Founded By Women Episode Transcripts

Jaime-Alexis Fowler — Leading with Empathy, Meeting People Where They Are, Increasing Diversity and Equity Within Teams, Following the Need, Creating Ripple Effects, and Much More!

Listen to Episode #004 on: Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, Google Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Return to show notes for Episode #004.

Jaime-Alexis Fowler  00:00

I love empathy. I embrace it. I lead with it. It's such an important value to me .When I was thinking about creating Empower Work, I was like, "I don't know how to teach it to others, but I believe deeply that it's possible." But when you're thinking about how do you build that and scale it, you do have to systematize it in a way. And one of our earlier supporters was like, "Why didn't you hire an engineer first?" Because we can figure out all kinds of tech stuff, but fundamentally, if we can't figure out how to train and build the skills of our support, we're not going to be successful.

Margie Chuang  00:32

Hi everyone, this is Margie Chuang and welcome to Founded By Women, a podcast about inspirational women building inspirational things. Whether they're founding companies, blazing a new career path, or reinventing themselves, I learn about what inspires women to start their own journeys, what keeps them motivated, and what it's really like to build things that bring them joy.   This episode features Jaime-Alexis Fowler. Jaime-Alexis is the Founder and Executive Director of Empower Work, a non-profit organization that provides confidential, free, immediate support for work issues. Empower Work envisions a world where everyone can thrive at work. They support each person to think through the situation, provide larger context, and consider options for how to take action.  Empower Work’s goal is for every person to leave feeling empowered with a next step that works for them.  

Empower Work leverages technology to meet people where they are. And their peer counseling model draws on best practices in coaching and strengths-based management focused on active listening, reflection, and positive inquiry. They also connect people to vetted information and resources if needed.  Jaime-Alexis is a seasoned leader with a track record of building agile, high-performing, healthy teams. She has developed a reputation for being a go-to resource for people management. Jaime-Alexis has led marketing at a $100M international NGO,  run operations for a national post-abortion counseling nonprofit, overseen marketing at Code for America,  and most recently before Empower Work,  launched a nonprofit investigative newsroom.  Her work has been featured in NPR, The Wall Street Journal,  Tech Crunch, Slate, Fast Company, and Forbes. Jaime-Alexis frequently speaks about building collaborative,  healthy teams, career pathways and pivots, social entrepreneurship,  and marketing for social change.   Without further ado, please enjoy my wide-ranging conversation with Jaime-Alexis Fowler.  Jamie Alexis, welcome to the show.

Jaime-Alexis Fowler  02:39

Thanks so much for having me.

Margie Chuang  02:40

Thank you for being here today. How are you doing?

Jaime-Alexis Fowler  02:42

I'm hanging in there.

Margie Chuang  02:44

You and me both based on my homework in preparation for this episode, I would describe you as a recovering academic who's driven by creating solutions to big challenges who meets people where they are and someone who leads with empathy.  I thought we could start off by asking you about how you occasionally refer to yourself as a recovering academic. What does that mean? And does it relate to your decision to leave your Ph. D program a few years ago to pursue a career in the social change space?

Jaime-Alexis Fowler  03:13

Yes. So, for most of my time thinking about what am I going to be when I grow up, I was looking for something that incorporated writing, I always loved to write and communicating. And I love connecting with people. And so for me, pursuing being a professor was a great opportunity to connect with folks, create a real difference in the world, and bring together some of the skills that really energized me, and that I was really passionate about.  And in the course of starting that work, going down that path, I realized that the trajectory to change was so much further than I was imagining. 

Of course, you change people's lives every day as a teacher and working with students. But I had imagined these really big reactions to like policy change and structural change and all these sorts of things. I realized that, yes, that totally happens. And maybe you get a couple times in the course of like a 14 year career to do that. And so, I was like, "Hmm, let me take a step back for a minute and think about how I can use the strengths and skills and passions to maybe have a faster trajectory and change." And so, I decided as much as I love and value research academia and teaching, going a different route was the way for me.

Margie Chuang  04:19

What did you end up then pivoting to? Because you're going through the Ph. D. program, your mind was set on becoming a professor, and then the shift must have been . . .

Jaime-Alexis Fowler  04:28

It was such a strong one that my mom was like, "Do you need a therapist?" Because everything had been really this line of sight of this is what I'm gonna do. And I'm really passionate about it and going down this path. And so, when I made this big shift, there was a lot of weight, what's going on, put the brakes on. I think that was one of the challenges for me growing up. I grew up in Dallas and really, the opportunities for careers were fairly limited in terms of what I had insight into. My dad worked in the business world. He was a salesperson and I saw a lot of the challenges that he had gone through personally, as well as women had experienced, who he supported. He was a huge champion and mentor for women and underrepresented sales folks on his sales teams. And I would hear these stories every night. So for me, I was like, "Don't want to go in that direction." You know, that's not of interest.  And my mom is a neuropsychologist, and I was like, yearh, I don't really want to go become a doctor or lawyer, business person. Those were just like, very few buckets. 

So, when I was taking a step back and thinking about where I wanted to go next, I had no idea, like, how do you impact social change in a different way? And what does that look like?  I just started applying to what felt like a million nonprofit jobs, and much to my parents consternation, because they were like, "you don't get paid if you work in the nonprofit sector", which is not true. And I felt like there was a lot of figuring out what this looks like, and nobody would hire me. And, I figured out a couple of things: One is that yeah, it's really hard when it looks like your whole resume is built for academia, to have a Ph.D. resume applying for an assistant position at a nonprofit, everyone's like, that doesn't make sense.  But fortunately, a friend of mine was working in an organization at the time, focused on women. My work in academia had been primarily around US foreign policy, particularly as it intersected with the civil rights movement and women's rights. And she said, "Look, the work that we're doing is tied to foreign policy. It's all about women's sexual reproductive health. 

This seems like it'd be a great organization for you to work for." So, I applied for a position here, and I never got a call back from HR.  And she actually walked into the HR office, and was like, "Hey, there's this candidate who applied, she wants to know why she didn't hear back." Which I'm so glad that this friend did. And they were like, "Oh, first of all, she doesn't live here. And so we don't look at any resumes that have addresses that are outside of our area. And she was overqualified." And my friend said, "She's already moving here anyway. Are there any other positions?" And so, I ended up having a conversation with HR. And the person was like, "Actually, we have this unposted position for a Web Content Editor. You look like you have a lot of writing skills. Is this something that you're interested in?" And so, that actually opened the door to a long part of my career that was in marketing and communications, where I was taking those writing and editing skills and applying them with a strategic lens to moving a mission forward.  And so, I'm so glad that friend had the conversation with HR and opened up that door, and I'm also really grateful that they took a chance on me. I was very transparent. Like, I don't have any web skills, but I figured it out.

Margie Chuang  07:15

Yeah, that's awesome to have had a friend who advocated for you and that you were willing to learn. And I think that your career has been reflective of that, of helping others gain experience or just have someone to talk to. It's really nice that you started off that way too when you went through this new path. And so now, you're building Empower Work.   You wrote an article entitled, "It Started With a Question and 60 Fliers". Can you tell us what sparked the question? Why wasn't there an easily accessible resource for people facing work challenges and what happened between that spark, and you creating those sixty fliers?

Jaime-Alexis Fowler  07:55

The spark was really tied to a lot of what was happening around— it's hard to say when "me too" started exactly. It's been unfolding over the last several years. But, I would say at a particular inflection point, when Susan Fowler's Uber memo had just come out, and there was a lot of attention being paid to women's experiences in the workplace, particularly negative experiences, I was doing increasingly frequent conversations behind the scenes with folks.  So, it's late-night conversations or coffees or things like that. And so often, when I was talking with folks about wasn't necessarily something you could put a particular box around, it was like: it felt unfair, and felt minimizing, it felt awful, lots of negative words. It didn't always rise to a legal definition, didn't always rise to what someone would be able to take action on for specifically for sexual harassment or something like that.  

And after one particular conversation one night where I'd spoken with a young woman, who had leveraged the heck out of her LinkedIn network to connect with me, I'm still surprised we got connected: she was first in her family to go to college and she joined this tech startup thinking that joining the tech industry was going to be her path forward, that the ticket to the middle class, so to speak, or maybe higher, that her family didn't have access to. And she had experienced all kinds of really awful things in her workplace. At the end of the conversation, I just thought what she needed was so much closer to the situation. By the time we connected, it was weeks after what had happened. There wasn't anything internal in her company. It was really small, the different levers that were available to her were so limited. And she was on the point of thinking, "Do I just leave tech altogether? How am I going to pay back my student loans? I can't move back to this rural community that I grew up in." It was like all these different factors were spinning for her.  And I thought I feel like she needed something really different than the conversation that we had and in much closer proximity to the situation that was happening. And so, I turned to my husband and I was like, "Do you think there's like a Crisis Text Line for workers? What would that be?" 

