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Behind every mission, every movement, and every attempt to create change, there's a human story shaping how it all unfolds.
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I'm Dr.
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Pyle Berry, and this is Reframing Perspectives.
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This podcast is for those change makers, those purpose-led founders, nonprofit leaders, growth mindset individuals, and purpose-driven entrepreneurs who believe the work that they're doing in the world should actually make people's lives better.
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Each week, I'm sitting down change makers who are shaping impact in their industries and communities.
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And together, we're going to explore the moments, the questions, and the perspective shifts that changed how they lead, how they build relationships, and how they create meaningful change in our world.
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Welcome to Reframing Perspectives, the podcast for change makers who believe relationships are the real infrastructure of impact.
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Hi, Essence.
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So excited to have you.
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It's so fun because I've known you for now, what, like 16 years as a friend.
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And then having to now interview you in this way is like, I actually went back and of course, you know, I've known you.
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I've known I've seen you through your entire trajectory of your career and what you've done when you first got to DC, your couch surfing to get into those right spots.
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And then, you know, did everything you did in Homeland Security and what you're doing now.
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But having to sit there and read it, I was like, oh, wow, I do know someone pretty awesome who's done incredible work.
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So it's fun to talk to you in this way because, you know, that's not how it typically goes.
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Yeah, happy to be here.
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I want to start, Essen, think something that I think that is really interesting about you specifically and your life, because the way that I think about change makers often and I think about individuals that are just committed to making a difference is there's these four arcs that someone may go through, right?
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So there's the outsider who needed the system to help them.
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Then there's the insider who builds the system.
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There's the watching the system actually dismantle.
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And then having to go back and create something without losing hope that just because something dismantled doesn't mean that we can't rebuild.
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And I think that it's really, really interesting to see that you're someone who has met each one of those arcs.
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Because starting with the fact that, you know, you came here as a refugee and you were someone who needed the system to help support you and your family to settle and to find that stability.
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Then comes you working in Homeland Security in the Obama administration, you know, TSA Precheck doing things, you know, civil rights, hate crimes, like really helping, giving advice to Homeland Security of like what needs to happen, but on things that were also targeting and surveillancing individuals that looked like you.
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So there's this like parallel of you having to be in a system that's targeting individuals that look like yourself.
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And then coming to seeing the dismantling of this in the last, you know, few years and now a difference engine what you're doing.
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So you've had such an interesting and incredible life in being able to see all those things.
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What would you say, you know, when you look at that, what is it like to, in your observation, having experienced it from needing it to being on the inside to seeing what does it really mean to create change?
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What does it really mean to create change?
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I don't know.
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I've never thought of that.
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I'm just so, I'm just so always doing that.
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I mean, I feel for me, it's for me, it's kind of like what else would I do?
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You know, life is short.
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Why am I here?
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Am I here to help a company issue their next, I don't know, product?
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Am I here to, as a lawyer, would I say I'm here to defend a corporation or a private interest?
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I mean, that is that what I'm gonna say at the end of my life that I've done?
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That seems kind of sad.
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So for me, it's just like, what's the good have I done?
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What good have I done before I've left this planet?
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And so I try to rack up as much of that good as I can, because to me that what's everything else is kind of pointless.
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And I know that's it.
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Not that it's truly pointless, but for me it is.
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No, no, I hear that, you know, and I think obviously it sounds like this is just something that's so deeply embedded in your DNA of who you are, is just but how much of that has been influenced by obviously your own start in your childhood coming here in the US, or like what would you say has been like the the caveat that just keeps you continuously finding that, oh wow, there's an accessibility problem here, I want to help with that.
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There's a resource problem here, I want to help with that.
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Before you even were part of Homeland Security in college, you started a movement too.
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Like you've always had something that you've found and you're like, I'm gonna activate on this.
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What drives that for you?
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I don't know.
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I think it's just the way I'm wired.
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I think I'm just wired that way.
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I don't think it has as much to do with my personal background as somebody who like you, as you mentioned, as somebody who came as a refugee, as a person of color, as a religious minority.
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I experienced my fair share of that discrimination, but I think I'm just wired that way, like you are, right?
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Like some people are just kind of wired to look at a problem and it bothers them, right?
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So I just go, I'm at a movie theater and I'm like, why is the line painted this way?
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You know, they could do a better job if it was this thing, right?
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Or if you're at an event of some kind, you're like, you know, they should have checked RSVPs this way and it would have been more efficient.
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And and the more you get wired like that, the more your brain keeps thinking like that.
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So the difference engine is really kind of a good pairing between my desire to leave an impact, a positive impact on the world, the way my brain thinks, which is like, let me solve a problem, let me like, you know, figure out a way to solve this problem.
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I think that that's what actually, you know, when you talk about that and you talk about the difference engine, which I really want to dive into because I think it's so incredible what you built.
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But you mention and you talk about it as, you know, division is designed and so is connection.
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And I think that what you're doing with the difference engine is you're bringing groups of people together that may never have run into each other, may never have understood.
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They would have received this problems or challenges from the media, from research, from looking at things from theoretical perspectives.
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And what you've done is created a lab where you take these young, aspiring change makers who want to make change happen in the world, but you're not having them do research papers necessarily.
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You're having them actually solve.
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And it's it's like truly ultimately, like what you're talking about is like when you're constantly looking at these problems and everyone over here is having debates about it and discussing and opinions are flying, you know, and you're like, what are you gonna do about it?
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Do something.
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And I feel like that's what the difference engine is.
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It's like literally telling young individuals, you can do something.
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You don't have to think that you're not capable of doing something.
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So I'd love for you to go into like, what really started that planted that seed for you that I want to build a difference engine?
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And then I'd love for you to share what that is.
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Um I like, I, you know, I think it's also the answer again.
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This might be a frustrating answer, is also, I think, the way I'm wired.
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I don't, I really get frustrated just listening to people.
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I get frustrated listening to my own voice as well.
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And the older I get, the more frustrated I get with that.
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And, you know, if you live in DC and work in DC like I did, you talk a lot about problems.
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Sometimes you write about problems.
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Sometimes you talk about what you wrote, which is a book talk.
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Sometimes you write about what you said, you know, like I gave a speech and now I'm gonna write about this piece there.
