Tech for Good: The Mission of Atma Connect + Vodafone Americas - June Sugiyama & Meena Palaniappan

12:40AM Aug 20, 2022

Speakers:

Julie Confer

Becky Endicott

Jonathan McCoy

June Sugiyama

Meena Palaniappan

Keywords:

people

nonprofit

technology

meena

community

women

create

vodafone

story

incredible

world

empowering

organizations

mission

support

connect

happening

june

disaster

innovation

As a social impact leader, you know, building a clear and memorable brand, impact story and digital experience is crucial to unlocking your mission. Our friends at Cosmic combine sharp strategy, memorable branding and scroll stopping digital experiences to catalyze real world change for social impact organizations around the globe. And get this they are offering an exclusive opportunity for the We Are For Good community, you can connect directly with Cosmic's founder and creative director Eric Ressler for free office hours. This is a huge opportunity friends, Cosmic's team are some of the most genuine and brilliant humans we've ever collaborated with. And so we'd love for you to tap their brain power for your mission. So if you could use an outside perspective on your branding and communications, visit design by cosmic.com/good, or follow the link in our show notes.

Technology alone can't solve the challenges nonprofits face. And that's why Neon One provides software that empowers you to manage constituents all while giving you the resources and support you need to connect to what matters most your people and their passions. Learn more about how Neon One is helping nonprofits create stronger connections by visiting neonone.com/weareforgood.

Hey, I'm Jon.

And I'm Becky.

And this is the We Are For Good podcast.

Nonprofits are faced with more challenges to accomplish their missions and the growing pressure to do more, raise more and be more for the causes that improve our world.

We're here to learn with you from some of the best in the industry, bringing the most innovative ideas, inspirational stories, all to create an impact uprising.

So welcome to the good community. We are nonprofit professionals, philanthropisst, world changers and rabid fans who are striving to bring a little more goodness into the world.

So let's get started. Hey, Becky, what's happening?

I'll tell you. We've got like women warriors, powerhouses on the podcast today. And I'm so thrilled to talk about this partnership.

Yeah, we have just got a couple of powerhouses here to talk to us about this really incredible topic of enabling mobile technology to deliver social change. And you know, we push you a lot on the podcast to lean into technology. And that's what the story is today. Hopefully, we're going to break down some of the walls and show how this can really kind of deepen your mission as you think through the lens of how you can use tech to empower the people that you're trying to serve. And that's definitely the story of our two guests today. So it is my delight to introduce you to Meena Palaniappan, she's the founder and CEO of Atma Connect, the global tech nonprofit that's empowering communities to help each other during and after disasters. And also June Sugiyama, who is this incredible director from Vodafone Americas Foundation, who supports organizations like Atma connect, and so we're here to talk and kind of thread their stories together because they have been in this business a while of really connecting in this power of when tech and people and missions converge. And so let me tell you a little bit about June's story. She has been the director at Vodafone America's for the last 20 years. And she's responsible for leading and providing strategic direction for their corporate foundation here in the US. Part of her role. She supports projects that advance the use of technology for social good by assessing community and nonprofit needs. You know, she's totally our person that we are putting the community at the center of this. And let me tell you a little bit about Meena. She has been implementing community based technology projects in the developing world for nearly two decades. As an environmental engineer and technologist she launched technology projects in Africa and Asia. She was the principal instigator for a 1.3 million US AI D project to build the water, SMS, mobile to web crowdsource mapping system that improve water services for the poor in Indonesia. So truly some remarkable talent here. And these two are all about empowering specifically women on the front lines, and really getting technology to do all of these things. So we're just delighted to have this conversation. Thank you so much for coming to the podcast.

Thank you. We're happy to be here I am for sure.

Yeah, excited to be here.

Well, I mean, you know, we love story around here. And we feel like our personal stories, our personal experiences very much inform and point us in the direction that we want to pour into our lives. And so I'd love to kick it to y'all just give a little bit of your context of growing up, and what led you to this really important work that you're doing today. So Meena, I want to kick it off with you. Tell us a little bit about your story.