And I had experience within companies of, "Oh, you have an employee assistance program, or you have these different channels." It just seems really intuitive that there must be something that's a third party, outside of a company that would be available. And so, my husband and I actually spent time that night sitting on our computers next to each other. What would you Google? And what are those search terms? How would this come up?  And I had run a post-abortion talkline a couple of years earlier and crossed paths with Nancy Lublin, who at the time was starting Crisis Text Line, specifically focused on mental health. And I was just like, Nancy is really taking this idea of a suicide hotline and made it more accessible to the 21st century, to really where we are now. And someone must have done that for like EAP or ombudsman. It just makes sense. And no one had. So I was like, why has no one done that? Just because something doesn't exist, doesn't mean it needs to. And, I was certainly seeing a need in the conversations that I was having with folks. But I thought, if no one's created it, then there must be a reason why.  So, over the next couple of months, I did a ton of market research. I kept pursuing this question because I just couldn't let go of the fact that there was clearly such an extraordinary need. 

I started digging into the market research. And then, I did extensive user research to understand what were people experiencing? What did they do when they had those experiences? Where did they turn? What was available to them? What were the impacts of it?  And not surprisingly, saw what was already confirmed in a lot of existing research, which is that everyone experiences some form of workplace adversity across the course of their career. We spend so much time at work. Stress related to workplace is the number one health issue across the United States. There are so many negative physical and economic situations related to our workplaces. And yet, who it has the most negative impact for are often those with the least resources. And so, when we looked at that data, it was astounding to see that, of the more than 300 people that we did a survey and then we did in-depth interviews with folks, combined, that was like over 500 people, there was this very clear pattern that for folks with less social capital, so, women, people of color, folks with disabilities, when they ran into those barriers, they not only disproportionately experienced them, and more severe experiences with them, they disproportionately lacked access, and the outcomes were all the more negative.  

So, leaving a job with their next job lined up taking a pay cut, leaving an industry altogether. And this is again, reinforced by other existing research that was out there. But I think so often that existing research points to like: What needs to change within a company? What needs to change within policies? And we were looking at it from the lens of that's super important, but what do you do for people in that moment? Because you have to change that trajectory if you're going to say that you want to support the opportunity for everyone to thrive, then one of the key pieces of that is helping get over that barrier when people experience it.  And what we saw was that existing platforms didn't address that. They're really awesome ones for legal services and legal support, but you have to meet a legal threshold. There are really excellent mental health resources, but there are barriers, as well as stigma associated with reaching out to a mental health platform. And frankly, a lot of folks that we interviewed were like, "I talked to my therapist", or "I reached out to a mental health line", but they don't know how to have a conversation with a manager who's been gaslighting you. It didn't match with what they needed. And so, we really looked at where is that gap? 

And following that question of, "What do vulnerable workers need?" In these moments, what we saw was this pattern of behavior where folks would go to the bathroom and text a friend, or they would go for a walk, and connecting in their Whatsapp group or whatever. And that was really helpful. The connection piece was really powerful. The challenge was that a lot of the folks that they were connecting with, who they had a personal connection with, were like wonderful champions, but didn't have the information or wanted to steer them in a particular direction. So, if you reach out to your mom, and you're like, "Oh, mom, I'm worried about losing this job." And your mom's like, "Keep that job! Don't lose that job!" And it can feel like wonderful championing, but it doesn't necessarily empower and address the situation.  So, we came up with this idea of building out this SMS line and built it in a way that we thought we were addressing the needs of the workers that we saw. But, I'm not interested in building something that doesn't have an impact. We had to test it. The flyers were like, "How can we test this in as light of a way as possible, so that if it doesn't work, we're like 'Ok, great!' We scrap that idea and move on to something else."

Margie Chuang  13:42

So, when you say "we", was that you and your husband? You and your friend? Almost 500 people that you spoke to overtime. That's still a lot of people. Were you the only one who went out there to print out the fliers and then put them up on bus stops?

Jaime-Alexis Fowler  13:56

Yeah, this is a great question. So, it was predominantly me. But I say, "we" because I would tap into people at different points where I needed things. So, when I was like, "How do I capture this information about users?" I had a conversation with someone who's now on our board. And she's a former pollster. So, I developed some of the questions, and then she worked with me to help finesse the question so that when we were sending out the survey, we were collecting the right data and thinking about the questions in a way that we were going to get the information that would be most useful.  So, it was very much me doing the heavy lifting. But, I also was very aware of where I had gaps in terms of my knowledge, or I was like, "Okay, I think I can get a Twilio number and set up this text line, but I'm not totally sure how to do it. Let me call my friend Dave, who is an engineer, he can walk me through it." Because what I wanted to be thoughtful about was I wanted to leverage where my strengths were, and not necessarily spin my wheels on things or teach myself a bunch of things that weren't relevant. And so, the "we" was really like other folks that I would strategically engage at different points. But yeah, the walking the fliers around was totally me. I made them in a Google document and then sent them to Office Depot and picked them up and slapped them on some poles.

Margie Chuang  15:07

Yeah, yeah. I love that. You say it's "we", I always tell my sons, "Teamwork makes the dream work!" Which sounds really corny, but like,

Jaime-Alexis Fowler  15:14

Yeah, we say that all the time at home! My five-year-old is like, Teamwork makes the dream work!"

Margie Chuang  15:20

Yeah, so that's fantastic. Okay, I'll link to your article in the show notes, which includes a photo of the first flyer that you posted on a telephone pole. Can you describe to listeners out there what was on the actual flyer?

Jaime-Alexis Fowler  15:33

Yeah, it was really simple. So one of the things that we wanted to test was did people want to call or text? So, we had a theory based on user research: the theory was people would want to text instead of call, but on the flyer, it just said the number but didn't say whether to text or call. And if you did call, you didn't get anything, like no one answered or anything. And so, we wanted to see would people text or call if you need to talk to someone about work, here's a number, and that it was free.  On the flyer, I think there's a very sketchy photo of a phone. It's not even, it doesn't even like make sense. I thought it looked super sketchy. But while I was putting it up, this guy was like, "Oh, that looks cool. 

Can I take a picture?" I'm like, "Sure. Okay." And to be fair, the fliers, I think they only stayed up for a couple of days, they were not particularly successful. And I think it rained.  But part of the reason we chose the fliers first was that when you start a URL, Google puts you in this black box for a while. So, you're not really showing up online. And so, we were like, "Let's do something that we can actually talk to users as we're putting it up." I talked to that guy and asked him some questions about it, and then used that as some user information gathering as well. I think we had started the website, like five days earlier, or something, and we didn't think anyone was gonna think it was real.

Margie Chuang  16:45

You said that the fires weren't particularly useful in those first few days that they were up and then it rained. And so, what ended up being that first SMS text? Like where did that person come from . . . if you found that out?

Jaime-Alexis Fowler  16:57

Yeah, at the same time, I was really interested in how we could do more. So, we did the user research survey, and then the interviews, and then we had this initial pilot and wanted to do user research. One of my neighbors actually worked at Clear Channel. And I said, "Is there any way to get a transit shelter ad that I could put up a note about Empower Work?" Because it wasn't necessarily about people using it, it was more like I'd love to go do some user interviews.

Margie Chuang  17:20

Yeah.

Jaime-Alexis Fowler  17:20

And he was like, "That's not how advertising works. You need ten transit shelter ads, or 30. Wider visibility." So, he actually negotiated for ten, free transit shelter ads. And a friend of mine, who is a designer, locked up a quick design. And so we posted those and that was where we saw the first users come from. And obviously much more longevity than, the Office Depot fliers.  But, I would go and stand at the bus stops where they were posted, and just spend 90 minutes there and ask people, if they were coming off the bus or getting on, questions about the service and would they use something like that. And why or why not? And had they had a challenge, and what would they need to know to use it? Which was really useful, and then people would text us.

Margie Chuang  17:58

Thank you for sharing all that. So, I started a startup with my husband a couple of years ago called Brighten Flowers. And I went to downtown Mountain View and I stood near any high traffic areas and passed out cards, trying to test out if people would even go about using this app to purchase flowers. And it's really uncomfortable. You don't know if what you're doing is going to work. And we also had a website that really didn't have anything on it. I think it had three different flower arrangements in different sizes. Part of being an entrepreneur is about that hustling and putting yourself out there in uncomfortable situations, what was going through your mind as you walked alone, through the streets of San Francisco, taping up these fliers, standing there waiting for a stranger to talk to you or show some interest in what you were doing?

Jaime-Alexis Fowler  18:46

I think for me, I was excited. And I think there's this big unknown because you're like, "Oh, my gosh, is what I'm building so amazing?" One of my actual initial concerns that I talked to my husband about, who has also started a nonprofit. So we've talked about a lot of ideas around this. And I was like, "What if like, we only had a couple of people who were available to respond to chats?" And he was like, "This should be an even earlier stage. Like, you don't even need people responding. You just want to see if they reach out." And, "I said no, I really . . . " because part of what I wanted to test was how we were providing the support. So, it wasn't just when people reach out. I also wanted to understand, "Is this framework of what we developed to provide the support something that's useful?" 

