, and this is brought to you by our partners and act blue Free fund-raising Tools to help non-profits Macon Impact Thanks so much for being with us. We need to take a break. Wagner, CPS. They’ve got a free webinar It was on April sixteenth. That was a few days ago, but you watch the archive. Of course, it’s tips and tricks for your nine ninety. The best part. You’ve heard me say it. Using your nine ninety as a PR tool is a marketing promotion tool. So many people are reading it because it’s so widely available. Ubiquitous. You might say that you may as well not just satisfy the I. R. S because they don’t care what your right and how you used these sections. As long as the numbers all add up, uh, use it as a marketing tool because it’s so widely read by potential donors. Watch the archive of the Webinar Goto wagner cps dot com click seminars. I wish you could click webinars, but you can’t quick seminars. Then go to April. Now, Time for Tony. Take two. Thank you. Um, thanks. Thanks for listening. Thanks for supporting non-profit Radio however you do if you are subscribed on YouTube. Thank you very much. Twitter. Following their joining there, I’d like to say I don’t really like to turn followers some messiah. Uh, no. You’re joined me. You joined me on Twitter. Thank you for doing that. You’re an insider. You get the insider alerts. You got the access to the insider videos. Thank you for doing that. Whatever you do. Uh, what else? Facebook. Oh, yeah. Facebook were still there? A cz disenchanted as I often am with Facebook. Yes. Were there along with four billion other people. So, uh, thank you. Your your fan on Facebook. Thanks for doing that. You shared non-profit radio you shared with your colleagues to share it with your board. Thanks for doing that. Whatever you do. Thank you. Thank you for being with non-profit radio. Now let’s go to our panel for great ideas. Welcome to Tony martignetti non-profit radio coverage of nineteen. Auntie Si. You know what that is? It’s the twenty nineteen non-profit technology Conference. We’re kicking off our coverage right now. This is our first interview of many, many thirty seven to be exact on DH this interview, like all of ours. At nineteen. NTC is brought to you by our partners at Act Blue Free fund-raising Tools to help non-profits make an impact. Kicking off with me, our gods piela Jackson seated next to me. She’s CEO of Echo and Company and Marcy Ride. Marcy is founder and principal of wire media Ladies. Welcome. Thank you. Pleasure. What chorus? Eleven. And your topic is staying sharp. How to create an implement. Great ideas. Yes. Okay, uh, let’s start at the end. More. See? What? What do you feel like? Non-profits could do better around, I guess. Problem solving and idea eating. I think one thing that’s important is getting everyone involved in the whole process on DH have it not necessarily coming top down, but getting all kinds of input coming in. Okay, Stay close to you. Might remember. Stay close to me. Okay? Andi, I’m sure you know, subsumed in that is getting the right people involved. Yes. Identify who they are. Okay, uh, got piela anything. You want to kick us off? Yeah. I think when we’ve been working on projects where innovation is the core of the project, a lot of times, what we encounter is that culture is a barrier to being able to drive innovation forward. And a part of that is because non-profits in particular, have cultures where there’s scarce. Resource is, there’s not a lot of time. A lot of the staff is very overworked. And so the idea of getting together and creating space actually create and innovate is very scary. Because if you don’t get the right answer first, then you might actually exhaust all your resource is you might actually not be able to go on to the next idea. Everybody’s tired of the process And okay, so we’re gonna talk about culture now. This was originally presented at the Harvard University Digital Innovation Academy. Wass by the two of you Just bite me first. Are you okay? In the true spirit of ideas, this is a pilot. Yes, awesome. And also, in the true spirit of Tony martignetti non-profit radio, which is big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent. So if you want the ideas that emanated from Harvard metoo listening to non-profit radio and here’s the proof. All right, um, you, uh let’s take what you’ve got you what you want to encourage strong, strong ideas like every day. This is not just for your strategic plan or something like that. This is every day, pre idea creation. So how do we start to make this culture shift? Thinking about breakthrough ideas every single day? Yeah, yeah, I think the most important thing is that ideas don’t come from a predetermined spaces or predetermined settings. So a lot of times, what you need first in order to come up with new ideas, is a spirit of play in a spirit of spontaneity and often times when we’re in meetings, we have laptops were sitting around a table. Everybody’s in a setting where they’re afraid of being the one, not saying the right thing. And there isn’t a spirit of embracing mistakes. And it’s embracing attempts as much as you have embraced successes. But we really need to shift your setting, whether