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And it's just this like cycle of talking and writing and writing and talking.
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And meanwhile, the problem is still there.
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And I think writing and talking are pretty easy to do.
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They're low common, low denominator effort exercises.
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Not that there's not an importance as a lawyer, I'd say that's very important to write and talk.
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And but you know, that's not what the country read like needs right now.
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I think right now what we need is people who are gonna build.
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Who's building?
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If the medical system is broken, there's plenty of research out there, there's plenty of talk out there that tells you again and again that the system is broken for most Americans.
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The greatest source of bankruptcy, more Americans go bankrupt because they cannot afford medical care.
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People are going broke in this country trying to live, trying to survive.
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I don't need any more information.
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What I need to do now is to solve that problem.
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And to me, it gets really frustrating every time somebody keeps bringing up the problem.
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I can't listen to it.
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It just drives me up the wall.
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And so that's kind of where that desire comes from.
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I just want to be like, let's just build something.
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And then the other thing is that we live in a time where production of things has been democratized, right?
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You can 3D print an object, you can make a podcast, you can make a video, you can code software using AI, you can you can craft a physical object.
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It's pretty easy.
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You can make a mold, you can send it's all of that has been pr is pretty accessible compared to 10, 20, 30 years ago when it was very expensive and very difficult, people wouldn't dream of doing it.
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Right.
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Accessibility to entrepreneurship has become so easy now.
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Right.
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So why don't we give the thesis behind the difference engine is why don't we give communities, why don't we treat them as entrepreneurs, communities that have a problem, but a church that has a problem, a city that has a problem, a group, you know, a social group that has a problem, an ethnic group that has a problem, women, men, whatever.
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So that's what we do.
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And we work with young people quite a bit, like you mentioned, because we're at Arizona State, but we have one program kind of for each third of your life.
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So we have the Creative Justice Lab for young people, we have the Distinguished Innovation Fellows program for people that are in the latter stage of their lives.
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They're at, near, or past retirement.
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And then we have a program for everybody in the middle, people like you and me.
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So we call that the Difference Corps.
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We launched our first Difference Corps class last year, or this year rather, and they finished their program in in March and pitched their ideas in March.
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And so there's something for everybody.
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And then the beauty of it is that these cohorts work with each other.
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So the young people help out the old people and the older people help out the middle-aged people, and it's all interconnected.
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So it's very beautiful in that way.
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Well, I think right there, right?
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It's the fact that you're having now intergenerationals come together.
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They're learning from each other, there's experience that's being taught.
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The younger generation is seeing that I actually have something within my own hands that I can do.
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I'd love for you to like walk through, you know, a group of students who actually pitched an idea.
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I know you do like a Shark Tank style concept where, you know, they come in, for example, one year was food inequity, which I came and saw.
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And you have these different teams that come together to come up with a solution of how would you solve this for this particular community?
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And they go up, they pitch their ideas, and then they actually get$50,000 to invest into their concept idea.
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And I remember while we were there, there was um a girl from the year previously who had won who was already in series A.
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And she was not even a senior in college, or she had just become a senior in college.
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She was a senior, yeah.
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She was a senior in college, and she was already in her partner, co-founder, wasn't there because she was pitching a series A fund, you know, in Chicago.
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Yeah.
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And so, you know, I think that part right there is what I would love to kind of dive into a little bit more because what you're doing is you're literally teaching these kids.
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And yes, you know, there's older individuals that are there too, but you're teaching these like specific.
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And the reason I'm harping on the aspiring change makers on these kids is because to your point, there wasn't accessibility in other ways before.
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Before it was like write your papers, be a part of a community organization, be a community builder.
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And it would have just put them into that same kind of pattern of looking at it.
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And now what you're doing is you're empowering them with actually seeing that change can happen within their own hands and that it is possible to build something.
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So I'd love for you to like talk about an experience where you saw a student actually like their eyes just finally like they it clicked for them of like, wow, like look what I can do and how that shifted the trajectory of like their life choices.
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Yeah, I mean, we I don't want to speak on behalf of my students or the students that work with us, but perhaps what I can share is like the results that that uh that indicate that, you know.
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So we just had a a wonderful young person who um one of our board members is Canon, Canon Corporation of America.
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And uh one of the ways they support the Difference Engine is they provide us with a student who does kind of does calm social media work and they're also involved in the projects.
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And she was only with us for a short period of time, but she, you know, got very emotional because she got another job, full-time job, and wrote very nice emails.
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And that's really nice to see.
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Uh, one of our original students, we've been around five years.
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Um, she was a PhD, she was a master's student, she became a PhD student with us, master's PhD.
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And now she's graduated.
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She has a full-time job, she has a beautiful child, and she's still volunteering with us.
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The first ever student that started working with us.
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Another student who started with us three years ago, stayed with us for all three years, and now we've hired her as a full-time employee.
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So her first job ever out of college is to stay there, still work with us.
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And so I think that this that speaks more in terms of the volume, of in terms of how the students feel about working with us and in terms of some of the ideas that you asked about.
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I mean, this March, a couple of weeks ago, we had our creative justice lab for this year.
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And the grand challenge we gave the students was to build practical solutions to help immigrant communities because of what immigrant communities are going through right now with the Trump administration.
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People are dying on the streets of American cities.
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And so, can we build a product?
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An example of that, this is not one that we worked on particularly, but uh is in Long Beach called Whistle Mania, which I thought was really cool.
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So the idea behind that is that ICE comes to places like Home Depots to interdict and arrest and apprehend people.
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So now people know that.
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So they'll send observers, organizations will send people with phone cameras.
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So ICE is like, okay, now we'll just go to random places.
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So what if you had a whistle that makes a unique sound?
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You can 3D print that whistle, it makes a really unique sound.
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And people within a 200 feet radius can hear and know, oh my God, ICE is here.
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I better get out.
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Because the difference between a whistle and a phone is if I don't know Dr.
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Barry, I don't can't text her, right?
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But she may be here passively, an undocumented person.
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But my job as a citizen is to let her know you need to leave because ICE is here.
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So I'm not going to call her because I don't know her, but she can hear a very sharp, like unique whistle sound.
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So you hear them in this area as you're driving around.
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And it's a multi-directional tool that accomplishes a social good purpose built by and for the community.
