Category: Local

Creating guardrails and confronting trauma: What it will take to build public trust in AI

Posted on by Anthony Smith

In the fall of 2021, NationSwell partnered with the Patrick J. McGovern Foundation (PJMF) to assemble a group of cross-disciplinary thinkers and leaders to kick off a conversation about building public trust in artificial intelligence (AI). The timing of that launch was no coincidence: despite its potential to transform the human experience — affecting the modern workforce, connection within communities, and civic and political participation to name a few — public opinion on AI remains mixed, ranging from boundless optimism about the possibility unlocked by AI, to deep distrust based on evidence and a slew of headlines focused on instances where AI has — both maliciously and inadvertently — been used to target and cause harm to historically marginalized communities.

“We must remember that in order to show the full promise of AI and AI as a positive tool, we must unite together to make important shared decisions about how this technology will be created, used, and regulated,” says Patrick McGovern, current Chair of PJMF’s Board of Trustees and a longtime technology executive. “At the core of our optimism is a belief that trust in AI and in each other must be built and earned.”

At a summit convened in Washington, D.C. in June 2022, NationSwell and PJMF once again teamed up with an influential group of cross-sector leaders to discuss what it will take to earn the public’s trust in AI. During the event, panelists dove deep into what accountability, transparency, nondiscrimination, data protection, and justice will look like for the future of AI, and also discussed what it means to build credibility during a time when it is notoriously difficult to cultivate public trust.

A formula for trust

Clarence Wardell, keynote speaker and Chief Data and Equity Officer for the American Rescue Plan (ARP) implementation team at the White House, works every day to bridge the gap between the Biden administration’s policy development and the technical data and human centered design tools that will allow us to more effectively deliver policy outcomes for the American people.

Wardell compared building public trust in AI to the critical failures of American police officers in the high-profile deaths of several Black men in recent years, including Michael Brown in 2014 and George Floyd in 2020.

“A system, an institution that is designed to protect and serve, to keep you and I safe, had failed to deliver that safety for a certain segment of this population,” Wardell said. “I don’t think it’s any different than building trust or public trust in AI. Core to building public trust is delivering outcomes in line with the public’s expectations of what these tools can do, but at the very least doing no harm.”

Part of the work, then, becomes using data reliably and consistently in order to prove over time that not only do the technology systems we’re building not pose an active threat to marginalized communities, they actively stand to make community members’ lives better.

Wardell said that by using data to qualitatively evaluate the performance of AI systems, the Biden administration has already taken steps to address and prevent racial and ethnic algorithmic bias in home valuations, and has also implemented guardrails as well as called for further studies on using facial recognition technology, other biometric technology tools and predictive algorithms in policing and other criminal justice fields. 

“The key here is to be able to show these things hold over time, not just at an aggregate level, but at a level that’s specific and personal to individuals and communities,” Wardell said, “particularly those that have been harmed by other tools, technologies, institutions, and systems in the past.”

Confronting bias and trauma

Dr. Kirk Borne, Chief Science Officer at DataPrime, highlighted the importance of acknowledging the limits of our own bias, and how we can push past that with data.

“The truth lives in a higher dimensional space than our limited perspective,” Borne shared. “And in statistics, that’s called bias. That’s a mathematical statement in statistics, which is: there’s more structure there than your data is allowing for. There’s more information than what  you’re taking into account when you’re making your decision. Diversity of perspective and diversity in statistics, they both mean the same thing: breaking the bias wherein we’re limited by our own perspective. Start collecting more data, and we can start resolving those errors… because we’re adding the different perspectives that all those additional data sources give us.”

Nicol Turner Lee of the Brookings Institute elaborated that while tackling inherent biases will be critical, determining how those biases show up in systems will still be difficult — particularly when working with “traumatic data” on wealth, systemic inequalities, criminal justice, and policing, which historically has greater implications for certain groups.

“There’s always going to be differential treatment: ‘I like tan jackets, treat me differently, show me every tan jacket that you sell,’” Lee said. “But when we start talking about the coordination of how you figure out through the inferential economy that I not only like tan jackets, but I also spend a lot of time buying stuff for my Black daughter or I spend time looking at my bank account… the inferences that come with AI, that data availability lends itself to traumatic circumstances for certain populations.”

Data and AI ethicist Renée Cummings underscored Lee’s point about the importance of understanding the historical underpinnings of algorithmic bias.

“One of the things that I always think about is, ‘how do we code what it means to be Black and Brown?’” Cummings said. “Those data points have always been data points related to risk, data points related to danger, data points related to liability, data points related to what is untrustworthy or what is unworthy. So when we think about those credit scores, and when we think about those unfair sentences, and when we think about an algorithm being able to deny you parole or an opportunity to get a home or loan, then we’ve got to think about why people are not trusting of this technology.”

Bridging the gap between makers and users

Chris Kuang, co-founder of the US Digital Corps, expanded upon the transparency issues in AI and neural networks, specifically those that exist with “black box algorithms,” which are designed by people who are “…so far removed from the end impact of who that system is going to impact.”