that’s being up on your feet, it’s changing. The environment is going outside, and you really need to bring in a spirit of play and equal contribution to the table in order to just even start. Okay, this all sounds sounds very good, but how do we convinced our CEO that playtime is eyes really question that playtime is appropriate for our idea. Generation? Yeah, it has to be structured and has to be intentionally set to a goal. So normally, when you’re creating this environment, what you’re trying to do is separate the creation of ideas from the refinement of ideas and picking the one that actually can go forward with limited resource is budget and people. And when you actually see ideas constrained and started inside of organizations that they haven’t done enough prep work, enough research to actually ground the session, you’re going to be having an ideation. And then you’ve also tried to create ideas and edit ideas at the same time, which ends up with too much dress. So, Marcie, I mean, when I was in college, I learned this as brainstorming right on DH the first, the first step in brainstorming was nothing was disallowed. Everything ridiculous. Wild but insane was was not labeled as such. It was written on the board. Is that is that an outdated, uh, brainstorming dead? Now, Marcie, you were just calling it a breakthrough idea generation or what? I think the idea of brainstorming in a group is may be dead and time to move past it. I know that we’ve had some success where people are are individually coming up with ideas. And then they worked together as a group to organize and come to consensus on them. And that works pretty effectively. Okay, okay, yeah, yeah. One thing, too, is a brainstorming in the method a lot of people use. It really don’t doesn’t allow people of different types of thinking and different learning styles actually contribute equally. Why’s that? Oftentimes it’s a group of people, and there are questions put out to the room. And then there’s a sort of ad hoc responses to questions. But a lot of people don’t answer well. They need to take time to reflect. They need to have structured activities, to think, to frame their thoughts and then be able to contribute it back to the group. So what end of happening is people who are really good at responding quickly, who are more extroverted and who are better at thinking out loud, dominate the setting and the people who are actually more cautious and they’re thinking and reasoned. And maybe it’s quieter. Researchers don’t have space, but often times have the best ideas, okay, and so you really have to structure your setting. So how do we do? Martin? Marcie, can you start? Give us some tips. How do we structure this to empower everyone equally? I mean, there’s there’s different ways to do it The way loud on non-profit radio when I was what I was thinking of earlier and sort of referring to earlier is something that we do with branding. Exercise is where it’s pretty simple, but everyone has time to write down their ideas on sticky notes. For example, if they’re trying to figure out, you know, how do they come to consensus on what the personality of the brand should be like? And so they have time on their own to come up with ideas in their own way, and then they and the next phase is they get together as a group, and they work together to figure out how to organize these ideas into categories and which categories are the most important and in the process of doing it, they have conversations about why they’re making those decisions, and it’s really effective in getting to consensus with the whole group that includes often like the CEOs down to the the marketing assistant. Some of the audience. Sometimes it works really well. Okay, um, stick with you, Marcy. Had you mentioned the CEO? How do we get our CEO onboard with this is culture change. What would you say? Way? Tell listeners to say what one of my favorite sort of go twos is. There’s a psychologist called me. Holly Chick sent me. I and don’t ask me to spell it, but he way, having asked you to say it a second time, he came up with the concept that’s called Flow. And it’s the idea of being so fully engaged in something that time passes freely. You don’t notice the passage of time on DH, you do it very. You do your activity very well because you’re completely engaged in in the moment on DH. Then there’s information. There’s data somewhere that shows that you could be more effective. When you’re in a state of float, you get more done. You do better work. All right. What if our CEO says sounds very metaphysical, but how are we going? Toe You wanted me to give you want You want me to get our team into a flow. What do I need to do? What we need to do? Well, I think that’s what God Cielo was recovering Teo earlier about having a structured format that gets them there, and that puts them in the moment. Okay, if you can also drive if you can drive that conversation towards operational efficiencies. So what actually happens when you make this culture shift is teams are happier. They feel more productive. They’ve created space to come up with better ideas. They also embed research into the process that we didn’t really talk about. How you