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And so that's what idea.
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Another idea, one of the earliest ideas we had was a creative justice lab.
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We didn't even call it a creative justice lab back then.
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We just had a hackathon on transportation.
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And the winning idea was an app we built called Ride Centric that our students built.
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And the mandate was like, get make transportation more accessible, mass transit in particular, but make it more accessible.
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It's a big problem in LA.
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So they came up with a very simple idea that was very, is I think is very innovative, but it's super simple, and like a lot of innovative ideas.
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And they came up with this app that would track, you would give it permission, it would track you when you're moving.
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So if you're in a car or if you're in a public transit system, it knows.
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If you take a car to work, nothing happens.
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If you take the train to work, the moment you get out of the transit system, um, up, pop up in like a quarter mile radius, discounts, like pretty awesome discounts for all the businesses there.
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But only if you took the train, right?
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Oh, wow, that's true.
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And so, yeah, and there were pretty significant discounts that were negotiated.
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So you only if you took the train.
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And so what that does, it's great for the business because they're still getting something out of it because otherwise there would have been no foot traffic.
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So it's better than zero.
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So yeah, it's a discounted, but you're making some revenue, right?
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It's great for the environment because it's encouraging more people to take the train.
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It's great for people because they're spending less money on transportation and maintaining their cars.
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It's great for the city because it encourages transportation to be used that they've invested in.
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And it's tying uh, you know, a community good, a social good, anything commons related to and you you can't do that with litigation.
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You can't do that with protest, you can't do that with writing a book, you can't do that with a speech, but you can do it with an app.
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Something only a product can accomplish.
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So that's the kind of work that we that we do.
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And we have we launched 20 products this past uh March.
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Uh, this is our largest year with our largest number of community entrepreneurs.
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So we're very proud of the work that our teams are doing.
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We have 77 now difference engineers that work with us and we're growing every single day.
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Wow, you should be really proud of yourself, Ess.
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And I know it's been what five, six.
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It's a team effort, yeah.
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Yeah, no, definitely five years of you building this.
00:17:10.079 --> 00:18:00.000
And you know, what I'm hearing in all of this as well is that not only are you making a difference for the community and for the for the businesses, but it's like because these kids or these individuals are building out these apps and these products that are helping and benefiting everyone, I can only imagine how much then the community actually wants to lean in to being a part of the difference engine because they see that how this is going to benefit like my neighborhood, how this is gonna benefit so how much of that are you noticing as well with your corporate partnerships, your sponsors, and everyone who's coming in and looking at this as a to your point, it's that you're not asking to do another research that's just gonna, you know, write out statistics about what's happening, but how are corporate partners also looking at this as wow, you just built something that we could even benefit from to be able to service our clients?
00:18:00.240 --> 00:18:01.599
Yeah, yeah, that's a good question.
00:18:01.759 --> 00:18:05.599
You know, one of the tools that we have is called the Women's Power and Influence Index.
00:18:05.680 --> 00:18:08.640
That was our original, that's a tool we built in-house.
00:18:08.799 --> 00:18:10.640
And it was a way to test our model.
00:18:10.960 --> 00:18:17.279
It's still a tool that we have that uh we launched the version, uh, we launched, we don't call it version 2.0 anymore.
00:18:17.359 --> 00:18:18.720
I've been told to not call it that.
00:18:18.799 --> 00:18:22.960
We launched the WPI 2026 and a couple of weeks ago.
00:18:23.039 --> 00:18:25.200
It measures 121 companies.
00:18:25.440 --> 00:18:28.880
It's the most comprehensive measure of gender fairness in the country.
00:18:29.039 --> 00:18:34.960
And uh the interesting thing is it tells you a lot about your workplace that even you may not know as a company leader.
00:18:35.039 --> 00:18:40.799
And so we've had conversations with instance with PayPal, and they've changed their policies on the basis of that.
00:18:40.960 --> 00:18:43.759
Um we've had conversations with Netflix.
00:18:43.920 --> 00:18:57.599
Uh, just sent the index to the leadership at Starbucks um because Starbucks went up in um in their um kind of the power that women enjoy at that workplace, and they're doing really, really well.
00:18:57.759 --> 00:19:00.240
And uh A, it's good news for them.
00:19:00.559 --> 00:19:07.599
B, you know, we can we serve as a consultative entity for some of these partners, and that's a revenue generation piece for us, right?
00:19:07.680 --> 00:19:10.079
Because they're we're cons our students become consultants.
00:19:10.240 --> 00:19:18.240
And C, it's like, you know, you're you're seeing change because if you another thing that a tool can do is that it can keep data, right?
00:19:18.400 --> 00:19:20.799
And so that's live and actively updated.
00:19:20.960 --> 00:19:24.640
So you can't change what you can't measure, right?
00:19:24.799 --> 00:19:29.519
So, well, I guess you can change it, but it's not, you know, it's not going to be an accurate way of changing it.
00:19:29.599 --> 00:19:31.519
So that's kind of the philosophy behind the index.
00:19:31.680 --> 00:19:41.680
And we try not to pu make it punitive towards these companies, but uh we've seen remarkable uptake of our index uh with Fortune 500 companies.
00:19:41.839 --> 00:19:44.240
And uh we've had conversations with Blackstone.
00:19:44.319 --> 00:19:50.079
There's a number of companies we've shared our results with, some of whom have actually shifted policies on the basis of the index.
00:19:50.160 --> 00:19:55.119
And the more it gets out there, the more uh folks are companies are using it.
00:19:55.200 --> 00:19:57.839
Um we have 16 young women who designed this index.
00:19:58.000 --> 00:19:58.640
They're brilliant.
00:19:58.960 --> 00:19:59.839
That's so smart.
00:20:00.240 --> 00:20:01.440
Like, I want to take a moment right here.
00:20:01.599 --> 00:20:06.319
The fact that you said that there's companies, like you said, mentioned PayPal that has changed their policies.
00:20:06.400 --> 00:20:07.279
Like, walk me through that.
00:20:07.359 --> 00:20:08.559
What is that, what does that mean?
00:20:08.720 --> 00:20:16.799
Like you, you, you ran this data, you extracted these numbers, you know, and then you went to them and said, like, hey, we ran this research.