According to Kuang, building public trust will be contingent upon bridging those gaps in order to ensure that the people who will be most affected by systems are the same people who are building the systems:  “…[It’s] not just your AI subject matter experts, but your program area folks, if it is an economic system that we’re determining credit scores or whatever it might be,” Kuang said. “Bringing all those people together, but fundamentally with the people at the end of the day, who are being touched by those systems.”

In building such feedback pipelines in order to ensure that the voices of users are heard, Lee underscored her work with the Energy Star rating model, a “ way to integrate consumer feedback into the design and models,” so that people have an avenue to inform creators about what they’re getting wrong.

Being transparent from start to finish

Just as there should be more horizontal communication between AI creators and the communities they affect, Kuang said there should also be more public transparency throughout the creation process — including when and where decisions are being made by algorithms.

“It’s not at the end when all of a sudden you decide to be transparent, it’s transparent in your aims, transparent in the trade offs,” Kuang said. “I think anyone who is building these models has that responsibility, whether they’re here in the public sector, they’re in the private sector or somewhere in between. I think there is transparency that should come when it comes to the people that are consulted. It’s not just the data scientists and the AI experts, it’s people in the community.”

Putting protections in place

Lee also spoke about the need for increased governmental oversight and regulation in order to bring AI to heel in the absence of strict enforcement from the private sector. Such legislation — like the Algorithmic Accountability Act, which would essentially require companies to issue risk assessments for their algorithms — will be instrumental in safeguarding against widespread discrimination. 

“I want models to not amplify the same type of racism and discrimination and gender bias that we’re seeing show up on these platforms ” Lee said. She emphasized that lawmakers will need to be more nimble in order to be relevant in this space.

In a conversation with Hilke Schellmann, Assistant Journalism Professor at NYU, Suresh Venkatasubramanian, currently the Assistant Director for Science and Justice in the Science and Society Division of the White House’s Office of Science and Technology Policy, affirmed the need for more guardrails for automated technologies; but also went a step further, calling for the public to be involved “…at every stage in the development and the assessment in the evaluation of technologies, [in order to] make sure all stakeholders are involved.” According to Venkatasubramanian, this could look like a technology “bill of rights” — a set of principles that govern the way AI technology is created and implemented.

“This is not a legislative proposal or a legal proposal, it’s a set of aspirational principles along with very detailed guidelines that would help developers, that would help people who want to build these systems with these protections in place to do what needs to be done,” he said. Venkatasubramanian confirmed that a first version of such a “bill of rights” will be issued by his team in the near future.

Opening up creates opportunity 

Finally, Vilas Dhar, president of the Patrick J. McGovern Foundation, spoke about fairness and representation as the cornerstones of any conversation about building public trust in AI. Dhar suggested that, while the common wisdom generally holds that the wrong people are in the seats of power making decisions that govern how technology gets made, maybe the truth is that there simply aren’t enough people in the rooms where those decisions get made.

“Where are the representatives that speak to social and civic organizations that represent labor, that represent employers, that represent institutions that have been far away from a technological revolution and yet are being transformed by it?” Dhar asked. 

“I’ll suggest that there’s an opportunity that then comes out of this,” he said. “That even as we’ve heard the incredible risks vulnerable populations face when they aren’t a part of making decisions about the creation of new technologies, about their implementation, and maybe most important about their ongoing review, what happens when we’re able to bring them into the conversation?”

Learn more about the Patrick J. McGovern Foundation, a NationSwell Institutional Member, here.

Learnings from NationSwell’s event on immigration with Ali Noorani

Posted on by NationSwell Team

We often hear that the United States is a “nation of immigrants,” but this notion doesn’t reflect the realities of either our national discourse or federal immigration policy.

In his new book, “Crossing Borders: The Reconciliation of a Nation of Immigrants,” Ali Noorani, president and CEO of the National Immigration Forum, explores the recent history and current landscape of U.S. immigration policy through the stories of immigrants themselves.

In a recent Council event with NationSwell, Ali joined us to discuss his book, the rise of certain anti-immigration narratives — particularly on the far-right — what can be done to change these narratives, and what steps must be taken on a federal and local policy level to truly make it possible for immigrants and refugees to flourish.

Here are some of the key takeaways from the event.

Change is most effective when it comes from within

It’s extremely difficult to change somebody’s social and political views as an outsider. This can be especially true of issues, such as immigration, that large media companies like Fox News have a vested interest in shaping. But there are groups of conservatives who have broken from the narratives around immigration that are being pushed, and they have the best chance of affecting change in their own circles.

This is not to say that liberals and progressives are powerless to move the needle. The key, however, is for them to focus their energy on smaller scale outreach, as fact checking and scolding far-right media narratives has little practical effect.

We must make an effort to understand the fears of those who hold anti-immigrant views

Those who oppose immigration typically have a common set of fears: Culture, security, and economy. However wrongheaded or inaccurate these fears may be, if an attempt isn’t made to understand them, then the work of changing the minds of those who hold them becomes exponentially more difficult. When people feel their concerns are being dismissed outright, they are much less likely to want to be part of a dialogue.

What can we take away from the situation in Ukraine?

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has resulted in one of the largest and fastest mass migrations since World War II. Attitudes towards Ukrainians fleeing their country are generally positive, but rather than dwell on the disparity between how they are looked upon favorably while, for example, Central and South American migrants have often been demonized, we should use this opportunity to reshape our national immigration policy. The United States can use both the war in Ukraine and the recent influx of Afghan refugees to make permanent changes to its immigration policy and restore its gutted resettlement infrastructure.