Because there's one piece is like the means and then the other is like the actual end product, so to speak. But we only had a couple of people who are able to respond.  So, I was like, "What if we have hundreds of people reaching out?" And several of our advisors, including my husband, were like, "That would be a great problem. But maybe you should cross that bridge when you come to it." And I think part of it was seeing the scope of the need, right? When we were doing the initial market and user research, I was aware that the need is so huge, the possibility is there for that. But, I think I was a little overly . . . I don't know if optimistic is the right word. There's such an unknown factor. And I think I was too cautious in thinking about what happens if we get overwhelmed. Let's build something and break it first, before we get worried about whether or not it's going to break.

Margie Chuang  20:01

Yeah, but I could see why you would feel that way though, feel that type of excitement, because a lot of companies, especially startups that don't have an HR department, I worked at companies where the HR department wouldn't at all be anyone who I would go to for support in the workplace. And when you tell the beginning part of your story, I think, "But there are so many people out there!" But like you said, build something and break it first. Do you remember getting your first SMS from someone that you didn't know? Or that in your circle didn't refer someone to Empower Work?

Jaime-Alexis Fowler  20:36

Yeah, when we first started, I think a lot of entrepreneurs will often start with people that you know, and because we were building specifically with the idea of particularly vulnerable workers in mind, we were doing all of our outreach and testing beyond people that we knew. And it's also a confidential service, so one, I have no idea if some of the people that we initially supported were people that I knew or didn't know, who I was talking about the idea because we don't have any of that insight.  But one of the things that was funny is that the transit shelter ads that I mentioned, you don't necessarily get to choose when they go up. And so, we had figured out and laid out that they were going to go up, and we didn't quite know the timing. And we had already planned to go on vacation, pre-planned for months ahead of time. I found out that they were going to go up a week that we were going on vacation. And I was like, "Oh, man, this is tricky! So I remember, as users were ticking up, we were on vacation, and I was having to step away from fun activities to be like, "What's going on?" And frankly, respond to some of the texts. I was doing some of the conversations. So, it was me on the other side.

Margie Chuang  21:33

Yeah, all those hello@ or whatever email is oftentimes, in the beginning, it goes to you.

Jaime-Alexis Fowler  21:39

Totally.

Margie Chuang  21:40

So, during our initial call, you and I briefly spoke about our own experiences with workplace struggles and a lack of internal support, as we had just talked about, from the companies we worked for, or at least not feeling comfortable or supported enough from those companies to ask for help. Would it be okay if we shared one workplace experience that left us feeling, quite frankly, frozen and speechless? At least that was my experience when it happened. And then, can you walk me through the Empower Work process as if I texted or started a webchat with Empower Work about my experience as if it happened today?

Jaime-Alexis Fowler  22:16

Yeah. So, do you want to share yours first, or?

Margie Chuang  22:18

Yeah, I would be happy to share my experience first. So, years ago, I worked for a company that partnered with other companies across the United States who provided similar services. And there was a summit where some of the leaders from each of these organizations came together to brainstorm best practices, attend lectures, so on and so forth. And on the very last day of the summit, there was a networking dinner. So, I went around talking to people from other organizations. And I happened to pass a table where most of the people from my company were sitting together and chatting. One of those people who were sitting at that table happened to be the HR director, and she called up my name. I turned around, and she said, "Oh, look at you. It's so adorable how hard you're trying to impress other people. Hike up your dress a little more and I bet you'd get more networking in." And then she winked at me laughed, and said, "I'm just pulling your string." 

This was said in front of everyone at that table. So, people that I work with on a daily basis, people who were not part of my company, but who were in earshot. And no one said anything. And I didn't say anything, because I was shocked.  The HR director had treated me very poorly in the office. And yes, it made me feel uncomfortable, but I just felt in that moment that she used where we are at as an opportunity to . . . "x". I don't want to guess what it was that she was thinking or doing. But it caught me off guard. And also, I'm Vietnamese American. I don't recall any other person of color at that large event. Maybe there were a few? Like a handful? So like, I already looked and felt different. And that was horrifying. I actually never did anything with it. Because there was no one that I could really go to between her and the COO, who very fully backed all the decisions she made, or the CEO who the same thing. They're just like, "Oh, that's just how she is. So yeah, that was my experience."

Jaime-Alexis Fowler  24:21

This is what motivates me every day to do the work that we do with Empower Work because of that sense of isolation or feeling alone without having someone to go to or some support access, as well as the sense of no one else stepping in and being an advocate when there are public events like that. There are often so many things that happen behind closed doors or in places people don't see. But I think that so often in workplaces, it actually is a pretty visible experience to others as well, which has impacts. Those are things that we see quite a bit at Empower Work.  And what you just shared resonates a lot because it touches with some of the experiences that I've had, and one of the reasons I left academia, is because of the impact piece, but the other was like I had a terrible experience. My then advisor basically screamed at me in a public hallway. And your graduate advisor is essentially the person who helps shape the course of your career. 

When you're in academia, it creates part of your CV and the path forward and the connections that you have, and so forth. And I was not working for him directly, but I was working on an initiative. And he wasn't pleased with how that was going. And he berated me in this crowded hallway in front of 30 to 40 people in such a way that I felt like I had been physically punched, it was so aggressive, and so out of line. I could feel his breath because of the proximity in which he was so close to me. And it was such a visceral experience, and he fired me, even though he wasn't technically my boss, which is also very confusing.  And similar to what you shared, no one said a thing. There were people who were standing two feet away from me to the point where I could hear the person next to me say, "Oops." Like, they were really taken aback, and there was nothing that any of us could do. And so I was like, "Suck down those tears, take a deep breath, suck down those tears and get out of the situation." Fortunately, about 45 minutes later, someone who had witnessed it came over to me and said, Do you want to go to lunch, and he was someone I didn't know, didn't have a connection with reality. And we went and grabbed some sandwiches and I had tears coming down. We had a conversation about it. And it was him creating that space and saying, "I just wanna let you know that I saw what happened. And that wasn't okay. And I wanted to see if you're okay." 

And that has stuck with me since that happened.  Because when you're a grad student, there's no really HR to go to there isn't really a recourse for anything. He was also my advisor. So, what do you do, there's not a pathway for that. In the course of other aspects of my career, I've had a range of other experiences that are really off-putting, but I think at that particular moment, I was living in a town where I basically knew no one, it was a different type of isolation. And since we're on audio, I'm a white identifying woman. And so, I have a lot of privilege in a lot of different ways. And in that moment, I felt like I had absolutely no recourse to do anything. And I also didn't have a support network, living in a place that I didn't know, I didn't know people, everyone who could support me was hundreds of miles away. And that just feels awful. No one should have to go through something like that. That was now a very long time ago. Some people are like, "What inspired you to start car work?" That happened and then 20 years went by . . .

Margie Chuang  27:25

But you still feel it? Right? You relive it as if it happened yesterday, you could probably still feel what that hot breath felt like in your face.

Jaime-Alexis Fowler  27:32

Yeah. And I think for me, the pieces that also stick with me are the positives, like a friend who went and talked to HR, like this person who asked me to go grab a sandwich. And I think about the line of, "Look to the helpers." And there are always people who are helping. For me, as someone who's an optimist, it's like, as awful as things get in the world and as terrible as people can behave and as atrocious of experiences as people can have, my goal is always topping that, overcoming it and spending time and energy on the people that are the quote-unquote, helpers.

Margie Chuang  28:00

Yeah. So, let's talk about those helpers. Let's say that I am going to text Empower Work. And do I just start telling my story? Or do I just text and say, "Hello." What's the first step?

Jaime-Alexis Fowler  28:10

It depends. Some people text with a paragraph of, "Hey, here's what's going on. Is someone available?" Some people just text, "Hello." So, it's very personal. And what happens is, if you text or start a webchat, you get an immediate autoresponder. So, it's automated. And it says, "You've reached Empower Work. Here's what we do. Here are our terms of service." It asks you to opt into that because we're a free, confidential service. And we want to make sure that people are also aware that if someone was in a situation facing harm, we do have access to that information to make sure that they're safe. And so, we asked everyone to opt into the terms of service.  We ask a couple of basic questions, one of which is, "Do you have any time limit?" And we started asking that because some people really do. If I'm worried I'm gonna get fired in 15 minutes, like, I have HR or my boss or whoever is asking me to come into their office, and they have a very critical time window to have a conversation. 