00:20:16.880 --> 00:20:19.519
This is what we see specifically about your organization.
00:20:19.839 --> 00:20:37.759
How do you really get them to listen and get their attention, especially in a time right now where things like DEI are so under attack and giving any kind of attention towards those things could also bring attention to the unwanted attention to their organization that they don't want to engage in?
00:20:38.000 --> 00:20:38.160
Yeah.
00:20:38.240 --> 00:20:41.920
So, like I said, we don't, we're not punitive, and so we don't say that you're doing terribly.
00:20:42.079 --> 00:20:44.720
We just say, here's how you could do things better, right?
00:20:44.960 --> 00:20:50.960
Everybody's got, we assume good intentions, you know, of the people that work at these companies, and that's usually the way it is.
00:20:51.200 --> 00:20:54.720
We have never used, and I I don't personally prefer this word.
00:20:54.799 --> 00:21:00.960
I've never used it in any of my language, my writing, my materials, or the difference engine, the word DEI.
00:21:01.519 --> 00:21:03.599
So what we talk about is fairness.
00:21:03.759 --> 00:21:06.400
Everybody can understand fairness, and fairness is just equity.
00:21:06.559 --> 00:21:07.440
That's really what it is.
00:21:07.599 --> 00:21:14.160
But we talk about it in a way that doesn't make people square raise their hackles or get defensive.
00:21:14.319 --> 00:21:14.880
Yeah.
00:21:15.200 --> 00:21:18.240
Because there's a other side to fairness, which is unfairness.
00:21:18.319 --> 00:21:21.039
What you may think is fair is what somebody else may think is unfair.
00:21:21.119 --> 00:21:29.519
But inherently we have a compass that tells us, you know, my seven-year-old nephew understands what fairness is and what's unfair and what's fair, right?
00:21:29.599 --> 00:21:31.519
Your nieces understand what's fair and unfair.
00:21:31.680 --> 00:21:33.920
So that's the language that we build things around.
00:21:34.079 --> 00:21:42.640
And the fact that we're practically focused gives kind of sets us up to have conversations that are, it just makes it easy to open doors.
00:21:42.799 --> 00:21:53.759
So for instance, if I'm practically focused and I'm building this index, my my language is not can you believe how terrible you are in terms of how unfairly you treat people, which may be the case, right?
00:21:53.920 --> 00:21:58.319
But instead, like, do you know how much money you could make if you actually had a diverse workplace?
00:21:58.720 --> 00:21:59.839
They're definitely gonna pay attention to.
00:22:00.240 --> 00:22:00.400
that.
00:22:00.640 --> 00:22:00.880
Yeah.
00:22:00.960 --> 00:22:01.680
And it's true.
00:22:01.759 --> 00:22:05.759
Like diverse workplaces are way more profitable, way more profitable.
00:22:05.920 --> 00:22:12.160
And you're talking about investing a billion dollars in a factory, or you could invest$10 million in building a fair workplace.
00:22:12.240 --> 00:22:15.279
And the gains you would get are tremendous.
00:22:15.519 --> 00:22:17.759
Let me show you how and let us help you how to do that.
00:22:17.839 --> 00:22:18.079
Right.
00:22:18.240 --> 00:22:21.920
And it also helps that we're just a an academic institution.
00:22:22.079 --> 00:22:26.240
We don't really have a bone in this fight or we're we're incubated by an academic institution.
00:22:26.400 --> 00:22:29.200
So I'm not here to pick one company over another.
00:22:29.359 --> 00:22:30.319
I could care less.
00:22:30.480 --> 00:22:32.319
I'm just here to build a fair workplace.
00:22:32.400 --> 00:22:37.759
And so all of that kind of conspires together to lower the potential defensiveness.
00:22:37.839 --> 00:22:44.240
And to be honest with you, we found people are very willing to hear and listen, even if they're not doing super well because they all want to do better.
00:22:44.480 --> 00:22:45.680
We run on optimism.
00:22:45.759 --> 00:22:49.759
We're a very optimistic group and it just that's just my philosophy.
00:22:49.839 --> 00:22:52.559
And I think it's just a philosophy of the people that we bring onto the team.
00:22:52.799 --> 00:23:07.759
But I think that that's that's really powerful because when you think about optimism, you know, you talk about improvements, you talk about the strengths that you have, that's where you're also not creating the stunt that you're going to have in your brain, right?
00:23:07.839 --> 00:23:20.559
So your amygdala, all of those the this is where my nerdiness comes out, but it's like that prefrontal context of when you start with fear, when you create that defensiveness, then automatically any of those decision-making processes just completely shuts down.
00:23:20.799 --> 00:23:27.920
So I think what you're saying again and what I think is brilliant is the fact that you're approaching this from a place of like, hey, we want everyone to do good.
00:23:28.079 --> 00:23:30.799
You know, we want everyone to to win in this.
00:23:30.960 --> 00:23:32.960
There's not like a you lost, we won.
00:23:33.039 --> 00:23:36.160
Like it's like you win, we win, like our society wins.
00:23:36.400 --> 00:23:43.440
And so we recognize that what you care about is how is this going to help your business bottom line succeed.
00:23:43.680 --> 00:23:47.839
And what we care about is how do we create a more fair workplace.
00:23:48.000 --> 00:23:56.400
And so by being able to look at those and be like what's that common denominator here and it's like we're providing you to that, you know, I think that's brilliant because you're now meeting them.
00:23:56.480 --> 00:24:03.359
You're not creating this idea of we're going to punish you, we're going to shame you for who you are, your identity of what your work is doing.
00:24:03.440 --> 00:24:14.880
And I think that that's where a lot of people in that conversation who stay in the let me just have a conversation about my talk, about my book, about my article and let's now compare about how you feel about it versus how I feel about it.
00:24:15.039 --> 00:24:17.359
That's where they get stuck and they just stay there.
00:24:18.000 --> 00:24:31.440
And what you're doing and I think what's so brilliant again is that you're showing that it doesn't matter generationally where you are change can continuously happen if we just like come and meet and look at that, you know, what that means and what that looks like for all of us.
00:24:31.599 --> 00:24:31.920
Yeah.
00:24:32.240 --> 00:24:32.880
I agree.