What are some steps that still need to be taken to help immigrants and their children succeed in the U.S.?

Education is a key tool in this effort. Our schools must do better at even the basics of teaching about immigration so that non-immigrant students can better understand what their classmates or possibly classmates’ parents have gone through. Educators must also be provided with access to professional development so that they can better teach immigrant students. Immigrant families must also be provided with the basic infrastructure to succeed in the U.S. economy, such as access to the naturalization process through their employers, English classes if needed, and assistance obtaining necessary licenses to open businesses.

The NationSwell Council community brings together a diverse, curated community of bold individuals and organizations leading the way in social, economic, and environmental problem-solving. Learn more about the Council here.

NationSwell Fellows

Posted on by NationSwell Team

Who

NationSwell is a social impact company that provides purpose-driven leaders and organizations with the support they need to take their impact to the next level. We are looking for up to six young leaders — aged 18-27 years old, from across the country — each of whom are leaders in making change on social or environmental issues, passionate about the causes they advocate for, and seeking support to grow their network and knowledge of the impact sector. The leaders selected will be the inaugural NationSwell Fellows.

What

You will have the opportunity to participate in the launch of the program alongside five other young leaders, creating a community that is working together to build their skills, gain insights and experience, and access a robust network of expert change-makers connected to NationSwell. Programming will be tailored to the needs of the cohort, this means you will have an opportunity to help build and inform an experience that matters to you including:

  • – Access to potential mentors in relevant areas and issue-based digital  events to meet other leaders.
  • – Customized programming and events on relevant topics relevant to you
  • – Exposure to impact projects that NationSwell is actively working on 
  • – The opportunity for strategy, creative and/or connections support from NationSwell ecosystem for projects you are working on.

A Program Lead on the NationSwell team will serve as a manager of the program.. Candidates must be willing to commit 1-2 hours per week to participate and inform programming. Each Fellow will receive $1,000 as an honorarium, to make participation in the pilot program possible.

When

The pilot program will launch in October 2022 and run through June 2023. Applications are due by August 26, 2022. Candidates will be contacted in late September with NationSwell’s decisions. 

Where

Most Fellowship experiences will be virtual so we encourage candidates to apply from all over the United States. If there is an in-person event, NationSwell will cover travel and accommodation costs.

Our design principles

  • NOTHING ABOUT ME WITHOUT MEInvolve young people in the design and development
  • GENUINE EMPOWERMENTProvide young people with authentic value: a platform for amplification and equal voice in the conversation
  • EARN TRUSTPrioritize consistency and transparency of the experience, follow through on promises, compensate Fellows for their time & contributions
  • MEET THEM WHERE THEY AREConsider young leader’s demands, time constraints, and comfort levels, centering the experience around their needs
  • EMBRACE INTERSECTIONALITYCreate ways for young leaders to reach across age, sector, geographic and experiential divides, surfacing the interconnected nature of work across issues areas
  • CENTER JOY AND MINDFULNESSProvide young people opportunities to have intentional breaks from the relentless work they do and invite moments of peace and reflection
  • DEIB AT THE COREBuild a space that is radically inclusive and accessible to youth from all walks of life, avoiding exclusion and creating a space accepting to all experiences and backgrounds
Get involved

Do you know a young impact leader looking for an opportunity to expand their network and deepen their influence? Use the link above to nominate a fellow or share this page with young leaders you know would thrive in a program like this!

Five Minutes With Shalin Jyotishi, World Economic Forum Fellow

Posted on by Anthony Smith

NationSwell Council member Shalin Jyotishi has spent his career advancing solutions at the intersection of workforce, education, and tech. The NationSwell team recently had the opportunity to speak with Jyotishi about the global coalition he’s building through his work at the World Economic Forum, the “downstream impacts” of technological innovations, and how tech can improve the lives of workers.

NationSwell: Congratulations on your new fellowship at the World Economic Forum! Can you talk a bit about the work you’ve done throughout your career, and how it’s informing the work you’re leading now?

Shalin Jyotishi: Thank you! My mission is to help leaders from colleges and universities, companies, and governments solve complex problems where education meets the workforce and where both topics meets scientific and technological innovation as well as public policy. 

I first worked “upstream” in science and technology policy both domestically and internationally with a focus on technological innovation, asking questions like, “Why do governments fund R&D? What’s the best way to fund R&D so society benefits the most? What do optimal public-private sector collaborations look like in R&D? How does R&D translate into technology-based economic development, entrepreneurship, technology transfer, job creation, and workforce development?”

Then, I moved to “midstream” in the technological innovation continium. At the Association of Public and Land-grant Universities, I worked with executives from nearly all public research universities in North America to help improve the role of our public universities in maximzing the economic and societal benefits of those government R&D investments – whether it be through talent and workforce development, innovation and entrepreneurship, or or public and community engagement in science.  

These days, my work focuses on the “downstream” impacts of technological innovation. 

At New America, I’m focused on the future of learning and work relating to the innovation economy with a focus on community colleges and new models for career preparation. 