And other people are like, "No, I've got plenty of time." So, it's helpful for us when volunteers are connecting with people to understand is this someone who has time to go deeper to really think about what's at stake to really explore possible outcomes? Or, is it someone who has a very urgent time-sensitive need, and it might end up being an abbreviated kind of counseling session related to that.  And then, after those questions, you get connected with a real-life peer counselor. They ask questions to understand what the impact of the situation is having on you, really delve in and acknowledge what their range of experience has been like, and then slowly start to think about what an ideal outcome for that person might be and discuss paths forward. 

It's very personalized, centering the person who's connecting with Empower Work in their experience, because one person who's experiencing harassment may not have the same things at stake or have the same desired outcomes as another person experiencing harassment. And we've had situations where someone reaches out and they're like, "I've already contacted a New York Times editor. I want this to be on the front pages. I don't want anyone to experience this again." And then, you have people who are like, "I just need to make it through the next two weeks while I find another job. I'm in the final stages of an interview. And I just need to be able to make it into work the next two weeks, because I can't afford to not be able to pay rent. And then I just want to leave." And it's like, those different paths are so personal.

Margie Chuang  30:18

You mentioned in another interview, I think it was on a podcast that Empower Work is creating space and not solving. Like you mentioned before, you don't provide legal services, but you provide resources that people can go to. Can you elaborate a little bit more about creating space and not solving it?

Jaime-Alexis Fowler  30:33

When we're thinking about what's empowering to folks. The situation that we're talking about that people experienced, that you experienced, that I experienced, is so minimizing and disempowering. And part of what we're trying to reconnect with is a sense of confidence, of agency, of really reconnecting with that power, because we all have it. But given whatever has happened to us, that may be in different stages of having been impacted.  When you solve something, like if someone comes and says, "Hey, this just happened to me. What do I do?" And you chime in and you're like, "You do these three steps. This is what you do." It doesn't really help fuel that sense of reclaimed agency, because then that person is just like, "Okay, great, go follow these three steps. I don't really know that I feel that much better." For some people, it might. But it's not an approach that really centers the person in their experience, it doesn't help them think about what's at stake or value for them.  

When we create the space to really listen deeply and understand, this is a mom of three, who is terrified of being able to pay rent next month, or has experienced trauma in her past, and maybe was abused as a kid and reported it and nothing happened. And that's going to inform whether or not she wants to report to HR, given what's going on. And so, taking a cookie-cutter approach, I'm just going to solve it doesn't really take that into account. And that can be important. You know, if you are going to go talk to a legal resource, the lawyer is going to give you that, this is how you solve it. And that's important. That's what lawyers do. But our particular approach is really on connecting with the individual and reclaiming that sense of feeling heard, feeling acknowledged, and reclaiming that agency, so to speak.

Margie Chuang  32:06

Yeah, a lot of the time, like when you and I are talking right now, I feel very safe, I feel empowered at the moment. But to your point earlier, in reality, it's still pretty intimidating to go and speak to your manager by yourself in person, especially if the manager is . . .

Jaime-Alexis Fowler  32:20

the perpetrator?

Margie Chuang  32:21

Yeah, exactly. Would you be able to give an example of what Empower Work would say to someone who is about to have that conversation? Do you have mock conversations or like breathing tips in the moments that you're feeling nervous while you're talking to this person?

Jaime-Alexis Fowler  32:36

Yeah. And that's a part of the process. So, let's say someone has decided that their ideal outcome is having a conversation with their manager where their manager hears that they're having this challenge. And their hope is that the manager is going to change the behavior. What a volunteer would ask would be, "What's feeling hardest about that conversation?" And for some people, it might be like, "Well, just having to have the conversation." And so we'll talk through, "How does your manager respond best to these kinds of requests? Communicates over email? Face-to-face meetings?" Not during COVID, but like, all of the different facets of it. And for some people, it may be like the anxiety of having that conversation feels really hard. And so, the volunteer and the person might talk through like you were saying, breathing strategies, or do a brainstorming exercise.  

Sometimes, we'll ask people like, "When do you feel your best?" Or, "When do you feel most centered?" And someone might say, "Oh, I love cooking" or "I love . . ." something like that. And so, we might hone in on, "What about cooking? Is it like the tactile component of it? Is it the smell? Is it this?" And then, how do you get reconnected to that when you're in the conversation. And so, we want someone to come up with whatever strategy is going to work for them.  Because we're having a conversation over text or webchat, we can't see someone, there's so much that we don't know about the person that our approach is really about asking powerful questions that hone in on what they know about themselves, and creating the connective space so that they can rediscover some of those that they know about themselves, but someone may not make the connection between, "Oh, yeah, I love having a warm cup of tea, because it helps me to take a deep breath and calm down." And they may not connect that to a conversation with their co-worker. And so, we might help foster that in some way.

Margie Chuang  34:13

In listening to you say that right now, I didn't think of that either. And that really helps. It helps to have just that very simple question, but when you're in the moment, you're not thinking about those things: having tea, going for a walk, any of the things that bring you a sense of calm.

Jaime-Alexis Fowler  34:29

Yeah. And I think particularly when we think about work, it's tied to our well-being in so many ways. And then, I think also the cultural pressures around it are like we don't get emotional at work. There are a lot of added layers that people put pressure on themselves around when thinking about how to show up, not to mention, the vast majority of folks that we support, identify as women and particularly women of color. And so then, there are added layers of complexity and exhaustion and wearing that come into play when you think about not just how you're going to have that conversation, but how you're going to be perceived, or how you're going to show up.  

And so, creating that time and space to really take a step back and figure out what's needed is really important. And I think in the workplace, we have this pressure of, "Hurry up and fix it." Or, Hurry up and solve it." It's certainly when it impacts your finances and well-being, you have that pressure. And we create a space where you take a breath and slow down for a minute because what feels like there may only be one option may actually have ten. But with that really heightened emotion, it's nearly impossible to see what other available resources there could be.

Margie Chuang  35:28

What are some common topics or concerns that people are coming to Empower Work for? And please feel free to share if that's changed since COVID, because now people are dealing, especially people of color, people in marginalized communities, are dealing with a different set of that or a more intense part of that.

Jaime-Alexis Fowler  35:48

Yeah, I would say the two top issues that we've seen pretty consistently are fear of getting fired, and this sense of pressure to make a job decision. And so, the fear of getting fired, it can be related to a lot of different things, it can be related to, "I experienced discrimination. I reported it now I feel like I'm getting retaliated against.' "I feel like I'm gonna lose my job." Or it could be like, with COVID, we're seeing the fear of being fired is huge. But now, it's tied more to how the business is doing, how the economy is doing, and things like that. It's also tied to safety reporting issues. So, people who have stood up and said, for instance, we've supported a lot of frontline workers.  And we had someone connect with us from a pharmacy where half of the staff in the pharmacy believes that COVID exists and half don't. And this particular person was on the camp of, "Let's keep everybody safe. Let's put safety protocols in place." 

And in so doing, really angered their manager who felt like that was really unnecessary. And so, they were worried about getting fired, because they were enacting these safety protocols. So if you're getting fired has been really huge. It's just that the issues related to that fear have changed over time. And particularly in 2020, it's much more about the larger economic forces, the implications, both of racial unrest that's been happening across the country, but it's also impacting people's workplaces, as well as health and safety-related to COVID. And then, job decision is the other one. And job decisions, we see where people are like, "I'm trying to figure out basically if I stay here or do I go? Do I stay and try to affect change? Try to address the situation, or do I decide to leave?" And again, we've seen that consistently as one of the top issues. But with COVID and 2020, in particular, it feels heavier, because of this sense of the job market is so fraught or so seemingly, "Everyone has lost so many jobs that it looks like I won't be able to get another one." So, they're worried about putting everything on the line, basically.

Margie Chuang  37:35

Because do I stay in this terrible situation, yet I still have a job? Or, do I leave and not have something lined up?

Jaime-Alexis Fowler  37:42

 Yeah.

Margie Chuang  37:43

How many people do you serve? And is it mainly in the US?

Jaime-Alexis Fowler  37:48

So, we're just US-focused at the moment, because so many of the practices and approaches or even legal resources in the States, for instance, not only federal protections, but then you're looking at state and local resources as well. So, the scope of the need is so huge in the US and the range of what people might have a recourse around is so broad that we've been like, let's be very us focused. There are 40 million working Americans who don't have access to resources. We've got a pretty big swath of folks that we need to address here. When we think about who we support in average texters. We often say "texters", because volunteers, early on, were like, "It feels weird to use the term users." Yeah, that makes sense. And so, what we see is that there are still ups and downs in terms of trends. So overall, for 2020, we're now tracking at more than double the number of people that we served in 2019. We're closing anything on 7000 people served and 250,000 messages exchanged because the conversations go pretty deep. And about 90% of people leave conversations feeling better, which is huge, but there's still a lot of daily variabilities. 