prime yourself for the session before you start. But the idea is to go out to your audience, understand the mission, understand the people you’re serving, actually get input from them so staff can be representative representatives of the end constituent in the room. What actually happens is staff tends to get way more re engaged in the purpose of the organization and the mission, and, uh, and then they start putting in more qualitative hours during the workday. So it’s not showing up in just doing the usual work, which is very important. It’s creating space to do work better and being really connected to how you actually scale the mission a little bit more and you can actually map it. Tio outcomes that looked like revenue looks like costs. It looks like decreased costs and recruiting staff and keeping staff. It looks like decreasing the amount of time that is spent to get better ideas. And then it’s actually having a spirit of trying a lot of things. Picking the best ones, replicating them, maturing them and turning them into programs so the organization itself can grow in a non haphazard way can grow very intentionally around the efforts. All right, I got to take a break. Tell us the passive revenue stream. You want fifty percent of the fee. When cos you refer process their credit and debit card transactions with Tell us and all that fifty percent of those tiny fees it adds up. That’s the long tail of passive revenue. You don’t work for it. That’s passive. Get passive right passivity. The passivity of the revenue. The Explainer video is that Tony dahna slash Tony Tell us, watch it, then have the company’s watch it, then make your ask. Would they switch to tell us and then tell us we’LL we’LL work with them, right? You go to Tony dahna slash Tony Tell us now Back to Gutsy Ella Jackson and Marcy Ry Way. If we’ve made the case on DH, we’ve we’ve had our first. This’s not just like a single session. It doesn’t sound like you know, you said some people function very well in one hour setting. They think rapidly, and other people need Teo. Be more considerate. So we’re talking about something that’s not just a one, a one off ideation session, and then we moved to the next step or something. You know, we start going down. It’s a longer term. Yeah, Usually the cycle is a research and prepare. Then idee eight. Then concept test concepts figure out which ones are the best. Replicate those and then a couple times, and then the ones that prove themselves than mature them and continuously start that cycle over again. That can be a sprint in a matter of two weeks. Or it could be a longer term programme in a matter of months or a year just depends on the complexity of the problem that you’re trying to solve. Okay, and then eventually the goal is that this becomes very natural. And so that that then you are doing this in every day, decision making. But it’s happening obviously more, more rapidly. We can spend two weeks on every decision. Yeah, and then the other thing that is very beneficial for a leader is a part of the process. Is teaching staff to learn how to pitch their best ideas to leadership in a way that leadership can then go pitch that to board members and thunders and things like that. And so you actually want at the end of it, you want to go knothole process so you can prove your pilot. You can pitch it to the executives, they could go pitch it to the board, and it’s founded in research. So when the board is arguing about the marriage of that or questioning the merits of that, they’re arguing with numbers and evidence and not with people and ideas. So you do want to push out of the ideas phase into evidence, but the process allows you to do that better. Okay? What brought you to this work? Initially? A good question. It only took me twenty twelve minutes e-giving dancing question out. I’LL try harder next time. It’s marrieds are getting So I started in journalism when newspapers were falling apart. Somebody said, Who wants to learn? HTML and I did, and I ended up in technology. But I ended up in technology doing big Web strategy for organizations that had thousands of people, lots of micro sites. They kind of had homegrown technologies. Everybody had their own budget. All of the technologies were decentralized, and people were had an appetite to consolidate all of that. And I started in organizations trying to do it from a Strat from a consulting perspective. And it didn’t work because you have so much change embedded in the process that if you don’t do the work to get people excited about process and excited about the ideas, they’re not going to be able to understand or commit to the amount of change that you’re asking them to go through. And so I just got really excited in that I studied design thinking, which, uh, it’s a It’s a way of solving unknown problems, using a lot of co design with people who are going to be the end beneficiaries of the solution and it’s actually built on improv. So the the for the, um, the art form of improv has a central concept. And yes, and exactly why do I have done in problem taking improv classes? And I use it in my stand up comedy? Yes. And you surrender or fishes? Yeah. Alright. And so it was just and I’m