Yeah, I was born in India, and I kind of was left there by my parents as they went to the US to earn money for our diaries. I was the third girl that was born in an Indian family. So this, this mission that Vodafone and we share of empowering women and girls is really close to my heart because, you know, you come into the world. And it's you know, there's this feeling of oh, I'm a burden, you know, and so I think this whole journey of realizing the tremendous power and value Women bring to the world women and girls bring, and how we can help them find their voices and share their voices and create the future they want. And how technology really helps enable that in new and really exciting ways. So yeah, I'm excited to so and you know, went through all of the, you know, pieces of my journey sort of like being like one of the few women and engineering and one of the few women of color trying to lead up a technology company. And, you know, in each of those places, like really realizing that this, this is important, you know, it may not be the way the world works now, but it's the way the world needs to work and how can we really, like have half the sky? Like how can we have women creating the, the communities of the future, so great.

June catches up with your story. Sure.

I'm like, Meena. I was born outside the United States. I was born in Yokohama, Japan, my dad was in civil service for the army. So we traveled all over. But I ended up here in the Bay Area, and was active in the community, just like Jon said, he was very active in the community, especially in Japan town, people of Japanese heritage in the US have been displaced numerous times. You know, during World War Two, the internment camp, my dad was placed in an internment camp with his family and lost everything. And like I mentioned about Japantown, that town has been displaced, and most recently displaced with debris development. And so my I think background is about social social justice. And I entered the corporate world, but I had the opportunity to be part of the foundation and the company. And that allowed me to further my interests, social justice in a different way. And we were a technology company, I started very early on as part of the phone company, and then the divestiture I'm aging myself now. But you know, actually, before mobile phones, and when this job at the foundation opened up, we were doing the regular grantmaking that corporate foundations do. But then we realized early on that, you know, our own no know how what we do within our company is of value to the communities. And so we started to look into technology for social good. And we actually started a competition called the wireless innovation project. And that allowed us to be in the field of social innovation through technology early early on. Vodafone is quite unique, in that we have 26 foundations worldwide. Wow. Most companies do not have independent foundations wherever they have employees and their work their business. But we have that model that's quite unique. All the 26 foundations run connected for good or technology for good projects. And we are one of them here at Vodafone America's Foundation, which I run. And like I said early on, we started our challenge. And from there, we really got to know what kind of innovation is out there. Whether it be FinTech health, on mobile, education, incredible things started coming to us, and they really educated us. And that's how we kind of wet our feet as far as social innovation was concerned. And it just really has grown not only within ourselves, but also within the technology community. I think social innovation is very commonplace now, but it wasn't more than about 10 to 15 years ago,

I feel like I see that lens a lot on our personal stories, you know, when we figure out what we're passionate about what we're good at, and that that can just kind of put us on a path that you telling the story of the foundation, kind of like finding that pace, I feel like y'all were very progressive, in how the social impact side of the business can really come alive when you lean into your core competencies of what you do really well that you can show up and really change the world with so just super here for this conversation. I'm so excited y'all are in our midst today to chat.

We have the same brain Jon because I was literally just thinking these two women are ahead of their time. Like and I can see how the lived experience really powers this passion for you both and I think the the wonderfulness of the world is how we connect and how we find people that are like minded and have the same values and they're chasing the same things. And I appreciate both of you just being so open and vulnerable about your personal experiences and I'm sorry for the the harm that any of that caused, but I love how you're using that to make Life more equitable and more open and accessible and inclusive for others. And I'm just very curious about each of your companies, we want to dive into that before we get into this really unique partnership. So, Meena, talk a little bit about the mission of Atma Connect, talk to us about what you all are trying to do. And then we're going to dovetail that in with June's work.