When we first started, we felt like oh, Fridays are gonna be a busy day. And actually, Friday afternoons are crickets.  We also see that major national news events often have a day of quieter activity, and then we'll see an uptick later on. So we thought like, for instance, when the Cavanaugh hearings were going on, we thought, actually, we might see an increase in people reaching out who had experienced harassment or discrimination in the workplace. And the fact that these national stories were happening would be a trigger for someone to really want to talk to somebody. And what we found was it was like crickets during the hearings. And then in the weeks following, the same thing happened in 2020, where there was a major announcement about job loss or unemployment numbers. And that day, we'll see you lower volume, and then we'll see an uptick. And we suspect that because the service that we're providing is related to work that there is a sense of, if you're going to do anything, you're just going to focus on your work. And even if it's really stressful, or even if you're really overwhelmed. The fact that there's this other overwhelming piece of life or news happening may impact people's bandwidth. It's like that tidal wave where then it's like, oh, then it crashes and you feel like now I need to reach out to somebody which is not a trend. I think we would have predicted a couple of years ago.

Margie Chuang  40:00

You're seeing the trends, your data, it's confidential, like you said, but I imagine that companies could develop new tools or approaches. If you're currently wanting to improve your company, you would want to know this data. Are you currently doing something where you're publishing the general information?

Jaime-Alexis Fowler  40:17

What do we do with the data? Yeah, that was an interesting thing is that when we started and we were scoping out, "Why does this gap exist?" Part of the reason the gap exists is that everyone who's come at this previously had been really focused on the enterprise market. It's been very focused on the buyer will be HR or the buyer will be the company, because that's where employees are and that's where workers are. Part of our theory is that I mentioned there 40 million workers who work in workplaces that barely even have HR. And so, those are not workplaces that are going to provide tools or resources or training or be interested in data. So, that's who we've targeted with the service itself, or folks who don't have access to anything else.  In terms of the data, the larger question for us as a mission-based organization is how do we build healthier, more equitable workplaces. And part of that is our tech service. Part of that is through our training with our volunteers. 

And then we also offer an aspect of our training that we provide for volunteers we offer for companies so companies can buy training that we can provide to their employees, we don't provide the text service. And then we thought about the third area of how do we influence policies? How do we influence practices? How do we change behaviors in workplaces? And we see actually that one of the key ways of doing that is through the training that we provide for volunteers and for companies. And then in terms of our data, we look at it as it's a nonprofit that's committed to this vision and this mission, we really want to make that data accessible to everybody. So we work with researchers who are looking into what does justice looks like for workers, we don't have a lot of available avenues for recourse, what would people like to see.  And so partnering with researchers who can look at the aggregate data and start to identify trends and themes and say, based on these 1000s of conversations, we're seeing particular themes that are coming up, we released a report to help inform companies or managers that one of the biggest gaps that we see, and then we think there's also a gap in the available research related to the gender pay gap is directly related to managers. 

So in all of the gender pay gap research, there has been incredible research in that area, and incredible ideas put forth to address the gender pay gap. And one of the things that we found in that we see in our conversations quite a bit is that the rubber really meets the road with your manager.  So a company can have particular policies or practices were expectations, if those don't get translated at the manager relationship, those policies and practices are basically moot. And so we looked at the data and surfaced information that we felt should be available to anybody, like a company isn't paid for it, take this information and run with it, of course, as we were releasing that code was hitting didn't quite land in the way that we had hoped. But that's what we wanted to do in the future is to take the information and really centering it in the experiences that we're seeing from workers and surface it to say, look, it's hard, but it doesn't have to be complicated. And here are some practices that even really small companies can put into place. If you're like a five-person that clinic.

Margie Chuang  43:05

Yeah, being someone who worked at a vet clinic, I definitely know that they could really use it. So empower Work, as you mentioned, are peer counselors, who are all volunteers. Can anyone apply to be a volunteer? And what qualities or experience does empower work look for in a volunteer counselor?

Jaime-Alexis Fowler  43:25

So anybody can be a volunteer, which is great, there's no you have to have a Ph.D. and empathy to join. We encourage and invite everybody to sign up. That being said, it is a commitment, it's 20 to 25 hours of training. And we asked for folks to commit two hours a week for at least six months, which is basically like we invest a lot in the training for folks. And it is really a form of professional development in a way because volunteers will come back and say I just got a promotion, or I just got a new job because of the skills that I learned with Empower Work.  That's part of our mission to lift all boats. So that includes the volunteers in terms of skill sets, what we really screen for is has someone had work experience, we are having conversations with people, it's a peer-based system.  

And so people expect to connect with someone who has experience in the US workforce. Early on, we found that really, someone has to have at least six months or a year in the workforce, to be able to have that sense of connection. And that work experience can come in a variety of different ways but is important. And then a sense of openness and curiosity, because like we're talking about earlier, we're really creating space and not solving. We call it mutual alignment. We have an interview and application process where we screen for mutual alignment. What are you looking to get out of this? And this is what we do so that there's mutual alignment on both sides. does this fit for you and your life right now? Is this something you're interested in doing? And are you open and curious? If that's not a fit for you right now? Totally fine. We have folks who are chefs, we have folks who are tradeshow, checkout clerks. We have folks who are VPS that huge tech company has a huge range of workplace experience. And that's really powerful. And connective for folks that were supporting.

Margie Chuang  45:03

As you mentioned, it helps everyone within the organization, and they may not have even expected it. They may have just been like, Oh, I had someone who helped me in my life, I want to pay it forward. And then they ended up Yeah, getting a promotion or getting the life skills to speak better to be more thoughtful. What does the training program look like, Jamie-Alexis? They have that initial training. But as time goes on, and I imagine different scenarios pop up. Will there be an ongoing training part of the program?

Jaime-Alexis Fowler  45:32

Yeah, that's a great question. What's really important for us is investing in a volunteer experience, People are so wonderfully giving of their time and energy, and skills to give back to others. And just as we provide support for folks who connect with us, we want to provide support for volunteers too. And so, when we think about our work, it's really investing in both sides. So that includes the initial training, which has been really thoughtfully built out by our training director in a very co-designed process when we first started, we had a version of a training that looks so different from what it does today, partly because we've also been building for scale. So we moved everything into a learning management system so that volunteers can connect in and do the training remotely, they could always do it remotely, but they can do it on their own schedule through the platform.  

And so you can do the 20 to 25 hours of training basically, on your own as you go. And that includes specific support during the training. But what's different for our training compared to other peer bases or like hauling platforms is that we also provide practice pairing with real-life people, when volunteers are going through training, they will get paired up with another volunteer and mentor to do practice conversations. And it's a way of experiencing the service as a texture as well as a volunteer, and you're taking the training and putting it into practice as you're building these skills. And we also do group practices and things like that. So it becomes a kind of collaborative process. And then to your question, their skill-building as soon as someone joins. So when they first become a peer counselor, they're great. They’ve supported peer counselors on the line, but they're gonna get a lot of extra support from our team as well. 

And they can raise their hand at any point and be like, I don't know like we always model asking for help is so powerful. So do it. If you don't know something, just raise your hand. And then as folks are on the line longer, as they have more conversations, as they build those skills as they get coached by our team, you know, you see those skills building, and there are different levels of being a volunteer.  And we have folks who are master counselors, and through that, we've also built in other facets of additional training. And we also do fun, collaborative things like a bunch of volunteers started a volunteer book club, and then they feel it's not actually reading a book, it's a heavy lift. But now people get together, it's you know, prep. It's like a no-prep book club. So if you show up, you watch a 10 minute TED Talk. And then you talk about it. And you talk about how it applies to your work, how it applies to volunteering kind of thing. So there are lots of fun, continued development opportunities, some that are very like, Oh, this is part of the training and others that are just like, This is fun. 

When you first started, empower work, just thinking of yourself googling next to your husband, is this volunteer community, something that you thought would come out of building empower was something that I was definitely familiar with, because I'd run a pure beast support hotline for folks who had experienced abortion. And so I had seen the volunteer model. But what I had seen there was a nonscalable model, like that organization had trained every volunteer in person. And I really like the intensive processes. And I was like, okay, that doesn't work. If you want to build to support 40 million people. That's a nonstarter. But I had seen other really collective volunteer models that did scale.  So like Crisis Text Line is, and that really effectively, when I was at Code for America, there was a wonderful volunteer program that was all about using your engineering and tech skills for good, a lot of people were able to see themselves in it and tap into. So that was a model that I had in my head. 

But we also looked at other models too, for instance, Planned Parenthood as a text-based service for questions when folks are like, have a question about contraception or things like that they can text in and at the time, I don't know if this is still true. This is when we're doing market research. At the time, those were all responded to by trained and paid staff. I think it was like 10 staff at the time, who was doing all of those, it was a free service, but it was staffed by paid folks. And so we looked at different models as part of it to see which one and we landed on the volunteer one for a couple of reasons. One, for a larger theory of change. We thought it was really powerful for folks to be able to go through training and take that back into their teams into their personal life into their working lives.

