Social Impact Tech: Claire Schmidt of AllVoices On How Their Technology Will Make An Important Positive Impact
AllVoices is solving these issues through technology by providing a secure communication channel between employees and employers, and it’s the most trusted employee feedback management platform by employees. AllVoices collects and presents all employee submissions into an encrypted, easy-to-read dashboard of patterns, trends, and actionable insights. Companies gain access to real-time, visualized data that helps them make proactive decisions and resolve issues before they become organizational norms.
In recent years, Big Tech has gotten a bad rep. But of course many tech companies are doing important work making monumental positive changes to society, health, and the environment. To highlight these, we started a new interview series about “Technology Making An Important Positive Social Impact”. We are interviewing leaders of tech companies who are creating or have created a tech product that is helping to make a positive change in people’s lives or the environment. As a part of this series, I had the pleasure of interviewing Claire Schmidt.
Claire Schmidt is the founder and CEO of AllVoices, a platform that enables employees to anonymously report workplace issues directly to leadership. Claire has a unique background in using technology to solve problems in our world from child sex trafficking to lack of access to healthy food. In 2010 she helped found and lead Thorn: Digital Defenders of Children, a nonprofit organization which deploys technology in innovative ways to fight child sex trafficking. During her five years at Thorn, Claire ran all programmatic work, spoke at the White House, the State Department, and Stanford University, and led a task force of more than 30 major technology companies, including Facebook, Google, Twitter, and Microsoft.
Claire graduated from Stanford with a degree in Economics in 2006. Claire grew up in Portland Oregon and now reside in Los Angeles (since 2008).
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 grew up in Portland, Oregon, with two brothers. My parents were both focused on giving back in their careers. My mom was an elementary school teacher, and my dad was a lawyer who specifically worked in legal aid. I grew up observing that instinct to help others, and it has been ingrained in me since then.
Can you share the most interesting story that happened to you since you began your career?
One of the most unusual things I’ve ever done in my career was that I joined the FBI on a sting operation during my time at Thorn. I had to wear a bulletproof vest and rode in the backseat of the police car. It was fascinating to see how different their jobs are from anything I had experienced in the past, and to understand how these operations are conducted.
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 was really lucky that my first boss out of college was incredibly smart, diligent, and had an amazing work ethic. He seemed to really understand all that I had to contribute and encouraged me to take on leadership roles within the company and within our case teams, even at the age of 22. He was also funny, kind, and passionate about his work. I was very lucky to learn from him and work alongside him for two years. He led by example, and the qualities that made him such a good leader were also qualities that I was able to develop in myself.
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?
- Optimism — Specifically, I think it’s very important to assume the best about other people. We as humans have an instinct to assume the best about ourselves and our own intentions, and not always extend that grace to others. And this can end up backfiring on us. For example, if someone decides not to invest in your company, a knee-jerk reaction might be, “they didn’t invest in my company so I don’t like them.” But that is not a very optimistic view, and is also not productive. If someone doesn’t want to invest in AllVoices at a given point in time, I take the optimistic view that maybe they’ll invest later, and stay in touch with them just in case.
- Persistence — Persistence is a fundamental trait to success, especially when you are starting a company from nothing. It can often feel like pushing a boulder up an endless hill. In particular, there was one time in AllVoices’ history where I was worried we weren’t going to make it as a company — our cash was running out and we had interest from investors but nothing in writing. Persistence, and the belief in what we were building, is what kept me going during that time.
- Humility — I know this one is a little strange (shouldn’t someone else be the one to call me humble?) But I have a lot of humility about myself as a leader and about my degree of responsibility for our company’s success. We have a team of incredible people, from employees, to advisors, to investors — who are all working hard to make AllVoices succeed and I acknowledge that I am just one piece of the puzzle. Humility also enables you as a leader to admit when you’ve made mistakes, or when you don’t have the answer, or when you need help.
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?
AllVoices is an employee feedback management platform that is helping to drive positive change within organizations by giving all employees a way to speak up, provide feedback, ask questions, share positive input, and report harassment, bias, or culture issues directly to their company’s leadership. Through our employee approved interface, AllVoices encourages employees to share their feedback and concerns securely and comfortably. AllVoices’ user-friendly and truly anonymous reporting tool has an encrypted messaging system that builds employee trust. AllVoices collects data in one simple dashboard allowing for easy follow-up, early risk mitigation, tracking progress and resolving reports in one centralized place. AllVoices helps companies build sustainable and healthy cultures, where employees feel heard. Historically, employees haven’t had a safe and secure way to speak up about issues from harassment to toxic culture — or even just ask a question. As a result they’ve either stayed quiet and been unhappy or unproductive, left their companies, written negative reviews on Glassdoor or social media channels, or even sued their employer.
How do you think your technology can address this?
AllVoices is solving these issues through technology by providing a secure communication channel between employees and employers, and it’s the most trusted employee feedback management platform by employees. AllVoices collects and presents all employee submissions into an encrypted, easy-to-read dashboard of patterns, trends, and actionable insights. Companies gain access to real-time, visualized data that helps them make proactive decisions and resolve issues before they become organizational norms.