At the World Economic Forum, I’m focused on how employers are responding to emerging technologies entering their workplace, and how workplace technologies can be a “win-win” for employers and employees.

For example, last year, my colleagues and I produced a white paper on the state of play for AI-based tools for HR professionals which laid the foundation for the project I’m leading as a Fellow. My project is focused on empowering companies and their partners to ensure that workplace tech is a “win-win” for employers and employees. 

NationSwell: COVID-19 has completely disrupted the workforce, accelerating us into the future as it exacerbates present-day inequities. Can you talk about the potential you’re seeing in this moment for how tech can improve the lives of workers?

Even before the pandemic, a Gartner study revealed that 50% of surveyed large employers were using nontraditional monitoring techniques which accelerated in the pandemic era as businesses sought to track worker engagement remotely.

Algorithmic management in warehouses and call centers has made work more stressful, grueling, and dangerous. Such technologies have eroded worker privacy, autonomy, and civil liberties.  

However, simple and advanced technologies also nearly singlehandedly carried the world through the height of the pandemic, maintaining and, in some cases, expanding work opportunities, ushering in a new normal for work-life balance enabled by flexible work arrangements for workers of all socioeconomic statuses. 

Workplace technologies can make jobs better or worse. We want to ensure that the former scenario to happen, and we believe now is the optimal time to focus on this issue. 

On one hand there are the labor market conditions: In the United States, the tight labor markets, the national racial reckoning, the flexible work movement, greater attention paid to essential workers and working conditions in general, a new wave of unionization are all well timed with the maturation of a number of workplace technologies rooted in technologies like AI, Internet of Things, and advanced robotics. 

We need to align the conversations of employer competitiveness enabled by technology with that of advancing job quality. Many people want a different world of work than the one we inherited or even shaped before the pandemic.

For technology optimists, this project is an opportunity to clarify the positive impact of workplace tech on employers and workers For technology pessimists, this project is an opportunity to mitigate the negative risks around workplace tech for employers and workers.

While workplace tech may not always be able to improve pay, which to most workers is the most important aspect of job quality, We will be looking at how workplace technologies can improve a number of working condition aspects including: safety; schedule predictability, regularity, and flexibility; non-discrimination and support for disabled workers; employee voice and input; job design; meaningfulness and social value; and career security and growth , such as training and advancement opportunities whether internal or external.

We will be emphasizing how employers can co-design workplace technology implementation strategies with their employees, giving them a say in which technologies are adopted and how. 

NationSwell: What’s your call to action for people reading this profile?

We have brought together a diverse global coalition of business, labor, government, academia, philanthropy, and civil society to address this challenging topic. We will be doing a lot of storytelling and research over the next year.

Please get in touch with me if you would like to contribute. Below are a few examples for each of our constituent groups. Of course, all ideas are welcome. 

  • Employers, technology vendors, and associations: Share stories and case studies of how you have adopted workplace technologies that have led to a “win-win” for workers and the company. 
  • Labor groups and worker voice entities: Share stories and case studies of how you have enabled workers to co-create workplace technology implementation strategies alongside employers. 
  • Policymakers and stakeholders: Get in touch on enacted or proposed policy solutions or even ideas to help ensure that the “win-win” scenario for workplace scenarios is actionable.
  • Academics, think-tanks, philanthropy and civil society: Share your research around how workplace technologies can lead to a “win-win” scenario for employers and employees.

To learn more about the NationSwell Council, visit our hub.

Learnings from NationSwell’s event on ‘Protecting the Dignity of LGBTQIA+ Youth’

Posted on by NationSwell Team

While many of the bills put forth will face significant legal challenges, the message they were drafted to convey is chilling on its face: After decades spent winning new legal protections, the LGBTQIA+ community is no longer safe in America.

In Idaho, HB 675 seeks to make it a felony for parents or doctors to give hormones or puberty blockers to trans minors, reclassifying the act as “genital mutilation,” and attaching a maximum sentence of up to life in prison. In Iowa, Gov. Kim Reynolds in March signed the pernicious HF 2416 into law, which prohibits transgender youth from playing on sports teams that correlate to their gender identity. And on July 1 — just two days after a NationSwell hosted a panel discussion dedicated to “Protecting the Dignity of LGBTQIA+ Youth” — the Ron DeSantis-backed piece of legislation known colloquially as the “Don’t Say Gay” law went into effect in Florida, effectively banning public school teachers from any mention of sexual orientation or gender identity in the classroom.

During NationSwell’s mainstage event, Colorado Gov. Jared Polis — the first openly gay man to be elected governor of a U.S. state — used his opening remarks to call upon “all 50 states” to protect same-sex marriage in state law amid fears that the Supreme Court will soon revisit the landmark Obergefell v. Hodges decision. And panelists Carl Siciliano, founder of the Ali Forney Center, Sam Ames, director of advocacy and government affairs at The Trevor Project, and Janelle Perez, a Florida State Senate candidate — alongside moderator Lauren Baer, a managing partner for Arena — joined Polis in calling for swift action to affirm the dignity and protect the rights of queer youth.

Below are some of the key takeaways from the conversation.

