Social Impact Tech: Laura Read Of Yoke On How Their Technology Will Make An Important Positive Impact
Yoke is a relationship check-in app designed to create a dedicated space for clearer, kinder communication in everyday life.
As a part of this series, we had the pleasure to interview Laura Read.
Laura Read is the co-founder of Yoke, the relationship communication app built around a simple daily check-in that helps couples understand how each other is feeling and what they need. The app is grounded in a framework Laura developed through years of working one-to-one with clients, helping people understand themselves more deeply through their relationships. She has also created online courses taken by thousands of students worldwide and hosted What’s Love Got to Do With It?, a podcast featuring conversations with well-known guests about love and modern relationships.
Thank you so much for joining us in this interview series! Before we dive in, our readers would love to learn a bit more about you. Can you tell us a bit about your childhood backstory and how you grew up?
I was a creative child who enjoyed making and sharing things, and I developed an early interest in other people’s stories. I’ve always enjoyed understanding how others saw the world, which has ultimately led to the work I do now through relationship coaching. I’m particularly fascinated by our intimate relationships and how they can help us understand ourselves more deeply. That idea now sits at the heart of Yoke.
Can you share the most interesting story that happened to you since you began your career?
Yoke grew from a difficult period in my relationship with my husband and Yoke’s co-founder, Matt. As we found our way through it, we introduced regular check-ins to help us communicate more openly and understand how the other person was feeling.
Matt built a simple digital version for us to use and I immediately saw how it could help others. Something created to support us when we needed it became the foundation of the company we now run together.
None of us are able to achieve success without some help along the way. Is there a particular person who you are grateful towards who helped get you to where you are? Can you share a story about that?
I’m most grateful to Matt. Yoke has been built from the ground up by the two of us, and our skills are highly complementary. I lead the creative direction, brand and communication, while Matt brings the operational and technical thinking that turns those ideas into a working product.
Building an app together has taught us how to translate between those two worlds. Matt has helped me understand what sits behind the technology, from making product decisions to managing the practical realities of the build — and the bugs.
There have been many moments when I’ve had a vision for how Yoke should feel or what it should enable couples to do, and Matt has worked out how we can make it possible. Yoke grew from our shared experience as a couple, and it’s taken both of our perspectives to bring it to life.
Can you please give us your favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Can you share how that was relevant to you in your life?
“Time will pass anyway.” Humans are very good at waiting for the perfect moment to start something — when we’re feeling more confident or when life feels a little calmer, for example. But time passes whether we start the thing or not. Yoke had been on my mind in various forms for years. I’m glad I stopped waiting and started building.
You are a successful business leader. Which three character traits do you think were most instrumental to your success? Can you please share a story or example for each?
The first is openness. I listen carefully to feedback and remain open to ideas that challenge my own. I never want to be the smartest person in the room, and some of Yoke’s most thoughtful product decisions have come from conversations with the people testing it.
The second is creativity. I enjoy taking an idea and shaping it into something tangible and useful. With Yoke, that has meant translating an intimate relationship practice into an experience that feels simple and natural for other couples.
The third is determination. Once I believe an idea should exist, I’m committed to finding a way to bring it into the world.
Ok super. Let’s now shift to the main part of our discussion about the tech tools that you are helping to create that can make a positive social impact on our society. To begin, what problems are you aiming to solve?
We use technology to track everything from sleep and steps to calories and meditation, yet we don’t give the same kind of attention to our relationships. Relationships shape an enormous amount of our wellbeing, but communication gets squeezed into whatever time and energy remain at the end of the day.
That can happen to anyone. It might be two people with high-pressure careers whose conversations have become practical, busy parents passing each other between work and childcare, or a long-distance couple trying to feel close across different routines and time zones. It’s very easy to lose sight of how the other person is feeling.
With Yoke, we want to remove the guesswork that builds up between two people. We so often assume we know where our partner is emotionally, or expect them to know what we need without having to say it. Yoke is a relationship check-in app designed to create a dedicated space for clearer, kinder communication in everyday life.
How do you think your technology can address this?
Yoke offers a simple daily relationship check-in that takes less than a minute. You can share how connected you’re feeling, along with your mood, energy, anything on your mind and what you could use from your partner that day. They do the same.
The important part is what happens outside the app. If you know your partner is nervous about an upcoming presentation at work and they check-in saying they could use some distraction, you can then show up exactly as they need.