Because if we just held 10 staff that were doing it, then there's no ripple effect, or there might be but it's a more limited ripple effect.  And we were like, oh, that could be really interesting. And then when I was looking at I think being based here in San Francisco, a number of bottles that have gone enterprise and done some variation of that, whether they were like on the mental health side in terms of therapy or in terms of coaching, we actually found were underpaying coaches and to really achieve our mission of building healthy, equitable workplaces, I was really averse to the idea of underpaying folks to come in and do this. Some of these platforms are paying if a market rate for a coach is like $200 an hour. Maybe they're paying like $35 an hour and that felt fundamentally out of line. You what we were trying to achieve?

Margie Chuang  50:02

Yeah, I really appreciate just how thoughtful you are in everything that you do, and asking that question I didn't expect. So you really thought about all these different models and what that would look like. And so for someone like me, who isn't familiar with the nonprofit space, why did you decide to pursue the nonprofit route versus B Corp or for-profit? You had mentioned a couple of things. But if you can expand about it, that'd be great.

Jaime-Alexis Fowler  50:29

Yeah, so we looked at a couple of different options. And I really credit Julian, who's the person I mentioned, who helped me with the survey, she and I also sat down over burritos on a picnic bench, we're like talking about business models, and we centered it and what's the change that we want to see, we really want to center this on vulnerable workers who don't have access, okay, you can do a nonprofit model, you can do that in a B Corp, we didn't see that as a viable path and structuring it as a for-profit initially, because frankly, I'm a mom and a partner living in San Francisco, I was like, we're gonna have to take on capital in some way. And to achieve our mission of really supporting vulnerable workers, I didn't see a path to taking on that capital, if we were going to be a for-profit entity that wouldn't be out of line with what we wanted to achieve. And that's not to say that it was impossible.  But all the different ways in which we looked to configure it, I just couldn't see the path forward, we saw a potential path with V core, we've also thought about having the nonprofit structure with a for-profit side that has a revenue model that contributes to it. And fundamentally what we landed on, was it nonprofit versus for-profit equal, it's really about like, it's not that you don't have profit, it's just what do you do with that profit. And in the nonprofit model, everything goes back to the mission, and in a for-profit model, that's going back to shareholders. 

And so for us, it's like the shareholders are the folks that we're serving. And so we do have streams that have earned revenue, and that earned revenue goes back to achieve our mission. At some point, we may not do it differently. Maybe in the future, we'll have a spin-off, it's for profit. And part of that fuel pays for the mission-driven work that we do.  There are lots of organizations that do things in creative ways at this point. And at the end of the stage of where we are focusing on what are we really laser-focused on achieving, and doing that without getting distracted by some of the possibilities. And if we can get far enough down and see the impact in a strong enough way, in terms of the initial problem that we set out to solve, then I think we can look at what are the other ways that we could extend this and again, to credit, Julie, she was like, you can always change. But she was like, you can start as a nonprofit. And then switches. In fact, a couple of founders, I know one of them started as a nonprofit recently switched over to a for-profit entity. And I've seen the opposite happened to there was a group that started as a for-profit. And they realized that being a for-profit was fundamentally out of line with their mission, they ended up actually merging with a nonprofit. So they essentially got acquired, quote, unquote, by a nonprofit, and that was their exit strategy.

Margie Chuang  52:47

Oh, very cool. Okay, if you're comfortable answering this question, just because again, I'm not familiar with space, how does Empower Work create revenue?

Jaime-Alexis Fowler  52:56

How are we free?

Margie Chuang  52:57

Yeah. You're offering your service for free to texters, which we've identified, which is fantastic.

Jaime-Alexis Fowler  53:03

I think it shows you later like in the tech space, when you think of a free summons, also, what are you’re selling my data? No, we don't do that. How am I free? We talked about the why there's just a lot of the folks that we're serving are lower-income and can't necessarily afford to pay for a service. And the companies that they work for can't afford to pay for a service. So it was really important for us that we've ever been free and accessible. That being said, a number of people donate afterward. So before COVID, and this has gone down to totally, candidly, it's gone down basically to zero during COVID. But before COVID, about 15% of people who connected with us, even those who were extremely low income would donate afterward. And even if it was like $2, and on average, people would donate about $25. And so that's never going to get us to scale, but it's a really solid pillar of ongoing revenue.  We also have partnerships for volunteering. 

So we work with companies who have really robust volunteering programs, and who may match ours for volunteering or me provide grants services for volunteering, recognizing that for us training, a volunteer cost between 507 $100. And as amazing as it is to have volunteers who come in and provide this peer support. It's also a huge investment for the organization. A lot of companies that are interested in employee engagement and volunteering will provide dollars for doers or other grant-based opportunities. So that's another slice for us that we have partnerships around another slice is earned revenue. So we have training that we provide that's a sliver of what we offer for volunteers that build skills in listening. And acknowledgment really is skills that are fundamental to being a great manager or a great colleague, and also a really good coach.  And so a lot of the skills that we offer help people with conflict management and to help increase the diversity and equity within teams. We've had an increasing number of partners and companies who are interested in paying for training to provide that which is really awesome. And then we have really generous philanthropic partners who support our work who believe that everyone should have access that there shouldn't be barriers that women and people of color should be able to thrive. in the workplace. 

And so we've had amazing corporate and philanthropic and organizational donors who contribute, as well as individuals who raise their hand and say, I get it. Look, we had someone who was a major donor who had been a C suite individual had gone through this terrible personal experience. And it was like, I get it, I don't want anyone else to experience this, I want to pay it forward. And I know if I give $3,000 to empower work, that's going to be 100 people who don't have to go through what I went through.

Margie Chuang  55:26

Thank you so much for going through all that. It's amazing. So you're building empower work through the lens of a woman, and through the lens of a mother, you also spoke a little bit about your upbringing, as Empower Work continues to grow Is there anything specific that you and your team do or think about in regards to diversity, inclusion, parental benefits?

Jaime-Alexis Fowler  55:48

It is baked into everything that we think about, and I remember very early on was like, just me, we had just barely hired me, we'd raised enough money where the board could hire me. And I was like, we've got to set our policies and practices at our borders like you're the founder of one. But it was really important to me in terms of achieving our mission to be living and breathing and embracing the values that we were embodying in all different ways. Our team's been pretty small today, but a number of us have been parents. So it's like being really flexible with do people need to step up or step back, especially right now with COVID and remote learning? 

What do people need and making that really flexible, has been really important, and modeling everything that we do that we support for textures for volunteers, like modeling that within our team to and looking and measuring at how we're doing.  And so we've been really intentional, for instance, in looking at does our volunteer community match our texture community, if you don't have to, the percentage for percentage has to be totally aligned. But it's really important for us that we're building an inclusive equitable experience for volunteers, and that our volunteer community matches those of the folks that we support. And we realized earlier, the biggest place that we were out of line with that was our board. 

And so we went through this process of evaluating with our board, okay, we're really aligned, our staff, our advisors, our community, our volunteers, our textures, were out of line with our board. And so what do we need to do on that? How do we want to think about it? How do we want to tackle it, and I'm excited that we just added four new board members to our board with a really intentional process of evaluating where we were, what we needed, what skills we needed, and then aligning that and being very intentional about diversity and proximity to the population served.

Margie Chuang  57:29

Congratulations. That's super exciting.

Jaime-Alexis Fowler  57:31

Yeah. And it's a journey. So I'm like, Oh, we've solved it.

Margie Chuang  57:35

But I think the important piece is we're constantly paying attention to it and adjusting where needed. And I think that's really important, during this time, to be really honest to others about what we're going through. And I'm a mother, your mother. And I don't know if, in the past, I would have done this, but I reached out to you in the middle of the week at this point all the days been together. So I don't remember when but I reached out to you. And I just said this week is not going well, I don't have our prep doc ready, I'm drowning a little bit. And it was really wonderful to know that I would send this email to you, we've never met in person or anything. And know that when I hit send that there would be understanding on your part.  But I didn't have to have this fear of saying my kids not sleeping, he's having a really tough time with quarantine. And it was so wonderful. Just to get an email back that was like, don't worry about it. We're all going through something like this, take your time, do what you need to. And I just wanted to point that out. Because I think that's really important during this time and important for what empower work is doing within your organization, and then with people who are texting in to Empower Work, right? Like we're all trying to empathize with each other. I appreciate your sharing that it's like how do we create space for one another right now,

Jaime-Alexis Fowler  58:45

It's hard because there's so much wheat in the world? And how can we help just take a little bit of that we want another?