Young people — particularly homeless queer youths — have always been at the heart of the fight for LGBTQ+ dignity. While the trans activists Marsha P. Johnson and Sylvia Rivera are most often credited with throwing the first brick during the Stonewall uprising of 1969, Carl offered the prescient reminder that the homeless queer youths hanging out in Sheridan Square that night were also instrumental in contributing the “lightning rod moment” that sparked the riots. As Siciliano noted: “Queer youth have always been at the center of the movement that launched our rights, and even 50 years later, we still have to work so hard to protect queer youth. It’s not just a smooth march towards progress.”

Pay attention to who is being left out of the conversation. As Ames noted, the Stonewall riots were about who was being disenfranchised and silenced — an important reminder we need to carry with us today in identifying the communities or groups most vulnerable to the constant string of attacks against the queer community. Sex workers, unhoused people, and incarcerated individuals who identify as LGBTQIA+ will all need special attention in the fight for dignity, and getting involved with and embedded in those communities at the local level will be more important than ever before.

The “gay agenda” exists, and it involves making the world safer for future generations. While conservatives frequently play political football with the idea of a monolithic “gay agenda” that seeks to trick and corrupt heterosexual children, Perez argued that the opposite is actually true. “‘You’re so worried about the gay agenda, but the gay agenda is just that we want to make things better for the generation behind us,” she said. “We’re all fighting for them to have a better life than we did, and we’re seeing that our fight isn’t over.” While GOP lawmakers frequently use the specter of the “gay agenda” to malign the LGBTQ+ community as predators and groomers in pursuit of their legislative agendas, Perez said that having conversations about a different type of agenda — one that seeks to protect queer and trans youth and their families — will need to be had loudly and often to counteract that political propaganda.

Trans girls — the “most marginalized of the marginalized” — are being targeted with particular ferocity. According to Ames, the discourse is currently being dominated by two primary groups: demagogues and dogmatists. While the dogmatists are the same religious crusaders who have long sought to undermine gay rights, the demagogues are relatively new as a phenomenon, and frequently use hate-mongering to fuel their aspirations for higher offices. Both groups have set trans girls in the crosshairs of their anti-gay agendas, targeting gender-affirming care — access to which has been proven to be highly correlated with suicide risk — with particular enthusiasm.

Mobilizing the politically apathetic will be a critical part of the fight to preserve LGBTQ rights. According to Siciliano, if the queer community and its allies hopes to protect the community from the legal threats it currently faces, they will have to engage people who are not typically politically engaged, using threats to freedoms as a galvanizing force. 

“It’s without a doubt that LGBTQ youth are going to face more risk of homelessness, bullying, suicide; look in your local communities to those who are dealing with these issues and connect, try to protect the young people who are going to face the brunt of these attacks,” he said. “Do what you can to support the organizations working to protect young people.”

Take the fight offline. Posting infographics to Instagram won’t be enough; as Baer pointed out, the next phase of the fight will necessarily involve showing up in real life and engaging with communities directly. Although it’s still important to read, listen, and tweet when necessary, enshrining the dignity of LGBTQ youth must also involve practical tactics like supporting direct service organizations and, if you’re planning to run for office, attending political training sessions like those offered by Arena that can help you run a winning campaign.

“During this critical time, don’t sit back,” Lauren said. “Lean in and become involved, because everything really is on the line for the queer community.”

Learnings from NationSwell’s Strategic Advisory Session for ‘Make Us Visible’

Posted on by NationSwell Team

The last several years of social and political upheaval have been met with an explosion of grassroots fundraising and activism. As communities, leaders, and activists rise to meet the challenges of our rapidly changing social fabric with newly formed nonprofits, they often run into barriers to expansion, and their charitable or activist efforts become kneecapped.

The issues these organizations face can be logistical, as rapid expansion requires an increase in staff and funding that may not be readily available, and institutional, such as clashes with older and more established support systems. One such organization is Make Us Visible, co-founded by Council member Mike Keo.

Make Us Visible seeks to have AAPI history included in K-12 curricula across the country. They have seen rapid success, with bills being passed in Connecticut and New Jersey and others being considered in New York, Florida and Rhode Island. Make Us Visible currently has chapters in 10 states, and has received requests to open chapters in several other states just in the last month. But with this success come questions of scale, and how to best go about expanding at such a rapid pace.

To answer these questions, NationSwell convened a group of experts from the nonprofit, business, finance and activism sectors to help create a roadmap that Make Us VIsible and other new organizations can follow to ensure success as they build out their operations. 

Here are some of the key takeaways from the discussion:

Flesh out your longer term institutional goals:

While pursuing your organization’s stated goal, it is beneficial to devise a plan for what the organization itself should look like and be doing within the next three to five years. Bringing on a consultant to go over your staffing, fundraising, and structural plans is a relatively quick way to achieve this goal and prevent your organization from having to come up with staffing and leadership solutions on the fly.

Decide early on how to financially structure your organization:

There are numerous financial structures available to new organizations. Registering as a 501c3 or securing a fiscal sponsorship are two of the most common. There are advantages and disadvantages to both arrangements, but it is important to make a decision early on to help facilitate funding and avoid liability issues resulting from improper donations. If looking for a fiscal sponsor, be sure to find one that is aligned with your organization’s goals, as problems can arise when they are not. 