00:24:34.319 --> 00:25:00.319
I mean what would you say then that like you know when you think about the difference engine and where it's going and the vision that you have for this and what I'm sure from you know day one to day like five five years down it's evolved a lot obviously but more so than necessarily your vision of it because I know what matters to you is how everyone else around you is taking it and you want to kind of be in the just observing and seeing it grow like a proud father.
00:25:00.559 --> 00:25:11.839
But you know when you're when you're seeing these students who five years down the track are still staying involved who are building things that are actually getting investors involved.
00:25:12.079 --> 00:25:24.160
And how are you seeing them taking the difference engine and expanding on you know what is possible for for their journey as a change maker in their trajectory of their life?
00:25:24.480 --> 00:25:26.640
Yeah, it's actually quite phenomenal to see.
00:25:26.720 --> 00:25:45.359
I mean we're still pretty young as an organization but I mentioned one of the students I'm not going to mention her by name because I don't know if she wants to be embarrassed, but she's brilliant and she's probably listening to this when this is airing but she, you know, in the beginning I used to run the Women's Power and Influence Index alongside another professor, Dr.
00:25:45.519 --> 00:25:45.599
S.
00:25:45.759 --> 00:25:49.119
Miguel and she and I ran this together and she's still involved.
00:25:49.279 --> 00:25:55.599
But over time we had one student come in who kind of took it over a little bit and then this other student came in and she runs it.
00:25:55.759 --> 00:25:56.480
I don't run it.
00:25:56.640 --> 00:26:06.319
I just show up she sets the agenda she sets the meetings she runs the meetings she figures out what's priority what companies are going to be ranked how are they going to be ranked what she's going to say about them.
00:26:06.480 --> 00:26:12.559
She assigns the other students work she and she's a student on par with them same situation.
00:26:12.799 --> 00:26:15.920
What companies are we going to talk with she presented in March.
00:26:16.000 --> 00:26:27.440
She came up with the deck she had this detailed presentation she put the presentation together you know we just reached out to Starbucks she she created the document to send to Starbucks's head of talent their head of HR.
00:26:27.599 --> 00:26:34.559
She's going to be when we do a call and I'll send you a link to a highlight reel of the call we had with PayPal if you want to put it in your show notes.
00:26:34.640 --> 00:26:38.000
But absolutely she'll be leading that call.
00:26:38.160 --> 00:26:51.680
And so what what's happening there is that what she is prioritizing or the way she's starting to think about the index is what the index is becoming, which is great because the index shouldn't be what I care about was my as an idea I had.
00:26:51.839 --> 00:26:54.079
But if it's all my ideas, we ain't going anywhere.
00:26:54.240 --> 00:26:56.799
We're just kind of it's a very slow growth situation.
00:26:56.880 --> 00:27:09.039
And so we serve community but we model how we serve community by building our own internal community and uplifting our team and our students and giving them agency.
00:27:09.200 --> 00:27:21.519
You know President Obama used to say like the only thing he looks for in in a kind of a somebody when they're he's hiring them is like if their attitude is like don't worry it, I'm going to solve it or don't worry it, I'll handle it.
00:27:21.759 --> 00:27:22.880
Which is kind of what we hire for.
00:27:23.039 --> 00:27:26.720
We hire for two things kindness number one and competence number two.
00:27:26.799 --> 00:27:26.960
Right?
00:27:27.119 --> 00:27:31.279
Kindness I can't teach you either kind or you're not competence I can try to get you a little bit better.
00:27:31.519 --> 00:27:32.799
And so that's who we hire for.
00:27:32.880 --> 00:27:38.400
And when you hire people that are kind and competent and let them go, they'll amaze you with what they're going to build.
00:27:38.480 --> 00:27:45.920
I mean there's no way I could have built the index I there's no way I could have done what she's done with the index because A, I'm not a woman.
00:27:46.000 --> 00:27:47.279
So there's things I just don't know.
00:27:47.440 --> 00:27:48.559
B, nobody's perfect.
00:27:48.799 --> 00:27:57.680
B, I just, you know, she's bringing kind of new information into it and I still collaborate with her and we I guide her and everything, but it's really becoming her project.
00:27:58.160 --> 00:28:01.039
And she comes up with ideas I'm going to talk about this here.
00:28:01.119 --> 00:28:02.640
I'm going to recruit these students.
00:28:02.799 --> 00:28:03.759
This is what we're going to build.
00:28:03.920 --> 00:28:08.480
She just built a beautiful you know I'll go off on a little tangent here.
00:28:08.640 --> 00:28:12.799
One of the problems with the index was that the data, some of the data was not visible.
00:28:12.960 --> 00:28:22.880
So they decided they're going to call out the companies that don't share she just sent me a message that don't share their data with the EEOC, with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.
00:28:23.200 --> 00:28:26.000
And they've built this amazing dashboard that calls out.
00:28:26.079 --> 00:28:35.599
So it's not just the fact that you're ranked on the index but there's another dashboard they built that says hey we couldn't rank you on the index because you don't even share your information.
00:28:35.759 --> 00:28:37.200
What are you trying to hide?
00:28:37.359 --> 00:28:38.240
Why not share it?
00:28:38.400 --> 00:28:44.319
Looks like you're doing pretty well right and then they've given that an internal ranking it's great.
00:28:44.559 --> 00:28:48.160
And we want companies to be transparent because that's the first pathway.
00:28:48.319 --> 00:28:51.920
Again, if you're not transparent I can't measure you if you can't measure you can't be profitable.
00:28:52.160 --> 00:28:53.279
Don't you want to be profitable?
00:28:53.519 --> 00:28:55.200
Costs you nothing to be transparent.
00:28:55.359 --> 00:28:57.200
You're probably doing better than you think you are.
00:28:57.359 --> 00:28:57.599
Right.
00:28:57.759 --> 00:29:05.440
And so we wouldn't have been able to build that if we didn't have students like her running and now she's going to be an employee running our our index.
00:29:05.680 --> 00:29:06.319
That's phenomenal.
00:29:06.559 --> 00:29:16.880
Essentially this entire conversation I think the most powerful thing and the most beautiful thing that's woven into all of this is not just about the fact of like how are we solving problems and actually doing something about it.