involved. I’m on the board of Washington Improv Theater in D. C. I’m very close to that work. And I could mind at UCB Upright Citizens. Yeah, And in these working Alan Alda actually created a organization. I think it’s called the Center for Compassionate Communication. We goes into mostly scientific organizations, teaches them improv and completely sort of read, helps them re imagine the way they communicate with each other and the way they communicate externally. Kruckel mostly. What drew you to this work? What drew me to it? Yeah, it’s kind of the opposite track. I guess I started working more with smaller organizations that had few numbers of people that needed to do a lot with a little on DH. So it was starting to think about how can we get there pretty quickly and then, you know, my background is more designed, technology oriented. So I kayman things from that perspective and started seeing that some. You know, some of the problems pretzel is talking about where change management issues on the on their staffing side and how their processes were creating problems for the project we were doing. And that got me interested in trying to fix it. Yeah. Okay. And so you apply this for your clients? A wider media, Okay? No, the ones that are willing, the ones that are willing. Okay. Okay, um see, choosing implement. So let’s talk about choice now choosing, choosing the options that we’re goingto way. Just choose one. First of all, we’re really choosing one of the many or we’re choosing half a dozen. How do you know who knows best this? I mean, that’s where I think pitching, pitching it is important and making a case for who is going to serve, what the outcome is going to be and why the commitment of resource is worth the eyes worth the investment. And so I can I think it just depends on the problem you’re solving and whether or not you want to try different things in different context to be able to compare them. There’s a lot of different types of research that you can do in our field. We kind of break it down before the first one is explorations. If you’re just trying to explore a concept, you do kind of many things that you, Khun, see how people would solve problems in their own world in their own words. And then the second one is, once you’re kind of headed in a direction, you do assessment testing, and that’s kind of figure out. You come up with a concept, and how close did you get it actually solving things the way that they that someone might want it to be solved, and then it just gets more formal from there. Once you have a finished design, you test that once it’s live and in production, you test that. So it really depends when you’re in this exploration phase. You wantto do the right amount of exploration to hit the appropriate audiences. We always do and use their definition first. It’s like there’s no point in doing anything unless we design for the people who are going to be using it, and that could be fifty different types of audience groups that could be too. And so that kind of dictates the how much work you do in that, um, who can give me Marcie, Can you give me some examples of problems that were that you’ve seen your client’s solve using this method? What types of decisions are we talking about? Well, I mentioned earlier, like coming up with branding characteristics for a new brand or something. Another one might be So something we’re working on now actually is women organization has lots of different kinds of information that they want to share with the world. And they want to put that on a website or some kind of application. How do you structure that? So that the people that need that information can quickly and easily find what they need, you know, and you couldn’t think of a million different ways to organize data or content like that. But doing the right kinds of testing at the right time really helps you with the audience focus, right? Really helps you make sure that you know the person who needs the particular piece of information gets it quickly and easily. Yeah. Um, you said in your session description that the best ideas are often undiscovered. Why why is that? Is that because, Well, you explain me. What? Why why do you say that? Um, well, we see it in different ways in different organizations. But my my general sends is that the people who carry some of the best ideas because they were the closest to the people that are being served aren’t in the room. When ideas are being created on and you don’t you don’t necessarily know by instinct. Who in your organization has the best ideas? I think the best thing you can do is an executive is go ask around for who kind of is the most pioneering who’s willing to drive things forward, who’s really good at people and marshaling resources towards a common end who’s really good at just guarding that. The innovation aligns to the mission. You have to have all the four types of those people to be able to get to a good idea, and oftentimes you’re just leaning on leaders to come up with a Biggins up inspiring idea or your leading on on leaning on staff or overworked a busy and they don’t have time. We use a formula where we kind of look at the amount of time that staff members are spending