Try to secure cash early:

Money can solve a lot of problems, especially for a fledgling organization. It’s always beneficial to have some cash on hand, rather than be constantly chasing donations at the start. In a situation where an organization is not capable of accepting donations, it’s important to maintain relationships with entities that have offered gifts or financial investments. If possible, secure pledges for donations in writing, so that when the organization reaches a point where it can accept these gifts, the offers are still there.

Create a clear organizational structure that can be copied across multiple chapters:

As an organization grows, it’s critical to have an operating structure that is clear and can be implemented across the board as new chapters form. Create a clear hierarchy and communication structure between local chapters and national leadership so that there are no surprises on either end. It is also important to be clear up front about what your organization does and does not do, to avoid a situation where a new chapter forms and the local leadership pursues goals that are not in line with the overall organization’s.

Be patient:

It’s important to remember that this can be a trying and difficult process. Rapid expansion can bring unanticipated consequences like burnt out colleagues and volunteers and ruined friendships. This is especially true in the current moment, as we slowly emerge from the pandemic with the wright of the past two years still firmly on our shoulders. Leaders of these organizations should do their best to mitigate these negative aspects, while understanding that the road will inevitably get rough.

The NationSwell Council community brings together a diverse, curated community of bold individuals and organizations leading the way in social, economic, and environmental problem-solving. Learn more about the Council here.

The NationSwell Mainstage: Women of color redefining power in corporate America

Posted on by NationSwell Team

Far too often, women and people of color find themselves in the familiar position of glancing around the boardroom or C-suite to notice that they are vastly outnumbered. But that phenomenon is even more prevalent at the intersection of the two groups, with women of color finding themselves to be “the first, the few, and the only,” with concerning regularity.

Despite comprising one of the fastest growing segments in the modern workforce, research shows that women of color still only account for roughly 4% of corporate leadership — a statistic that can lend itself to a host of unpleasant side-effects, including imposter syndrome, perfectionism, and a propensity to overcommit to mentoring opportunities in the hopes of eventually elevating other women into similar positions.

NationSwell recently hosted a Mainstage Event — hosted by president, Uyen Tieu and moderated by Deepa Purushothaman, the first woman of color partner at Deloitte, and Vernā Myers, VP of Inclusion Strategy at Netflix — that was designed with the express intention of examining some of the historic obstacles woman of color have faced in the workplace and unpacking some of the most promising strategies for reclaiming their power and pushing back against predominantly white corporate cultures.

The event marked a great jumping off point for some key learnings about what we can continue to do to foster cultures of inclusion in our work lives and redefine power in corporate America. Here are some of the most important things we learned:

When it comes to choosing a workplace that will value them and their work, women of color can afford to be discerning. Because their professional experience and perspective is in high demand right now, women of color can afford to take the time to shop around for the role that will allow them to do their best work and appreciate their talents — even if it means dispatching with the old wisdom about “just being grateful” for an old job that’s coming up short on both fronts.

Asking the hard questions up front can save you time and grief in the long run. Finding the right role can involve a lot of courage, particularly when it requires going against the grain to suss out potential pain points early on. Purushothaman advised that asking key questions like, “What are you experiencing?” “Do you feel safe?” and “Are you being paid what you deserve?” can help women of color to do a gut check about the treatment they’re receiving — and if something doesn’t feel right, it’s not right.

George Floyd’s murder provided a critical catalyst for discussions of race in the workplace. Along with conversations about the role of work in our lives instigated by the Covid-19 pandemic, George Floyd’s murder also helped to catalyze a new movement to examine the role race plays at work, and provided a pathway towards understanding what work still needs to be done. “It’s really important for us to recognize that where we are today is a collective movement that’s been happening for a very long time, with so many people making sacrifices,” Myers said. “Things are changing all the time, just not as quickly as we want them to, but it’s important to remember what got us here. We still need people mentoring, pushing, because it’s not guaranteed. We need people to stay super focused, because there’s usually a backlash.”

Women of color still need to do work to examine their own inherent biases. If we can hope to create a true culture of compassion, it’s critical that women of color are also reflexively engaging in work to examine their own biases. According to Myers, one way to do this is to recognize hegemony and hierarchies where they exist, even among groups of women of color. Recognizing the fact that we all have multiple identities will help us to be more aware of where our biases exist so that we can support more women more often.

Companies are trying in earnest to get DEIA initiatives right — but still falling short. Per research by Deepa, 97% of women we interviewed who were interviewed last fall said DEI initiatives weren’t working at their companies. Although there are currently observable trends that show companies weighing diversity initiatives more heavily as part of their cultural DNA, it’s also evident that many of them still haven’t grasped just how much work there is to be done — and have resorted to lazy tactics like copying other companies or trying to reach diversity percentages as if they’re “checking boxes” rather than advocating for real structural shifts.

The NationSwell Mainstage is the premier convening for change makers of all stripes to learn clear, actionable ways that anyone can be a key part of solving the nation’s most urgent problems. Learn more about the NationSwell community here.