Yeah, I'd love to start with how I first met June. So I, because it's the really the beginning of the story. As I was doing that project that you talked about in my bio, in that it was creating this system where urban poor people could become visible and their needs for water could become visible, I started to see that, wow, we just weren't really achieving all we could with technology for social good. I mean, you know, we're here we are living in Silicon Valley. And there isn't a tech for social good project that's reached the scale of Facebook or Google, there's, why is that there's no reason for that. And so I really wanted to create the sort of breakthrough technology that was going to reach the billions of people around the world, connect to them. So they could have the voice, you know, take the collective action and to create the world that they wanted to see. And so with this really big vision, I entered this tech for social good tech for good competition, that Vodafone Americas was sponsoring in November 2013. And it was an incredible experience, because we won June, was presenting the award. And it was it just was so meaningful. Because, you know, Becky, as you say, sort of like feeling that you're ahead of your time can get kind of lonely. Yeah. And it was so wonderful to see June there, as this you know, person sitting at an institution that is, has created so much innovation for social good. I mean, Vodafone was behind sort of MPesa this sort of like, you know, storied impact in the Tech for Good world, right, they created sort of digital digital money. And so it just really helped, I would say, like the rocket ship, like for our rocket ships to launch and, and I'm always saying now that it's really, I'm ready to be right on time. The truth is like the world is caught up, we've seen the harms of technology that is not designed for connection and, and making the world a better place, right, where hate spreads faster online, we have misinformation disinformation. You know, people are saying this is behind, you know, it's fraying the fabric of society and threatening threatening democracy, all of these social ills that, that we're seeing run rampant, and we need alternatives. So what we're building is that technology for social goods, so it's a hyperlocal social network, where neighbors are helping neighbors, women are helping women, people are helping each other find food, water and shelter in the hours after disaster. They are advocating with governments for needed services and resources. They're improving maternal health services, by, you know, letting public health centers know what what their needs are. And they're organizing to rebuild more resilient, equitable societies where people have community gardens in case the next hurricane hits Puerto Rico, and you people don't face the same food insecurity they did after Hurricane Maria. So just all of these points of light all of these incredible stories and solutions, and changemakers on the ground that are being connected through this app to be able to spread their their impact. Wow.

I mean, we talked one of our values here is community is everything and there is so much power and just opening up lines of communication. And we've seen that across the sector of like mammy, she's we can just talk and find like minded peers and to move through things together. Like it's so much richer and better. And so I hear that seeing that threaded in your story. So June, kind of catch us up on the Vodafone side, like, what was your mindset in creating this competition? I kind of want to go back to that. What did you think when you see Meena competing for this? This I mean, what was it like take us back?

Yes. So you know, the idea of competition didn't really come to us right away. We were doing scholarship programs and going from university to university. I mean, my eyeballs were turning at the back of my head looking at, you know, algorithms that they were presenting to me, you know, at the poster board contest. And, you know, I'm not an engineer, we did have engineer advisors, but our board and I thought that we could do better. And so with brainstorming amongst us, we found that hey, why don't we run a challenge? We didn't know what was going to come up. You know, what, if it's failed, you know, what, what are we going to do. But it was incredible, an incredible opportunity to see things that we never we ourselves never imagined. I mean, just incredible things that that we never, we just never really imagined. And we were just so happy. And it was really hard for us because the competition was fierce. And every year, we can only award three three winners. But when we first started, you know, FinTech was new, maybe we get a handful of FinTech applications, a handful of health applications. Now I participate as a judge for MIT solve and also involved with organizations like fast forward that help nonprofit and probably love fast forward, yeah, nonprofit technology companies. And I'm seeing that it's become a very crowded field, lots of FinTech solutions, health solutions. So it has really started to change. And I think for good, and then we're going to see even further change technology just moves fast, you know, the speed of light. So we're going to continue to see change. And we're going to continue to see things that we never really imagined. And one of the reasons, you know, from our challenge and learning so much from our entrepreneurs and our winners was the fact that we really needed to kind of drill down and focus and see where the gaps within our communities were. And if we in the field of philanthropy, find that our our work changes all the time, especially technology companies, you know, that us that's affiliated with technology companies. So people ask me all the time, how can you stay in one job for over 20 years? Well, that's because what we do changes according to the community. And the reason like I mentioned, the reason why we decided to drill down and focus on women and girls is because there was a dire need. And also a few years ago, our CEO at that time, Victoria cloud, the whole corporate CEO, worldwide CEO announced, with together with the He when He for She, that we were going to make a commitment to increase the number of women and technology, increase the number of women and leadership within our own company, and use our technology to educate girls and people in adverse communities. So like refugee camps, and so forth. And so we decided here at the Vodafone Americas Foundation that we're going to back him up. And also the fact that there's like I mentioned an incredible gap within our own field in the technology field. And then within the entrepreneur entrepreneurial field, you know, women still now women are receiving maybe just a little bit over 1% in VC funding. So things like that we felt that we can really help tackle those kinds of issues that are existing within technology itself.

Man, you guys get me fired up about the potential of what could be Meena Go ahead. I can see you wanting to jump in here.