Margie Chuang  58:51

Yeah. So I'm gonna skip ahead to actually this part since we're talking about it. During my research for our chat today, there were common themes and words that people use to describe you and the work that you've done or the impact that you have made on their lives. words such as Pathfinder, understanding manager results, strategic, thoughtful, professional, communicative, positive, and fun. You lead with empathy. Have you always been an empathetic person? And if so, where do you think that comes from? And then can empathy be something that's cultivated? Can being a people person be something that's cultivated?

Jaime-Alexis Fowler  59:25

Oh, man, I will say yes to the last part. And I don't know how to do it, which is why our first hire was a training director, because I was like, I love empathy. I embrace it, I lead with it. It's such an important idea to me when I was thinking about creating Empower, like, I don't know how to teach it to others, but I believe deeply that it's possible. But when you're thinking about how do you build that and scale it, you do have to systematize it in a way and one of our earlier supporters was like, why don't you hire an engineer first, because we can figure all kinds of tech stuff, but fundamentally if we can't figure out how to train build the skills of our support, we're not going to be successful. And so we have to figure out that piece of it. 

So I think that's super, super important. For me personally, it's hard to say if I've always been empathetic, I look back at who I was, like, I think we're all critical of who maybe were in middle school, I look back in the phase of growing up.  And I often wonder, why didn't I see more of what was happening to others around me, others in my sphere of life at that point may have had a different perception. But I reflect back and wonder was I as empathetic as I would have wanted to be, for example, I went to a very small private school in Dallas that was predominantly white, and I've thought about was as open and supportive to people in this very small community who learn differently, who thought differently, who showed up differently. And I like to think that I was, but I'm not totally sure. And so I grapple with that, in terms of how I've built empathy. I really credit my parents, in large part, because when I was growing up in our household, which was a phrase that drove me crazy at the time, but I really value it that my parents always say how you treat people is important, they would say that over and over again.  

And I think when you're like 17, and in a fight with your parents, you don't really want to have them throwing that back at you if you're not treating me. But I do think that it was this real value that was espoused in our house. And part of how you treat people, part of that being important is understanding where someone's coming from. And we may not be able to fully embrace what someone else's experiences are like, but to be able to at least spend time listening and understanding where that comes from, to the best extent possible, I think is really important. And that's been really important for me in the workplace. Because as a manager, when you think about all these different variables of like, how do you build a successful team?  How do you build a results-driven team? What does it look like to have a really fast-moving, impact-driven organization, everyone is human. And so starting with that human connection piece, I think is really important. Empathy, in my mind, doesn't mean like lack of accountability, or not being results-driven. But it's like acknowledging, hey, we're human. And we need to address what's going on with someone at any given point and understanding where someone's coming from. And I think that's where you tie that, to having a successful team in a way that can be really powerful.

Margie Chuang  1:02:16

Yeah, what has surprised you the most about being a startup founder or an entrepreneur in general.

Jaime-Alexis Fowler  1:02:24

I never set out to be a founder. So I think one of the things that's important is I know there are some people who are like, I've always wanted to be a founder, like, super entrepreneurial. And for me, I've always been an intrapreneur. So I've been someone who, within organizations, within teams, within businesses, identifies gaps, thinks about strategic opportunities, pulls things together. And we'll be very creative within a framework. And I think I've really excelled within that, because there's, in a way, like a nonrisk factor, like you're in a supportive, structured environment, and then you're taking it to the next level, which is very different than starting something from scratch.  So I think the thing that surprised me the most like I anticipated that it would be hard that you'd get a lot of noise that it would be isolating because I've had enough people in my life who've been in the sphere in some way. 

Like when my husband and I first met, he was running a nonprofit that he had started and was making like nothing. And it was like his driving passion, it was really hard. And it took a toll on him. And I had a sense of those pieces of it. I think what I didn't expect was that the tools and leadership skills that I had built as an intrapreneur are sometimes very applicable. And sometimes they're totally out of whack with what's needed when you're like operating a tiny team trying to get something off the ground, but it's trying to figure out which tools you need. And I'm really excited for the next phase of Empower Work, because we're in this growth stage at the moment. And I think I'm actually going to be a much more effective leader when we're bigger than I think I've been super, super early.

Margie Chuang  1:03:50

If you could go back in time, then when you started building empower work, what are some things you would tell yourself didn't work? And what are some things you would tell yourself did work? And then maybe do it stronger or faster?

Jaime-Alexis Fowler  1:04:01

Yeah, I think one of the biggest things that I wish someone had raised a mirror to me on was that when we were first starting, we were just an idea. I think I did a really great job of setting the vision, I was like, this is what we're gonna accomplish. This is a big vision, here's how we're going to achieve it. I was really focused on this big vision. And we hadn't actually started the implementation. And so it was really easy to be at that elevation vision level. And then when we became operational, I got really tactical. And so one of the things that I realized is that once we started once we had this national reach, I really struggled with elevation change where I was in conversations, and I would be like in the weeds where I really needed to be like at the top of the mountain.  And I think if I had that mirror in that first year to realize who I met the wrong elevation, we would have had a little bit of a different trajectory for the second year of the organization. But when I realized that in the second year of the organization, it was a really important shift for me to take a step back and be like I need to constantly be thinking of where I am if I want to stay I'm pitching this level if I'm in a funder meeting, I'm pitching this level, and I'm acknowledging things I need to get covered. But I'm not down in the nitty-gritty. And I think that's one of the challenges of being a small, early team that's doing a lot of different things. Because as the founder, you are in that nitty-gritty, you are jumping around elevations. And so being really intentional about it, I think, is important.

Margie Chuang  1:05:21

Thank you for sharing that and being open about that journey of yours. You mentioned earlier that you did extensive market research, you talked to close to 500. People, you also mentioned that you are a partner, and that your mother, when did you find the time to talk to all of these people and take these initial meetings? Again, like you said, there was more attraction later on?

Jaime-Alexis Fowler  1:05:44

Yeah, I think one of the benefits of this sort of the timing of when I was doing some of the research from power work was that at the time, I think Finn was 18 months old. I mean, I got and so he was going to bed at 630. And so it was like, I would have these huge swathes of time in the evening, from seven to nine, or like seven to 10, where I would be like, Oh, I could line up a bunch of calls. Or I could spend time building out a deck or doing things. It's funny because you feel more time constricted when you have a kid. But for me, I wasn't going out Adam and I would switch off on social events or things like that. But we didn't have the bandwidth, or we didn't have the finances to pay for a babysitter, or do we want to do that.  So we're like, why don't we pay for a babysitter when he's sleeping? That doesn't make sense. So we were both home every night. And at the time I was doing a job where I didn't really need to get back online for work at that point. And I just did all this and power work research and interviews and all that kind of stuff at night. 

And then I would fit in coffees or calls during the day to in different snippets being respectful of also my employer, but just being like, instead of taking lunch over here, I'll go to lunch and interview. I got so excited about it and felt so passionate about it that Adam and I did have a really realistic conversation because I was like, I want to spend all my time doing this. I don't want to just be doing nights and weekends. I'm hitting things I'm I want to do this all the time. And he was incredibly he was just like, Yeah, absolutely, I totally believe in you, you can do this 100%. This is so great.  And also we sat down ran numbers and talked about it because he had founded this other organization that had taken him years to get to a point where he could pay himself. And so we sat down and had a really realistic conversation about where we were, what things looked like, and really the possibility for raising enough funding so that I could actually work on it full time. 

And I think that's one of the issues with some founders who are like, I'm not going to pay myself or things like that. And our board was like the first person we will pay will be you like you are the most important person for this organization. And that's the starting place is making sure that you're covered because the organization is not going to succeed if you're not like 100%. And we are not in a position where I would work in these coffee shops sometimes. And I would hear VC conversations around me since I'm in San Francisco. And I would hear people pitching where they're like, I haven't taken a salary in two years as like a measure of their commitment. And in the back of my head. I was like, I really want to see this person's finances like how does this work? Because I'm like, something isn't working. Either. They're consulting a huge amount of their time on the side to make money or they have another job, or how do you live in San Francisco or really anywhere without taking a salary for yourself for two years? There's some kind of math wizardry that's happening, or you have personal wealth? I don't know. But it's I was like, that is not something I can afford to do.

Margie Chuang  1:08:19

Yeah, yeah. Really? How do you prepare for pitches, fundraising, speaking engagements, do you have a coach or any kind of rituals that you follow? Right before you're about to go on stage or go into a room, I

Jaime-Alexis Fowler  1:08:32

think for me, with the early stages of empire work, I had to get over the barrier of sharing this idea with the world. And so I specifically set myself up for a couple of challenges, when in power was an idea before we had even launched the pilot, I signed myself up for this five minutes spark talk. And part of it was a forcing function to be like, if I can talk on stage publicly succinctly about what we're trying to accomplish, then I can take that and use it in a lot of different contexts. I set that as a goal for myself. And then as part of the process for the organization that did the spark toxins, a leadership group that I'm part of, they built in a coaching process. So you get connected with other folks who've done the spark talk, you get feedback on it, you fill out the framework. So that was really helpful. And I think that drove a lot of our initial messaging because I spent the time thinking about that. And then I felt comfortable going into pitch conversations or funder conversations or things like that because I honed, I'm still working on it. But it was like I had gotten to a place where I'm comfortable to go on stage in front of a couple of 1000 people and talk about this idea in five minutes or less two slides that I can't see.  