on different types of ideas. There’s bread and butter ideas that’s like your daily to do list. I always say that that’s like a goldfish. It’Ll grow to the size of the pond, so if you have a million hours, your to do list will grow to a million hours. The second type is building boost ideas, and so it’s creating a little bit of space to do something that requires a little more coordination, a little more effort. And from that, you often times can get what the third category is, which is breakthrough ideas. And that’s like big ideas. You spend a lot of time developing and nurturing, and most organizations are just stuck in bread and butter. And so there’s not enough intentional time carved out for the other two types. Time for our last break text to give Diversify your revenue by adding mobile giving. It’s not on ly for disasters. It’s not only for small dollar. Donations is not only through the phone company lots of misconceptions. You can allay those you can. That’s the Lei is more for fears. You can slay those misconceptions you can. Ah, eliminate. Seems kind of easy, but you can’t eliminate the misconceptions. You do that by texting NPR November Papa Romeo to four, four, four, nine, nine, nine Just do it and the misconceptions will die. We’ve got several more minutes for great ideas with Nazi Ella Jackson and Marcie Ross marchenese doing doing a lot of nada. Anything you want to add. What? I mean she’s right. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay, Information. Affirmation is a part of the process where it fits in rewarding people for being courageous and putting an idea out there that they’re hesitant about because the bad ones are as good as the good ones. The bad ones prime you for a better one. So it’s funny. I spoke on a panel two high school girls in stem on Monday before I came here, and they asked us a question. What will we go back and tell ourselves in high school? And mine was Don’t measure your don’t measure yourself to the success. Measure yourself to the attempts because we’re hardwired to learn from mistakes and failure, and sometimes we just get obsessed with what success looks like. But it’s better for us to try a lot of things and write things. And eventually we’LL we’LL hit a couple that are really good. I should have asked you, Is there a client story or two you want to share? Yeah, I’LL try to share one short red quickly So way work with organization in Washington, D. C. Called the Newseum. They’re pretty well know. Yeah, so they focus on their mission is to advance media literacy and education about our First Amendment freedoms. And years ago in twenty fifteen, they indigenous to just kind of redesign. A very simple website had about ten lesson plans and some PDS and some videos and way got in there with them. We did some ideas, ideas, princessa sessions, and we asked them why what teachers were looking for. And teachers were really preoccupied with not being able to teach current events in the classroom with curriculum that helped him deal with sensitive subjects and then with the materials to help them teach it. And so we started doing a ton of exploration, and we realize that the museum was sitting on this goldmine of thousands of artifacts that had to do with historical references to politics and media and also contemporary references. And when we went to talk to teachers, we realized that we needed to not redesign the thing that we were hired to redesign. We needed to create a completely new platform that was one hundred percent dedicated. Teo serving media literacy curriculum teachers in the classroom. So they making all these resources available to them for free indexing. Okay, Yeah. Driving. Yeah. So we pause that project way. We created a platform and a brand. So before they were just a department and then they were the Newseum. Ed, Uh, they ended up getting a major funder commitment for five years to be able to build this platform that’s still growing. And they went from eight hundred users to one hundred thousand users in about three years. How did the breakthrough process contribute to that exponential growth in usually So there was like a very cinematic moment where I walked down a hallway with something on a sticky note. It was like we need to do this, and honestly, they have. They had a vice president of education, and I think she was a director at the time. She is exceptional at pitching ideas and leading her team. And she took that idea on the sticky note. I think, to the CEO of the Newseum and said, We need to do this This is central to our mission. If we don’t do this, somebody else will do it. We’re going to miss the opportunity. I will lead it protects her effort into it. I will find my own funding for it. I just need your support. I need to be at the executive table to have conversations about this. I need to be ableto talk to the board and understand their support in this. And they did. That kind of shifted the department. She ended up sitting thie executive on the executive team and she really did. She was a visionary and she drove it forward, including this decision making process. Yeah, including this decision making process. So we launched a like what we kind of call the