00:29:17.119 --> 00:29:26.799
And the second part of you know this is truly a form of education but applied education, which I think is now being valued significantly more than traditional education.
00:29:27.039 --> 00:29:41.920
But the third piece that I think is woven in so beautifully is something that, you know, I know, you know, Obama's been pressing and talking about a lot more is passing down the baton and being okay with the fact that I have yielded a lot of power.
00:29:42.079 --> 00:29:52.160
I have yielded a lot of things that I've done in my time in my generation but it is really important if we want to see this society thrive that we need to pass the baton.
00:29:52.240 --> 00:30:10.720
And I feel like what you've designed with the difference engine, regardless if it's the students, if it's the middle aged folks, you know, like yourself, I'm not there yet, but just kidding but um you know the the middle aged group and then the older generation is that there is this sense of like each one of you are adding value.
00:30:10.960 --> 00:30:20.160
Each one of you matter and it's okay to recognize where it stops with me and where it needs to go on with you.
00:30:20.480 --> 00:30:32.720
And that that seems to be what is really the culmination of being able to create such change is that you're not hoarding all of this power and this control and saying, I'm going to do this, I'm going to create this.
00:30:32.880 --> 00:30:39.440
And that is what's allowing all of these like you know scalable products, projects to actually like evolve.
00:30:39.680 --> 00:30:39.920
Yeah.
00:30:40.000 --> 00:30:46.799
I mean um you know I'll be honest sometimes every entrepreneur struggles with letting go and I am a human being just like everybody else.
00:30:46.880 --> 00:30:48.559
So I also struggle with letting go.
00:30:48.640 --> 00:30:53.039
But it's kind of hard not to let go when the people you're working with are so amazing.
00:30:53.119 --> 00:30:53.279
Right.
00:30:53.440 --> 00:30:56.240
When you're like I, there's not even a way I could have done this better.
00:30:56.400 --> 00:31:02.400
I mean I have another staff person, she's probably listening to this too and this is airing one of the best tires I've ever made in my life.
00:31:02.559 --> 00:31:05.440
And she reads my mind better than I read my mind.
00:31:05.599 --> 00:31:07.200
And so why struggle?
00:31:07.359 --> 00:31:11.599
Why not just let her do it because she's so good at what she does.
00:31:11.759 --> 00:31:12.000
Right.
00:31:12.160 --> 00:31:19.440
And so when somebody's that phenomenal you want them to have the same feeling as an entrepreneur that you had.
00:31:19.599 --> 00:31:25.279
You want them to feel like oh man I launched this thing and it's taken off and you want them to become an entrepreneur.
00:31:25.359 --> 00:31:26.240
You want them to own it.
00:31:26.400 --> 00:31:27.519
You want them to run with it.
00:31:27.599 --> 00:31:32.400
You want them to make it their baby and then you want them to do the same thing with other young people.
00:31:32.559 --> 00:31:35.359
That's how you build a phenomenal organization, right?
00:31:35.759 --> 00:31:43.119
And the your goal as a leader is not to control and build the actual products it's really two things.
00:31:43.279 --> 00:31:48.319
One is to set the vision and repeat that vision, clarify that vision, well maybe three things.
00:31:48.480 --> 00:31:51.359
Two is to find the resources to execute on that vision.
00:31:51.680 --> 00:31:54.960
And then three is to hire the right people to execute on that vision.
00:31:55.119 --> 00:31:55.599
That's it.
00:31:55.759 --> 00:31:58.960
It's actually quite an easy job if you just limit it to those three things.
00:31:59.039 --> 00:32:10.319
And I think leaders make it harder on themselves because they're like, oh my God, I have to I have to check the logo design and build this product out and I have to make sure that it works this way and da da da da it's all good.
00:32:10.400 --> 00:32:10.880
You know?
00:32:11.039 --> 00:32:14.960
So that's the those are the three things I try to focus on when I'm running the organization.
00:32:15.119 --> 00:32:16.559
I'm not always successful but I tried.
00:32:16.799 --> 00:32:35.599
Essentially so much for sharing about just this incredible work that you're doing with the Difference Engine and the change that you're helping to create the problems that you're helping to solve by empowering everyone around you to see that they have, they have the resources through what you're built, but also they have the empowerment to do so.
00:32:35.839 --> 00:33:00.079
Last question for you is that looking back now at what you've created with Difference Engine, looking back at what with the passion that you were working with when you were in DC doing everything you were doing, looking at this entire trajectory of what you've done, how would you say that the Difference Engine has reframed your perspective on the power of change versus what you were able to do within a more traditional institution.
00:33:00.480 --> 00:33:05.920
You know, I think I I I have a kind of an internal theory of change which is pretty simple, right?
00:33:06.000 --> 00:33:09.519
So there's change that's broad and there's change that's narrow.
00:33:09.680 --> 00:33:21.839
And then there's change that's deep and there's change that's shallow right so my work I used to I started a legal aid clinic at one point and we were helping one client at a time, but really meaningfully.
00:33:21.920 --> 00:33:24.079
So that's narrow but really deep.
00:33:24.240 --> 00:33:25.680
But that doesn't change a system.
00:33:25.839 --> 00:33:27.359
You're just working within the system.
00:33:27.519 --> 00:33:41.599
And then when I was working in the government the change I was doing was very broad but really really shallow right like creating one little policy that probably nobody has any idea that it got changed because it's just a tiny little thing that got changed somewhere.
00:33:51.519 --> 00:33:55.680
Great feeling to do it meant multiple times, but also not changing a system.
00:33:55.839 --> 00:34:01.200
And the only ways I've found to meaningfully shift systems is through two ways.
00:34:01.359 --> 00:34:05.599
One is through entrepreneurship it's taking risks, making change happen.
00:34:05.759 --> 00:34:12.159
You know, the iPhone is a phenomenal systems changer only happened through entrepreneurship or getting a mandate of some kind.
00:34:12.320 --> 00:34:20.800
So somebody says to you hey you're now in power you're the CEO you're the president you're the governor and she has the ability to make that change happen that's a mandate.
00:34:21.119 --> 00:34:27.920
And the only way I've found to be entrepreneurial mandate is you have to do change that's both broad and deep.