Yeah, you know, I all of those statistics that June is talking about with women. And you know, just looking at disaster, it's just shocking. The statistics, women and children are 14 times more likely to die in disaster than men. And in terms of displaced people, it's like a majority of the people that are displaced from disaster disaster are women. So it's just an every one of these issues that we really care about in in crisis and disaster. It's women that are on the front lines, they're the ones that are bearing the brunt of all of this. And so it's they that we need to empower you know, it's these women that we need to empower to, to be able to create the change that's needed. And the Ukraine crisis, I think is a really, yeah, but they gave out that incredible and very sad example. And it's something that we're in conversation with organizations and planning to bring out my go to Ukraine for the crisis and there's so many places in which Technology is not the existing sort of mainstream technologies are not meeting the needs. This is where human trafficking, you know, connections are made through, you know, these these private groups and, you know, WhatsApp channels and all of these things. And so how can we bring more light and transparency and safety in these digital spaces so that women are protected and have access to the resources they need. So it's a, it's a huge opportunity and a huge need that we're excited to address. So it needs to happen all along the chain from who we invest in to who we empower on the frontlines. Well,

I think I mean, we love this mission that you've created and kind of how y'all show up. Well, you kind of in practical terms, just explain it. Explain it to us like we're a kindergartener, what is this I know, it's involves an app and how it connects people. But in practical terms, just explain it. Because I think it's powerful what you're doing.

Yeah, definitely. So let me take you through this as a woman in in Ukraine who, and these are stories that, you know, are happening in Puerto Rico and Indonesia right now. But we're really, you know, I think this is, it just really brings it home in real time to think about this in Ukraine. So in Ukraine, there's a woman who is struggling to find health services like her, her doctors have have left or are no longer there, she's looking for food, she's looking for education for her child. On Facebook, she's connected to, you know, her friends all over the world who, you know, want to help. She has some WhatsApp groups, but they're not really local. And so on this platform, she can get go directly into a feed, she doesn't even have to be registered, that's local, it's hyper local. So it's all of the information that she would need to to meet her needs. In that moment, she can get involved in groups like a child care group that's being organized in her neighborhood, she can find health care services nearby. And people are organizing events to help one another to, to share resources and to, to communicate to governments and NGOs what their needs are. So these are all of the these are all of the resources that are provided to her. And it's different than a lot of other technologies that happen in crisis in that it's not just telling people what to do, or collecting information from people, it's really making a person a woman and agent in her own change a driver in her own development. So that's, that's that's how the app works. And when people get on to it, they're getting you know, it's it's not diluted with like cat videos are political kinds of things. It's, it's all information, you know, for people helping people, Women Helping Women, it's really sort of creating a place for all of that ingenuity and resourcefulness and talent to to grow.

Hey, friends, taking a pause from this feel good conversation to share a quick story, hope and a future is a nonprofit that serves children in the Arizona foster care system. Last year, they wanted to grow donations during Giving Tuesday. The only problem giving Tuesday was only one day away. Determined to seize the opportunity, they reached out to our friends at feather with help from feather services hope in the future managed to launch a complete advertising campaign just in time. As a direct result, they raised more than $500 on GivingTuesday. But that was just the beginning. Hoping the future decided to follow up with an additional retargeting campaigns designed to increase donations and reengage previous donors. They raised over $32,000 With just a $4,000 ad spend. Nonprofits of all shapes and sizes are turning to feather to grow their campaigns with targeted digital ad tools that reach people whenever and wherever they're online. Use feather to grow your urine fundraisers learn more about their solutions for nonprofits@feather.co That's feather without the last e.co

You guys have created an empowerment hub. And I love so much that you have and I just want to thank you for the courageous way that you have shown up because it's not as simple as just creating a piece of technology that does one singular thing. You have stayed in this journey you continue to listen at the at the most base level to the people because we talk about this a lot on the podcast like the problem was Savior ism of coming in and just delivering what we think people need and when we don't lift the voices of the people and the needs that they have, then we cannot be partners in solving problems because they know what they need, they probably just need the tech or the connectivity, or the hand out in the hand up to help them in that way. And this, I can see the layers of this journey here that you might have thought it was one thing when it started out, but you kept peeling the layers of the onion back back back. And, and but the mission is so central. And it's like empowering the woman at the center of it. And we know that by empowering women, it's going to have a ripple effect to their children to economies to health. We know all of this, we have data that backs this up. So I thank you for being on this courageous journey that is really baked in empathy and listening inequity. And I want to ask you, because I'm so curious about this, because when I think about nonprofit, you talk to June about technology moving at the speed of light, and we nonprofit, when they work with tech, we don't move at the speed of light, very often, we're a little resistant. And and I do think that in the defense of the nonprofit professional of which we've been in those sector, you know, in that sector for me, you know, 20 years, I understand the nature of having so many things that I need to do. And we wear so many hats, and we don't have the budget, or the bandwidth to sometimes take on some of these things. However, when we don't embrace Tech, we make our lives so much harder. We make getting the information from our missions, and from our donors, the back and forth, we make it that much more difficult. So I'd love for you guys to talk about just Tech for Good. And this just massive opportunity to put technology innovation to work for good. How can nonprofits lean into this moment without fear without feeling risk averse to try something new, because you literally have evidence that when we embrace it and fall into it, just the ripple effects of what can happen power, mighty mighty mission. So I'd love to start with that in June, I'd love to pitch it to you first. Yeah. So