Learnings from NationSwell’s ‘Break the Bias’ event on menopause and perimenopause at work

Posted on by NationSwell Team

According to the Harvard Business Review, menopause generally occurs when people with ovaries are between 45 and 55 years old — right around the time in their careers when they’re most likely to be moving into a more senior leadership role. But despite the fact that it affects such a large portion of the American workforce at such a critical moment in their careers, frank and unnecessary discussions about menopause are still taboo in the workplace; and when those discussions do happen, they carry the inherent risk of exacerbating existing sexist and agist stereotypes about women at work.

In honor of National Women’s Health Week, NationSwell’s Gender Equity Group, in collaboration with Beth Bengtson, CEO of Working for Women, Ann Garnier, CEO of Lisa Health, Senior Vice President of AARP, Kamili Wilson, and Dr. Stephanie Fabioun, Medical Director of The North American Menopause Society and physician at the Mayo Clinic’s Women’s Health Center, convened for a panel discussion on what needs to be done to ensure that the physical and mental effects of menopause and perimenopause are being adequately addressed in the workplace.

Here are some of the key learnings from the event:

Digital technologies is a promising tool when it comes to addressing gaps in care

In just the last couple of years, new technologies — including AI, machine learning, wearables, and telehealth resources — have sprouted up as enticing options for making healthcare more accessible to more people. These new technologies have particular promise for their ability to give women experiencing menopause a highly unique and personalized view of their health, which many say is lacking in their relationships with their primary care physicians.

The case for increased support for professional women experiencing menopause has to be made from an economic perspective.

Research supports the idea that when women are hit hard by menopause, they experience increased rates of absenteeism and are hit harder on productivity. In demanding that their workplaces offer benefits parity and reimbursement models that offer affordable access, women will need to frame the possibility of not getting these things as an economic issue — one that will affect companies’ bottom lines if it leads to women abandoning the workforce in droves.

Women and allies will necessarily have to advocate for increased support at the federal level.

The United Kingdom and other countries provide positive models of the types of public-private partnerships that are needed in order to ensure that women experiencing menopause get the support they need. While lobbying for benefits parity and compassionate office policies is crucial, those lobbying efforts will also need to extend to the federal government if women can hope for wide-ranging policy shifts to the current healthcare model.

Critical gaps in education exist for both healthcare providers and women experiencing menopause

A decades-long lack of resources and training during residency programs has made it so that healthcare providers are sometimes ill-equipped to deal with women experiencing menopause symptoms — creating a frustrating lack of education and awareness that affects patients. Just as technology offers promise in increasing accessibility to health care, it also holds the potential to create new pathways for women to access compassionate and informed professionals who specialize in treating the symptoms of menopause.

Treatment options outside of hormonal therapy need to be part of the conversation.

There are a host of treatment options that can be used to address the symptoms of menopause and perimenopause, and not all of them are medication-based. While hormonal therapy is one of the most commonly recommended treatment options, not all women are eligible, increasing the importance of science-backed, non-medical alternatives like cognitive behavioral therapy, healthy lifestyle changes, hypnosis, and more.

The NationSwell Council community brings together a diverse, curated community of bold individuals and organizations leading the way in social, economic, and environmental problem-solving. Learn more about the Council here.

Learnings from NationSwell’s event on the Future of Work

Posted on by NationSwell Team

A mass exodus from jobs fueled by burnout, compensation, competition, and turnover have created previously unthinkable situations for employers, with many now scrambling to retain the talent they have on hand.

But amidst all the chaos is a pivotal moment, and a question: What types of structures, policies and treatments would we like to see in our workplaces going forward, and how can we use this opportunity to shape the future of work for decades to come?

In the hopes of getting answers to those questions and more, NationSwell Council member Lydia Loizides, president and founder of Talentedly, started a body of work in 2021, in collaboration with the NationSwell Council that has grown as the future of work rapidly evolves. Lydia has run surveys with leaders from the NationSwell Council two years in a row, followed most recently by a conversation on May 25th with NationSwell’s community of cross-sector and cross-industry leaders. 

During our May 25 working group, members reviewed the results of the 122 organizations and leaders who responded to the 2022 survey and discussed what workers should be advocating for in service of creating happier, hybrid, and holistic workplaces– and how employers can anticipate what will attract and retain talent in an increasingly competitive market.

Here are some of the key takeaways from the survey and resulting discussion.

Employers are already offering flexible work schedules, but what workers want most is better compensation.

Over 76% of respondents said that their employers had begun offering remote work possibilities as a benefit to increase job satisfaction, and the same percentage said that employers had also worked to improve their communication strategies in order to better communicate the company’s vision, business strategy and more. But when asked which benefits they thought employees should be offering to help employees cope during the pandemic, 46.7% of respondents said better compensation — something only about half of respondents said their company was already offering.

A surprising number of respondents said that their employers were already engaging in “open hiring” practices

Of those surveyed, 36 respondents said that their company was already utilizing “open hiring” — an inclusive recruiting method whereby prospective employees add their name to a list rather than submitting a traditional resume and cover letter. Crucially, open hiring models also omit the background checks and interviews that other companies usually require, eliminating critical points where human bias and discrimination can typical seep into the hiring process.

Most respondents agreed that employers should provide low or no cost access to formal education.