00:34:28.159 --> 00:34:47.519
And for me my hope is that the difference engine is the start of something like that that we change the way that communities think about solving problems that when there is no clean drinking water in Flip Michigan, they're not just thinking, let me litigate, let me protest, let me lobby, let me write an op-ed, all fine.
00:34:47.599 --> 00:34:53.599
But that they also think could I 3 print a water filtration device and just plug it into my house and get clean drinking water?
00:34:53.760 --> 00:34:54.639
What would that look like?
00:34:54.800 --> 00:34:56.000
We know what it would look like.
00:34:56.159 --> 00:34:57.679
But what would that look like right?
00:34:57.840 --> 00:35:01.440
And does that just short circuit all those problems and give me agency?
00:35:01.599 --> 00:35:07.920
And then if I do it as a community group, could I actually sell that and make some revenue off of it, make it a sustainable community driven business?
00:35:08.079 --> 00:35:08.960
What would that look like?
00:35:09.119 --> 00:35:09.360
Right?
00:35:09.440 --> 00:35:14.559
So we want communities to have that in their toolkit and that's when you actually start to change systems.
00:35:15.199 --> 00:35:16.320
I think that's amazing.
00:35:16.559 --> 00:35:34.719
Again, it's agency to the entrepreneur it's agency to the community member it's agency to the individual and to wrap it up to what you know we said in the beginning is that entrepreneurship right now is so accessible and democratized in a way that wasn't a decade ago, wasn't even five years ago.
00:35:34.880 --> 00:35:38.960
And so take advantage of that, lean in and see what you can do.
00:35:39.119 --> 00:35:50.079
I'm going to obviously have all the links in under you know in the podcast for everyone to see if you're in the LA area you absolutely need to go to one of the labs, the Shark Tanks uh it's brilliant.
00:35:50.159 --> 00:35:55.920
It's incredible what these people come up with it you leave so deeply inspired and it's incredible.
00:35:56.000 --> 00:35:57.599
So thank you so much Essen for being here.
00:35:57.840 --> 00:35:59.199
It was my pleasure thanks for having me.
00:35:59.440 --> 00:36:10.320
Hi friends I have a favor to ask you if you're finding meaning and you're really resonating with these episodes I'd love if you could subscribe, leave a review or share it with your friends and family.
00:36:10.639 --> 00:36:15.039
Your words help others discover the stories and perspectives that we're exploring over here.
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And the more that we grow and the more feedback that we get from you through these reviews the more we can make sure to create meaningful episodes that you're going to enjoy.
00:36:25.039 --> 00:36:30.559
You have no idea how much it means to me and how much it means to creating these podcast episodes for you.
00:36:30.639 --> 00:36:31.920
And I'd appreciate it so much.
00:36:32.000 --> 00:36:37.280
So subscribe following releave a review and share it with your family and friends.
00:36:37.840 --> 00:36:38.400
Thank you so much.
00:00:00.160 --> 00:00:07.200
Behind every mission, every movement, and every attempt to create change, there's a human story shaping how it all unfolds.
00:00:07.360 --> 00:00:07.919
I'm Dr.
00:00:08.000 --> 00:00:11.519
Pyle Berry, and this is Reframing Perspectives.
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This podcast is for those change makers, those purpose-led founders, nonprofit leaders, growth mindset individuals, and purpose-driven entrepreneurs who believe the work that they're doing in the world should actually make people's lives better.
00:00:23.760 --> 00:00:29.440
Each week, I'm sitting down change makers who are shaping impact in their industries and communities.
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And together, we're going to explore the moments, the questions, and the perspective shifts that changed how they lead, how they build relationships, and how they create meaningful change in our world.
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Welcome to Reframing Perspectives, the podcast for change makers who believe relationships are the real infrastructure of impact.
00:00:46.960 --> 00:00:47.600
Hi, Essence.
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So excited to have you.
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It's so fun because I've known you for now, what, like 16 years as a friend.
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And then having to now interview you in this way is like, I actually went back and of course, you know, I've known you.
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I've known I've seen you through your entire trajectory of your career and what you've done when you first got to DC, your couch surfing to get into those right spots.
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And then, you know, did everything you did in Homeland Security and what you're doing now.
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But having to sit there and read it, I was like, oh, wow, I do know someone pretty awesome who's done incredible work.
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So it's fun to talk to you in this way because, you know, that's not how it typically goes.
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Yeah, happy to be here.
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I want to start, Essen, think something that I think that is really interesting about you specifically and your life, because the way that I think about change makers often and I think about individuals that are just committed to making a difference is there's these four arcs that someone may go through, right?
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So there's the outsider who needed the system to help them.
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Then there's the insider who builds the system.
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There's the watching the system actually dismantle.
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And then having to go back and create something without losing hope that just because something dismantled doesn't mean that we can't rebuild.
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And I think that it's really, really interesting to see that you're someone who has met each one of those arcs.
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Because starting with the fact that, you know, you came here as a refugee and you were someone who needed the system to help support you and your family to settle and to find that stability.
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Then comes you working in Homeland Security in the Obama administration, you know, TSA Precheck doing things, you know, civil rights, hate crimes, like really helping, giving advice to Homeland Security of like what needs to happen, but on things that were also targeting and surveillancing individuals that looked like you.
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So there's this like parallel of you having to be in a system that's targeting individuals that look like yourself.
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And then coming to seeing the dismantling of this in the last, you know, few years and now a difference engine what you're doing.
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So you've had such an interesting and incredible life in being able to see all those things.
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What would you say, you know, when you look at that, what is it like to, in your observation, having experienced it from needing it to being on the inside to seeing what does it really mean to create change?
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What does it really mean to create change?
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I don't know.
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I've never thought of that.
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I'm just so, I'm just so always doing that.
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I mean, I feel for me, it's for me, it's kind of like what else would I do?
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You know, life is short.
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Why am I here?
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Am I here to help a company issue their next, I don't know, product?
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Am I here to, as a lawyer, would I say I'm here to defend a corporation or a private interest?
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I mean, that is that what I'm gonna say at the end of my life that I've done?
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That seems kind of sad.
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So for me, it's just like, what's the good have I done?
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What good have I done before I've left this planet?
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And so I try to rack up as much of that good as I can, because to me that what's everything else is kind of pointless.