So I can probably have a conversation face to face with the funder. And before those depends on what the thing is. But I always create some space before those either public events or in-person meetings to really get centered and that might mean if it's a meeting before COVID if it was a meeting, downtown somewhere I might build in like a 15-minute walk ahead of time where I don't have anything on the calendar. We're in power walking through downtown just to clear my head get the blood flowing. Like that, if it's like, oh, I'm speaking on stage somewhere, it may be like making sure that I have the right cup of tea spending a couple of minutes beforehand, doing a little bit of breathing depends on what the thing is. But I think for me, the most important piece is getting centered and creating space for myself, and then being really intentional about what do I want to accomplish, out of what I'm about to do. And having that being the driving force behind it.  Another founder on the podcast mentioned that fundraising and just being an entrepreneur, in general, is like sports training. 

It's super physical, super emotional, and you just have to keep going one after the other. Even when you're completely exhausted, mentally and physically, what keeps you motivated on those days where you are just completely exhausted? For me, it's really the impact of sometimes I'll go read a conversation that a volunteer has had recently because seeing the interaction between someone who connects with us and the volunteer reminds me like we had this increase in folks reaching out about unemployment. And you see these conversations where someone is really at their wit's end like they've been trying to contact the unemployment office for six months, no one's responding. 

They're totally decimated, and seeing the transition that can happen in a conversation. Like for me, that's really what fuels me. And when we have people who come back, let people come back like weeks later and be like, you won't believe what happened. I had this conversation with my manager, and they agreed that you're going to make these changes or that this promotion or things like that. And that's, to me is what lights my fire because there are ripple effects of our work that you can't see. And that for me is a very tangible grounding. reconnection got re-energizes me.

Margie Chuang  1:11:33

Yeah, that's wonderful, and really empowering, and gets you energized to keep going keep building. So thank you for sharing that. What's next for Empower Work?

Jaime-Alexis Fowler  1:11:42

I think one of the things that we saw with 2020, as terrible as so much of the year has been was that this was the year that so many folks, I think it really clicked what we're doing that people were like, I get why more support for workers as needed. I get why connecting confidentially and freely over a text-based platform makes sense. Like I get why workers with me this when they're stressed about not having access to people who are concerned about their family's livelihood, like their livelihood, their family's well being like, so much of this, I think clicked. And we saw such tremendous growth both in people who signed up to volunteer or people who reached out to us just like all across the board, which has been really amazing.  

And before COVID had set this really ambitious goal, okay, we think we can support or serve 3 million vulnerable workers in the next five years, which to go from closing in on 7000 conversations to 3 million. It's a moonshot, but we think we can do it. And I think 2020 has been the year that showed like, yes, you can scale a volunteer program. Yes, you can reach vulnerable workers in creative ways across digital platforms across communities. So the next phase for us is really driving towards that question of what do we need to have in our platform? What do we need to have in our training? What do we need to have in our outreach to build towards that, and I'm really excited that we have so much positive momentum as we really grow that impact.

Margie Chuang  1:13:04

Let's go and power. Okay, so I like to wrap up these episodes with rapid-fire questions. What do you think? Ready? Okay, are you a morning person or a night person?

Jaime-Alexis Fowler  1:13:14

100% morning?

Margie Chuang  1:13:15

What time do you wake up in the morning? like six? What would be your ideal office? You as cityscape, the mountains, the beach, or something else?

Jaime-Alexis Fowler  1:13:23

But definitely a cityscape.

Margie Chuang  1:13:24

What is the very first thing you do when you're alone?

Jaime-Alexis Fowler  1:13:27

When is the last time I was alone? Honestly, these days, it's checking Twitter, which is terrible.

Margie Chuang  1:13:32

Everyone needs an outlet somewhere. What show Have you binge-watched or really enjoy watching?

Jaime-Alexis Fowler  1:13:38

My favorite show from the last couple of years as well has been The Good Wife or Parks and Rec. Those are the two that I would binge-watch. I don't know when recently though.

Margie Chuang  1:13:46

Parks and Rec is one of my favorites. Have you watched the episode that they released during the pandemic?

Jaime-Alexis Fowler  1:13:52

I couldn't see it, which is such a bummer. I saw it on Twitter. Speaking of one alone scrolling Twitter, it was like and I had just missed it. It was like all the tweets were coming in.

Margie Chuang  1:14:03

Oh, you would love it. The roles that each character has is very fitting for what real life is now. So anyway, if you get time to watch it, you should watch it. It's fantastic. What book have you gifted the most or revisit often?

Jaime-Alexis Fowler  1:14:15

The one I read on the regular is Pride and Prejudice because I can go back and just pick it up anytime, which I really like the one that I've gifted the most is actually strengths finder. I've gifted it mostly around work. So like I've done that activity with my team. Pretty much every team that I've worked with and found that really helpful. You can identify key strengths. They have one for emotional intelligence as well. But I think this one is a really great way to understand what people's strengths are and how folks show up.

Margie Chuang  1:14:41

Got it. Thank you. A tradition or something that you look forward to doing every year.

Jaime-Alexis Fowler  1:14:46

I love birthdays.

Margie Chuang  1:14:47

So anytime there's a chance to celebrate birthdays, I get excited. In the moments where you're feeling nervous or fearful. What are some things you do or say to yourself to calm down those nerves?

Jaime-Alexis Fowler  1:14:57

Definitely, deep breathing is important. For me, and centering myself, and what am I trying to accomplish is really important. And sometimes that means walking away. This is really stressful, and I know how to accomplish what I want.

Margie Chuang  1:15:11

What have other women said or done to empower you?

Jaime-Alexis Fowler  1:15:16

So many across the course of a career, one of the mentors that I had earlier in my career, sat down with me and gave me some really helpful feedback. And she said to me, Alex, is your somebody who you walk into a meeting, and you've already thought 10 steps ahead. And that's so powerful. And also, you need to bring people along in those steps. And it was this wonderfully supportive piece of feedback where like, she saw my strengths, and also laid out, it's going to be difficult to be a leader if you can't bring folks along with you. And so I think that has really informed a lot of the ways that I think about because it is like the way that my mind works, I'm jumping ahead to all these other things. And you have to kind of help connect those dots, as well as listen to other people because it doesn't have to be the only path. But I really valued that she said that. And then another mentor at one point sat down with me was like, why do you want to take these jobs? I was choosing between two jobs. And she really encouraged me she was like, why not? Like why not swinging at the fences? And what are the risks involved in not taking this other thing, having a different point throughout my career? Both bosses and mentors who asked me questions that pushed my thinking and also champion me have been really helpful.

Margie Chuang  1:16:22

Thank you for sharing that. Last question, noot a rapid-fire. Do you have any parting thoughts for the listener out there that is building something or thinking about building something one day?

Jaime-Alexis Fowler  1:16:31

I think for me, the thing that I always share is to follow the need. And I see this a lot in San Francisco in particular, where, "I've got this great idea!" I'm like, "That's awesome. That's cool. But why?" For me, it's really important— there has to be a need for a thing that's getting built. What is it going to improve? What is it going to tackle? Why is someone going to buy it? Why is someone going to use it? What's the impact that is going to come out of it? And that for me, is what motivates me and drives me. So for me, it's really important.

Margie Chuang  1:16:57

Thank you so much for being on Founded By Women. Thank you for sharing your journey and being so candid about how your professional and personal experiences contributed to what you're building today through Empower Work and showing us that we're capable of creating solutions that help change the world for the better, while still meeting people where they are and leading with empathy.

Jaime-Alexis Fowler  1:17:18

Thanks. This is a really energizing conversation.

Margie Chuang  1:17:21

Hi, everyone! Thank you so much for tuning in. Links to everything we discussed are in the show notes on foundedbywomen.com. You can follow Jamie-Alexis Fowler on Twitter @jaimealexis, that's j-a-i-m-e-a-l-e-x-i-s. To learn more about Empower Work, visit empowerwork.org. That's e-m-p-o-w-e-r-w-o-r-k dot org. And follow Empower Work on Twitter @empowerwork. To get free, confidential support from Empower Work, text 510-674-1414. Again, that's 510-674-1414 to connect with a trained, peer counselor.  

And if you have a moment, I would love and really appreciate it if you could leave a rating and review on iTunes. It helps us to get more amazing guests on the show and grow the podcast. You can find the show notes and more interviews with inspirational women building inspirational things on foundedbywomen.com. Until next time, keep building what brings you joy!

Return to show notes for Episode #004.