Of the respondents surveyed, 55% said that they believed that employers should provide at least some form of educational access to employees. Certain companies have already modeled how this might be possible: Starbucks, for example, offers employees the option to enroll in the Starbucks College Achievement Plan (SCAP), which enables U.S. employees the opportunity to earn their first-time bachelor’s degree with the company paying for 100% of their tuition.

With high schools currently suffering massive dropout rates as a result of the pandemic, the ability to recapture workers into non-traditional education pipelines will likely become an increasingly critical point of discussion.

Burnout is still affecting employees’ willingness to stay at their jobs — but there’s a catch

Although pandemic-induced feelings of burnout and overwhelm are still dogging workers and fueling high turnover rates, those rates are often influenced by workers having a positive outlook and also perceiving their employer as being an active listener, their turnover intention goes down and they are more likely to be collaborative organizationally.

Job credentialing needs a facelift

Responses to a question about whether non-college credentials were just as valuable to their employers as a college degree were scattershot, suggesting that a very specific perception of education as it relates to capability in the workforce still exists.

There was, however, a strong agreement among respondents that certain skills, including critical thinking and adaptability, tend to be more important than certain hard skills in ensuring day-to-day success on the job.

The perception of the biggest threats to job security over the next 25 years include education, automation, and public policy.

When asked what they believed the biggest threats to job security would be in five years vs. 25 years, respondents included post-secondary and K-12 education, AI automation and technology, and public policy — particularly as it relates to the urban/rural divide.

The NationSwell Council community brings together a diverse, curated community of bold individuals and organizations leading the way in social, economic, and environmental problem-solving. Learn more about the Council here.

Electronic Press Kit: Building Public Trust in AI Summit

Posted on by NationSwell Team

In the fall of 2021, the Patrick J. McGovern Foundation and NationSwell convened a collaborative of cross-sector thinkers and leaders for critical conversations on building public trust in Artificial Intelligence (AI) and encouraging public participation in AI design, development, and deployment. The conversations centered on how public trust in AI intersects with Community Engagement, Workforce Development,  Policy & Regulation, and Ethics & Rights, which led us to convene public policymakers and leading AI experts to discuss one of society’s most urgent questions:

How can we build public trust in AI?

On June 9, 2022, the collaborative will culminate in a unique event where audience members will hear from Vilas Dhar, Clarence Wardell, Cristiano Lima, Nicol Turner Lee, Renée Cummings, Kirk Borne, Chris Kuang, Hilke Schellmann, and Suresh Venkatasubramanian, and more in a live conversation to go deeper on what it will take to create public trust in AI, covering topics outlined below and more.

Demystifying AI was posited by the collaborative as a prerequisite to engender a stronger and more comprehensive understanding of AI, and for building a foundation of public confidence in the legitimacy of AI to deliver sustainable, future-ready, solutions to some of society’s greatest challenges. Putting AI in context and empowering people to understand AI and its impact on their lives is critical to embedding equity into how AI works, and to making public engagement possible in key areas of influence, including workforce development, service delivery and community resilience.

The promise and peril of AI and how to deploy AI to better serve public interest was explored against the backdrop of a deeply imbalanced AI ecosystem that often reinforces preexisting disparities and persistent racial injustices. Prioritizing inclusivity to secure the diverse talent pool required to drive community-driven AI projects, community-inspired AI research, and equitable algorithmic solutions was offered as an effective, and essential, solution to some of AI’s many challenges that continue to slow the maturity of the technology. Diversity in AI was identified as necessary not just to deliver AI equity to high-needs and underserved communities, but also to strengthen US innovation outcomes.

Participants explored the disproportionate power currently held in this space by the corporate sector and its leaders, and the need for solutions that infiltrate businesses from the inside (such as ongoing ethics training and education for technologists and consumers) and the outside (like governance systems, industry standards and other protection mechanisms installed to mitigate the harms.) Conversations also covered how the social, public and private sectors need to collaborate as custodians of the common good to design AI policy solutions and products to empower and uplift all through reimagining public policy and governance, offering a critical rethinking of political participation, social change, and civic engagement in the age of AI.

The collaborative posited that more rigor in the launch of AI solutions was an essential building block for building trust, the need to balance the urge for speed with the desire to do no harm, and for a system that demands accountability for harm inflicted and causality for problems solved. 

Participants also discussed how to ensure AI is culturally responsive and relevant, and how to use advocacy to include those who have been historically excluded and denied access to the design and development of AI-driven decision-making systems and left out of the future of AI — stressing the importance of inviting communities to define the problem around which AI solutions are built, because the tool is only as strong as its ability to legitimately solve those problems and there should be “no application without representation.”

Not just preoccupied with preventing harm, the sessions also focused on the need to counter knee-jerk negativity and shed light on a positive narrative for AI Exploring how AI could be used to correct inequities and injustices, call AI powerbrokers to account, demand transparency, and ensure the future of AI is justice-oriented and trauma-informed. Participants even hypothesized that it may be time to use language that is less lofty and more rooted in what we can achieve — shifting from ‘AI ethics’ to aiming for ‘responsible and accountable AI.’

These themes will form the backbone of the unique event on June 9th 2022, at Wild Days at the Eaton Hotel in Washington D.C., bringing public policymakers and leading AI experts together to discuss one of society’s most urgent questions: What will it take to build public trust in AI?