I mean, if I can go back a little bit and let you know why. Meena kind of checks all the boxes of what we wanted to do. So when we decided to transition to focus on technology for women and girls, I mean, we could have like, supported a bunch of coding programs and slap money on women's organizations, but we really wanted to be thoughtful in what we were doing. So we we chose certain areas where we can't do everything. We're not a huge Foundation, we're very localized here in the United States. So we wanted to certainly provide a voice to women, make sure that they're safe, that they have opportunities for potential economic development. And you know, Meena hit all those boxes, right? So we supported a few domestic violence organizations so that we're using technology to help their survivors. We support an organization called Noemi networks that provide training on mobile for human trafficking survivors. We support a vaccine delivery system that like I mentioned before, that monitors the delivery of vaccine, usually, the last mile are done by women, frontline workers that are women. And you know, these nonprofits, like aminos have an organic birth. And that's how nonprofits are extremely successful. Because the people who are going to use them are usually creating them and usually have a voice and what direction they go. And you know, sometimes if a nonprofit like for example, here in the United States decides to take on using mobile or using technology, it might become more of a burden. So there has to be some sort of strategic balance is directed by the Board of Directors, staff, and the users together to create something. technology for technology's sake, is not going to work. But I think that you said early on that you're being a good listener, by being a good listener, and really listening and looking at the needs of your constituents is really is a really important thing in order to be successful in the technology for your organization. And, you know, there are lots of organizations like fast forward, but then there are a few hurdles thereafter, right? Because, you know, you need people to code these things. And all of these coders are going to high paying jobs at the latest tech companies, whether it be Google, you know or Facebook, so There are great organizations like quote for America that have people who are extremely passionate about their communities and work for the organization and use their engineering skills for good. So hopefully, those are the kinds of people that can help the nonprofits change over to technology for social good. I do have to say, like Meena mentioned, you know, things like M PESA, changed whole economies of countries like Kenya and Tanzania, because of a pure need that was there. And the fact that the people took that on themselves and started to kind of tailor it and customize it to their needs. And then just, you know, the word spread, and it was just an incredible boom. So you see technology move faster in developing countries, because there's not a strong infrastructure and competition built in already that works against new entrepreneurs and new technology and new innovation. Here in the United States. You've got banks competing with telecoms, you know, when it comes to FinTech, you have regulations, you know, the FTC. And if it's a health app, you've got the FDA, which is good, by the way, you know, that that kind of impedes the incredible speed growth that's happening in that's happened and happening in developing countries?

Well, I mean, I love that you put it back to people, because at the core of this, like tech is not going to save anything, if we can't pair it with people, you know, and get people to adopt it and people to use it. And so when if you could kind of thread some story, we learn a lot through stories. And I think, understanding how maybe using some of the work that I've done throughout Atma Connect, how what does it look like on the ground for when this goes into a community? What does it do to connect people maybe take us into the one of those moments?

Yeah, and I'll start from something Becky said about really listening to people, we took a really human centered design and lean startup approach when we started this, and it's a lot of humility, we've probably done 1000s of interviews with people on the ground, in these communities finding out you know, how much data do you have on your phone? And what do you use your phone for? And what are the things that you can't, you know, get access to on your phone? And, and there's always surprises and things that completely shift and pivot direction? So we initially launched in Indonesia, you know, so the focus was, how do we, you know, stop using technology to tell people what to do, but really create these networks of change on the ground, and help people find and ignite their own power. So we started out, let's do peer to peer information sharing on water prices, and kept talking to our users said, you know, how's this working for you? Like, is this helping you find cheaper water? And they said, You know, I have a relationship with my water vendor. And I'm probably even if I find cheaper water, not going to change that. But I'd really like to share more than just water prices with my neighbors. And so we did what a lot of nonprofits fail to do, I think, which is we through what we what we developed over six months, we said, Okay, people don't want this. They don't want this.