Can you tell us the backstory about what inspired you to originally feel passionate about this cause?
While I was working as the Vice President of Technology and Innovation at 20th Century Fox, I came across Susan Fowler’s blog, exposing the toxic harassment she experienced as a software engineer at Uber. The story stuck with me for weeks after I read it, and I kept thinking about how to make sure that more people didn’t have to experience what she went through. I began speaking with CEOs, lawyers, HR leaders and other employees (including Susan Fowler) and discovered that the tools available to employees to share feedback or report issues were ineffective, intimidating, and rarely used. The whistleblower hotlines in the market were outdated and clunky. This lack of an effective and comprehensive employee feedback management platform, was encouraging toxic workplace cultures of silence and unresolved, systemic issues. So I began building AllVoices. Then Susan’s voice along with countless others became the start of the #MeToo movement, and the potential of AllVoices became even more clear to investors and supporters, launching our rapid growth.
How do you think this might change the world?
41% of people have left a job because they didn’t feel listened to and 37% have left a job because they felt feedback wasn’t being taken seriously in their workplace. 72% of HR leaders believe that the feedback they receive from employees isn’t honest. Bad work culture is everyone’s problem — it compromises the well-being of workers and costs employers. The current models in place are outdated and ineffective. AllVoices is changing this, by helping companies build sustainable and healthy cultures, where employees feel heard. AllVoices’ platform is a win for employees and a win for employers and it is quickly becoming the most trusted employee feedback management tool in the workplace. AllVoices is helping to shape the future of employee feedback management with its trusted and innovative platform.
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?
I believe that most technology is neutral, and the question is really about how it’s being used. We try to be incredibly responsible and transparent about how our technology works and what its purpose is. We do try to think about edge cases or ways in which the service could be misused. In an extreme case, you could see an example of bots flooding our system with nonsense reports, creating too much “noise” to be filtered out that would prevent real reports from being seen and acted upon. We have a number of security practices in place to prevent something like this from happening, but we need to keep scenarios like this in mind to ensure the security of our platform and our customers’ data.
Here is the main question for our discussion. 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”? (Please share a story or an example, for each.)
- Make kindness a core value: This world has enough people who are ruthless or cutthroat — and this can come through in not only how they treat employees, but partners, advisors, customers. By making sure kindness is a core value, you can create a healthy company in which people are empowered to treat others well, no matter who they are. This will pay dividends in terms of customer loyalty and employee satisfaction.
- Stay focused on your vision: Get clear on your goals so that you can stay focused on the vision and remember who you are serving. One investor asked me early on, what is your north star? What does success look like for your business? And for us, it’s ultimately making AllVoices available to every employee in the world. So we look at every decision through that lens.
- Work on something that matters to you: Startup life can be challenging. What makes it way more manageable is if you actually truly care about the problem you’re working to solve. Too many people start companies just to start companies, or because they have an idea. It has to go beyond that to keep your interest for 5, 10 years — it has to be something you are passionate about, that you don’t want to live in a world without.
- Hire mission-aligned employees: It’s sometimes hard to hire employees, and in today’s job market especially, there can be a temptation to just hire the first competent person who can help take some of the work off your plate or help you grow. But this is a short-term mindset. It’s important to hire employees who care about the mission. Because things in a startup change quickly, and you want to have people who are anchored to the mission so that no matter what’s happening with the company, they are driven by their own passion and purpose.
- Listen to your customers: Especially early on, there can be so much enthusiasm for the “solution” that you forget to make sure you are actually solving a problem people have. The way to avoid this is to talk to prospective customers, understand their pain points and whether what you’re creating can solve something for them. Continue to solicit customer feedback over time to make sure you are continuing to add value and provide something people want and need.
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?
I think everyone wants to make a positive impact on our society but sometimes they don’t know where to start. I would recommend that people keep a journal of the issues and topics they care about, and even spend some time brainstorming potential solutions to the problems they identify. These can be minor annoyances that they’ve never heard anyone else talk about, or major problems on a societal scale like climate change. Either way, by journaling or keeping notes about the topics that matter to them they will start to identify themes and trends in what they are passionate about and interested in. Then they can start to figure out how to best make an impact in that space. Can they volunteer for a nonprofit? Start a nonprofit? Start a company? Write about the topic in their spare time, or for a living? Reach out to someone who works in the space and interview them just because? Sometimes having so many options of what to do can be paralyzing, but by taking small steps, it can feel clearer what to do next. This process is also a good way to identify the intersection of “things I care about” and “things I’m good at” that is sometimes hard to figure out.
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. 🙂
Oprah!
How can our readers further follow your work online?
https://www.facebook.com/allvoicesco
https://www.instagram.com/allvoices/
https://twitter.com/allvoicesco
https://www.linkedin.com/company/allvoicesco/
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCUsO9Bj1OiznxuN2anNqy-A
Thank you so much for joining us. This was very inspirational, and we wish you continued success in your important work.
Social Impact Tech: Claire Schmidt of AllVoices On How Their Technology Will Make An Important… was originally published in Authority Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.