beta of that platform and twenty fifteen didn’t have enough resource is and we knew that we were to achieve what we needed to We needed a road map. We wrote that so she could go get funding. And then we actually relaunched it this year, a major version release again with a lot more committed funding. And so it’s it’s growing from there. I hope it around for a very long time. Um, Marcy, how can we be sure that the idea that is going to be implemented remains intact through this through this? I don’t wanna call a tortuous process, but through this through this process, like, how do you ensure that you stay true to the idea that with the solution that was chosen through implementation, I think that comes down, Teo, the idea of having a structure and a specific process that you go through and you stick to it and you don’t let you know random outside ideas come in and derail that you stick to the formula that you’ve decided to use from the start. Um, we still have another, like, two minutes or so together. What, uh, what more can you say about you? Have a ninety minute. How long of the sessions on our or ninety minutes? Fifteen. Okay. Somewhere in the middle. So you got You got seventy five minutes on this topic. What? What can we say for another couple minutes? Yes. Oh, I am going to be fun. Yeah, so? So majority of the session is going to be a game, and I feel like that’s really important because you have to be able to bring a spirit of play and fun into it. Okay? And it’s going to be a man activity that helps you figure out you have a listener’s listeners can’t be on the game. Okay, so what else can we talk about this topic that listeners can benefit from? So it’s based on a model where there are four types of ideas and you can think of it as a ladder and you have to run your idea of the ladder. And the first question is, Is it useful? Is your idea useful is something that you can move forward If it if it’s yes, then you go to the second question. And that is, uh, is it rare? Is it valuable or is it rare? And then, if you get it, if it’s no, you’re you’re filtering out your ideas. If you get a yes on the next is is it difficult or costly to replicate? Can you only do it because there’s something about you and your resource is where you can achieve it. And if you get yes, you go to the last one. Which is is it designed for lasting value? And those air Four questions you can ask about every single idea. And what you’re trying to do is weed out the ones that don’t hit all four questions. Yeah, would you say Yeah. Yeah. And then the ideas, Teo, the idea is to present your idea to Piers or to other people involved and get their input on whether or not you’re asking them those questions. You’re not asking it of yourself. You’re asking the other people you’re working with. You’re asking this team right in each of these four questions. Okay? Yeah. And then what? Do you have a minute or so That what happens if multiple ideas? Well, then do. Then you start to co implement, right? Yeah. Move them all through the process. Yeah. Here, you pick one that seems to have the most merit. You’re going forward with that one? Yeah. It is kind of like the U size, the decision to the organization, But I think just going through that exercise will get you either a stack of all those really lasting value ideas or not. Okay, well, don’t leave it there. Thank you very much for naming my pleasure. They are gods piela Jackson, CEO of echoing company on Marcy RAI, founder and principal of Wire Media. You’re listening to Tony martignetti non-profit radio coverage of nineteen ninety seethe uh twenty nineteen non-profit Technology conference in Portland, Oregon, on this interview Like all our nineteen ninety seon reviews brought to you by our partners at Act Blue Free fund-raising tools to help non-profits make an impact. Thanks so much for being with us next week. Maria Semple returns. If you missed any part of today’s show, I beseech you find it on tony. Martignetti dot com were sponsored by pursuing online tools for small and midsize non-profits, Data driven and technology enabled Tony dahna slash pursuant capital P by Wagner’s Deepa is guiding you beyond the numbers. Gregor cps dot com by tell us credit card in payment processing your passive revenue stream tourney dahna slash tony tell us and by text to give mobile donations made easy text NPR to four four four nine nine nine our creative producers. Claire Meyerhoff. Sam Liebowitz is the line producer. Shows Social Media is by Susan Chavez. Mark Silverman is our Web guy, and this music is by Scots. Dine with me next week for non-profit radio. Big non-profit Ideas for the other ninety five percent Go out and be great lorts You’re listening to the Talking Alternate network e-giving Wait, you’re listening to the Talking Alternative Network? Are you stuck in a rut? Negative thoughts, feelings and conversations got you down. Hi, I’m nor in Sumpter potentially ater. Tune in every Tuesday at nine to ten p. M. Eastern time and listen for new ideas on my show yawned potential Live life your way on talk radio dot N Y c Hey, all you crazy listeners looking to boost your business. 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