Good for you, that's so hard to do that. But sometimes we just have to be able to move forward.

Yeah, yeah. That was great. And honestly, I could only do that sitting as the head of a new organization. And I That's why I started it a new because like, Listen, if we want to get as big as Facebook, we need to play in this way. Lean Startup, human centered design, zero attachment to what we think is the problem. Yeah. So we threw away or developed a luckily, we had a donor at that point, who was a company who was like, Yeah, of course, don't build something people don't want to build something people want. And so we re built, you know, which took another few months and relaunched as a hyperlocal social network. And this there's nothing in any of my previous research or anything that I could have known other than pure, like evidence that all of a sudden, after we launched, people started using it around chronic flooding in Jakarta. So they were sharing photos of flooded streets, they were locations of government flooding shelters, safe routes through the city, warning each other to watch out for signs of waterborne disease in children. And really just sort of like, you know, those are all like really practical things, but they were also providing the psychosocial support, like, you know, citizens of Bukit Doria, we can get through this together. And it was that sort of like, incredible like outpouring of mutual support and mutual aid building social cohesion. It's a sort of like, Paradise built in hell that does that. usually always there that, you know, people were using the app for, because it was a huge information gap in their existing environment, they had no way of sharing this information before,

I just think something you said that was really staying with me is adopting this mindset of having zero attachment to what we think people want. And I think honestly, that's a problem in nonprofit because we have so many sacred cows, and we just hold on to them forever. This is the gala, we've always done, and we're always going to do it, we always run the campaign this way. And this is my baby, and I can't let go of it. I do think that that is a really healthy mindset, if you're trying to commit to innovation, that you're looking forward, and that you can kind of surrender and release these things that are really keeping us you know, not on the modern edge of what's happening. And we've talked a lot in this season about the digital revolution that the world is experiencing right now. And we think it's a huge trend and opportunity for nonprofit right now, if we are not leaning in to the way that we innovate the way that we leverage digital, the way that we build digital community, the way that we connect to each other in a human way, it cannot just be about pushing out our messages and hoping that the donations come in or that the followers come in, there's got to be a two way advantage to do exactly what you all have done, which is pulling that information back in so we can learn what we what we should know. I mean, I've said the story before I have a public relations background. And every time I thought I knew what my audience wanted, I would have a focus group or survey and it was like eating a daily dose of humble pie. It's like what you think you know, you don't know until you actually go out and ask. So I think this is just my soapbox moment to say to nonprofits out there, this is a beautiful testimony, an example of what happens when you can release when you go into it embracing that which may be a little bit scary, but could change the way that you interface and the way you storytel And the way you share needs with your audiences. So I really thank you all for bringing this incredible story to light, I'm feeling so grateful that you two found each other, and that your two brains and hearts were connected in this way. Because I just think you're probably just beginning to see the impact of what you've built. And I know I mentioned that that story is just kind of the bedrock of what we think is the heart of connection. And I would love to hear from each of you a moment of philanthropy that has happened in your life that you feel like has changed you.

Sure, you know, when you look at the history of mobile technology. mobile innovation didn't really start from all of the mobile companies or the big telecom companies or technology companies, it actually grew from the communities. And you know, whether it be health services, or like we were just talking about m PESA. And you know, FinTech it really grew out of the communities and their needs. And something I recently encountered that really moved me was our foundation's relationship with the indigenous community through our competition that we now have sponsored through MIT solve. And this organization is called waking woman healing. We've never supported any efforts with indigenous community, it was really new to us. And we learned so much from this woman, Kristen Welch, who runs it, she has created like a Google pap program that collects the data on missing and murdered indigenous women, all of that data has never really been collected in one place. And you know, their governance within reservations are very different than the governance that we have outside throughout United States. So a lot of the missing women, their stories, their history, their situation, their investigations were never really recorded in one place. And she put together this platform with a map. And it was just so moving to hear about each of each and every one of these individuals, individual women and their stories, and the families that are telling their stories and how important it is to find out what happened to them. And so she was telling her story, that that comes with a history of indigenous people and history of injustice, and how she built this mapped up and it was just so moving, that we invited her to talk to our employees about her story and about her innovation. And you know, it's just been really a win win for both of us our own community of colleagues in the field and then for her to spread the word and that That's like Meena was saying and he Human Centered Design at work at most. And that's been extremely moving for me. Wow.