Our emotional and physical needs are changing constantly throughout our lives, regardless of gender or age. Sleep, health, medication, caring responsibilities and pressure at work can all affect how much energy we have and what we need from a partner. Hormonal changes also deserve to be recognised. Menstrual cycles, pregnancy and the postpartum period, perimenopause and menopause can affect sleep, concentration, energy and emotional sensitivity, although experiences vary considerably from one person to another. Someone going through any of the above may need something very different from their partner today than they did a week, month, or year ago — and Yoke offers a place to communicate our ever-changing human-ness.
Can you tell us the backstory about what inspired you to originally feel passionate about this cause?
As mentioned, Yoke came directly from my own relationship. We consider a daily check-in to be one of the practices that’s strengthened our marriage, helping us understand each other more clearly. We’ve experienced the difference this small habit can make, and we want more couples to have an easy way to build it into their own relationships.
How do you think this might change the world?
There’s something fascinating about what happens when two people become close. Ultimately, it’s two nervous systems constantly responding to one another, which is what we call co-regulation. Studies have found that partners’ moods and physiological stress responses can become linked. Feeling understood and cared for by a partner has also been associated with greater wellbeing. In other words, the quality of our closest relationship is carried into our bodies and out into the rest of our lives. It’s the most important decision we can make.
The reverse can happen too. Conflict, disconnection or the feeling that you’re walking on eggshells can keep the body on alert. Many couples only address that distance once it’s become impossible to ignore.
A daily check-in will not solve every problem, but it can create regular moments of attention before assumptions and resentment have time to settle in. If two people feel safer, more understood and more able to ask for what they need, that can affect how they move through their daily lives, how they parent, how they show up at work, for their friends, and so on.
A thriving relationship really is an extraordinary resource.
Keeping “Black Mirror” and the “Law of Unintended Consequences” in mind, can you see any potential drawbacks about this technology that people should think more deeply about?
Tech can easily become another layer between people rather than a bridge. We’ve been careful not to build something that tries to keep you scrolling. We want to take as little of your time as possible and send you back into your relationship.
The rise of AI companions also raises an important question about what happens when technology becomes easier to talk to than another person. An AI companion can be endlessly patient and accommodating. Human relationships ask us to tolerate different opinions and accept that another person has needs of their own. If technology removes too much of that discord, we risk becoming less practised at the skills that emotional intimacy requires.
There’s also a risk that people could begin outsourcing conversations to technology. We never want Yoke to replace a conversation. At its best, it prompts one.
Based on your experience and success, can you please share “Five things you need to know to successfully create technology that can make a positive social impact”?
1. Start with a human problem. Through both my work and conversations with friends, I kept hearing from people who understood the value of a conversation with their partner, but felt overwhelmed by the prospect of starting one. Yoke gives couples a manageable place to begin.
2. Treat privacy as part of the product. Our earliest testers were friends and family, which made privacy feel very personal. People need to know that their check-ins belong to them and that the space is safe.
3. Listen without losing sight of the purpose. A friend testing Yoke told us she would avoid checking in during the stressful school run because she wanted her entry to be positive. The conversation helped us clarify that every mood belongs in Yoke and inspired us to create a timeline that reflects how energy levels and feelings change throughout one day, rather than one day to the next.
4. Make it easy to use. Even a well-intentioned product will lose people if joining it feels like work, so we have had to balance our desire to understand our users with a sign-up process that respects their time and energy.
5. Let tech create the opening, then get out of the way. Our toolkit draws on years of coaching and research, while the central experience gives couples space to use their own words; Yoke has done its job when it prompts a conversation that continues face to face. That’s our goal.
If you could tell other young people one thing about why they should consider making a positive impact on our environment or society, like you, what would you tell them?
Author Clarissa Pinkola Estés once wrote: “Ours is not the task of fixing the entire world all at once, but of stretching out to mend the part of the world that is within our reach.”
I would tell them exactly that. You don’t have to solve everything. Just pay attention to your part — and start there.
Is there a person in the world, or in the US with whom you would like to have a private breakfast or lunch, and why? He or she might just see this, especially if we tag them. 🙂
Gabor Maté. His work has had a profound impact on how I understand human behaviour, emotional patterns and the experiences we carry into our relationships. I would love to thank him for what his work has given me and talk with him about the role our closest relationships can play in understanding and healing ourselves. His contribution has already helped so many people, and the legacy of that work will continue far beyond him.
How can our readers further follow your work online?
You can follow Yoke through our website and social channels:
Website
Instagram
LinkedIn
Thank you so much for the time you spent sharing these insights with us today!
Social Impact Tech: Laura Read Of Yoke On How Their Technology Will Make An Important Positive… was originally published in Authority Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.