What about you Meena, you have a story that sticks out?

Yeah, I'll tell you the story of some Yachty, a mother, who experienced and went through the earthquakes in Lombok, in Indonesia, Indonesia is sort of like just a canary in the coal mine when it comes to a lot of disasters and impacts of climate change, also, and after the, you know, the flooding that happened after the earthquakes and in that case, she used at my go to organize volunteers to clean up communities and to find people in need and get them like the food and water and health care they needed. So just organized all of these events and volunteers to rebuild and recover. And what was so amazing is on the first of the year, the next year, we have this like lovely, amazing photo of them, planting mangrove trees, right outside their community in the in the in the water. Because mangroves both store carbon, they prevent wave and flood events. And you know, just organizing a whole community event to do that. And it's certified, just given the chance people will move from being on the frontlines of disaster, women are moving from being on the frontlines of disaster to being creators, the solutions and change that we need. And you know, within six months, and it's all of that potential is out there, we just need to ignite it and unleash it and get out of the way. Amen.

Oh, my goodness. Well, I mean, as we start to wind down this conversation, we always want to kick it to our wise friends here on the podcast to kind of bring us home with your one good thing. And that's what we just defined as like a moment, you could share either a mantra for your life, or maybe a hack, or just a tip that you would share with our community just kind of leave with us today. So June, I'm going to kick it to you first, what's your one good thing?

Sure. I think it's really simple. And I think what is what we've been talking about me and and I and all of us, in that, you know, you have to be really good listeners. I think in order to create solutions. It has to be inclusive and diverse. Getting different stories and different opinions from a variety of people really helps to cultivate innovation. So just the eight simple people skills are what you need to incorporate in your innovation.

So good. Okay, Meena, you have to try to free yourself one more thing.

Yeah. Well, my good thing you know, being an entrepreneur is definitely not the journey for the the meek of heart. And what what keeps me in it. What keeps me going is like always connecting to the why, like, yeah, why are we doing this? It's not for this grant. It's not for this milestone, it's for this vision of this world of billions of people. All the women in the world, all the girls in the world lit up with knowledge of their power, and an experience of their power as creators of a better world.

Gosh, you guys are such good, incredible women. I am so glad different level. Yeah, I'm so glad you found each other. And, and I think about the legacies that you'll be leaving with this change that you have empowered in the way that you are changing mindsets, hearts and lives. We're just so supportive of it so proud of you want to amplify it at all costs. So tell anyone who's listening, how can they connect with each of you? How can they connect with Vodafone and Atma? Like, give us all the connections? I'll start with you this time, Meena?

Yeah, I would love to connect with folks. meena@atmaconnect.org. And atmaconnect.org is our website. And Becky like sort of like leading from your original thing. It's like I think that June and I were ready to be right on time. Not ahead of our time, right on time. Like this is the message and we're ready for it to be received.

Message received over here. Okay, what about you, June?

I'm on LinkedIn and we have a website vodafone-us.com. And then my email is very easy june.sugiyama@vodafone.com.

I love when amazing people just throw out their email, address their emails diverse and say come and find me if you're a good human. So if you are and if this conversation has resonated with you, please hitch your wagon to the work of these incredible women. We want this to be a ripple that goes on and on and affects every community worldwide. So thank you both so much for your work and just know that we are rooting for you and all you do.

Thank you. It was a pleasure to be here.

Yeah. Thank you so much.

Hey, friends. Thanks so much for being here. Did you know we create a landing page for each podcast episode with helpful links, freebies and even shareable graphics? Be sure to check it out at the link in this episode's description. You probably hear it in our voices, but we love connecting you with the most innovative people to help you achieve more for your mission than ever before. We'd love for you to join our good community. It's free. And you can think of it as the after party to each podcast episode. You can sign up today at weareforgood.com/hello. One more thing If you loved what you heard today, would you mind leaving us a podcast rating and review? It means the world to us and your support helps more people find our community. Thanks friends. I'm our producer Julie Confer and our theme song is Sunray by Remy Borsboom.

Today we're reimagining nonprofit professional development for good we are over the moon excited to announce the launch of We Are For Good PRO. Here you'll discover new workshops, live coaching and exclusive content added monthly investing yourself grow alongside community and take your mission to the next level. Learn more at weareforgoodpro.com.