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And I know that's it.
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Not that it's truly pointless, but for me it is.
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No, no, I hear that, you know, and I think obviously it sounds like this is just something that's so deeply embedded in your DNA of who you are, is just but how much of that has been influenced by obviously your own start in your childhood coming here in the US, or like what would you say has been like the the caveat that just keeps you continuously finding that, oh wow, there's an accessibility problem here, I want to help with that.
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There's a resource problem here, I want to help with that.
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Before you even were part of Homeland Security in college, you started a movement too.
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Like you've always had something that you've found and you're like, I'm gonna activate on this.
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What drives that for you?
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I don't know.
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I think it's just the way I'm wired.
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I think I'm just wired that way.
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I don't think it has as much to do with my personal background as somebody who like you, as you mentioned, as somebody who came as a refugee, as a person of color, as a religious minority.
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I experienced my fair share of that discrimination, but I think I'm just wired that way, like you are, right?
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Like some people are just kind of wired to look at a problem and it bothers them, right?
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So I just go, I'm at a movie theater and I'm like, why is the line painted this way?
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You know, they could do a better job if it was this thing, right?
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Or if you're at an event of some kind, you're like, you know, they should have checked RSVPs this way and it would have been more efficient.
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And and the more you get wired like that, the more your brain keeps thinking like that.
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So the difference engine is really kind of a good pairing between my desire to leave an impact, a positive impact on the world, the way my brain thinks, which is like, let me solve a problem, let me like, you know, figure out a way to solve this problem.
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I think that that's what actually, you know, when you talk about that and you talk about the difference engine, which I really want to dive into because I think it's so incredible what you built.
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But you mention and you talk about it as, you know, division is designed and so is connection.
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And I think that what you're doing with the difference engine is you're bringing groups of people together that may never have run into each other, may never have understood.
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They would have received this problems or challenges from the media, from research, from looking at things from theoretical perspectives.
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And what you've done is created a lab where you take these young, aspiring change makers who want to make change happen in the world, but you're not having them do research papers necessarily.
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You're having them actually solve.
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And it's it's like truly ultimately, like what you're talking about is like when you're constantly looking at these problems and everyone over here is having debates about it and discussing and opinions are flying, you know, and you're like, what are you gonna do about it?
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Do something.
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And I feel like that's what the difference engine is.
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It's like literally telling young individuals, you can do something.
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You don't have to think that you're not capable of doing something.
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So I'd love for you to go into like, what really started that planted that seed for you that I want to build a difference engine?
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And then I'd love for you to share what that is.
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Um I like, I, you know, I think it's also the answer again.
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This might be a frustrating answer, is also, I think, the way I'm wired.
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I don't, I really get frustrated just listening to people.
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I get frustrated listening to my own voice as well.
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And the older I get, the more frustrated I get with that.
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And, you know, if you live in DC and work in DC like I did, you talk a lot about problems.
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Sometimes you write about problems.
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Sometimes you talk about what you wrote, which is a book talk.
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Sometimes you write about what you said, you know, like I gave a speech and now I'm gonna write about this piece there.
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And it's just this like cycle of talking and writing and writing and talking.
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And meanwhile, the problem is still there.
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And I think writing and talking are pretty easy to do.
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They're low common, low denominator effort exercises.
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Not that there's not an importance as a lawyer, I'd say that's very important to write and talk.
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And but you know, that's not what the country read like needs right now.
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I think right now what we need is people who are gonna build.
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Who's building?
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If the medical system is broken, there's plenty of research out there, there's plenty of talk out there that tells you again and again that the system is broken for most Americans.
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The greatest source of bankruptcy, more Americans go bankrupt because they cannot afford medical care.
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People are going broke in this country trying to live, trying to survive.
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I don't need any more information.
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What I need to do now is to solve that problem.
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And to me, it gets really frustrating every time somebody keeps bringing up the problem.
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I can't listen to it.
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It just drives me up the wall.
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And so that's kind of where that desire comes from.
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I just want to be like, let's just build something.
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And then the other thing is that we live in a time where production of things has been democratized, right?
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You can 3D print an object, you can make a podcast, you can make a video, you can code software using AI, you can you can craft a physical object.
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It's pretty easy.
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You can make a mold, you can send it's all of that has been pr is pretty accessible compared to 10, 20, 30 years ago when it was very expensive and very difficult, people wouldn't dream of doing it.
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Right.
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Accessibility to entrepreneurship has become so easy now.
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Right.
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So why don't we give the thesis behind the difference engine is why don't we give communities, why don't we treat them as entrepreneurs, communities that have a problem, but a church that has a problem, a city that has a problem, a group, you know, a social group that has a problem, an ethnic group that has a problem, women, men, whatever.
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So that's what we do.
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And we work with young people quite a bit, like you mentioned, because we're at Arizona State, but we have one program kind of for each third of your life.
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So we have the Creative Justice Lab for young people, we have the Distinguished Innovation Fellows program for people that are in the latter stage of their lives.
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They're at, near, or past retirement.
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And then we have a program for everybody in the middle, people like you and me.
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So we call that the Difference Corps.
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We launched our first Difference Corps class last year, or this year rather, and they finished their program in in March and pitched their ideas in March.
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And so there's something for everybody.
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And then the beauty of it is that these cohorts work with each other.
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So the young people help out the old people and the older people help out the middle-aged people, and it's all interconnected.
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So it's very beautiful in that way.
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Well, I think right there, right?
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It's the fact that you're having now intergenerationals come together.
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They're learning from each other, there's experience that's being taught.
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The younger generation is seeing that I actually have something within my own hands that I can do.
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I'd love for you to like walk through, you know, a group of students who actually pitched an idea.
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I know you do like a Shark Tank style concept where, you know, they come in, for example, one year was food inequity, which I came and saw.
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And you have these different teams that come together to come up with a solution of how would you solve this for this particular community?
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And they go up, they pitch their ideas, and then they actually get$50,000 to invest into their concept idea.
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And I remember while we were there, there was um a girl from the year previously who had won who was already in series A.
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And she was not even a senior in college, or she had just become a senior in college.
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She was a senior, yeah.
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She was a senior in college, and she was already in her partner, co-founder, wasn't there because she was pitching a series A fund, you know, in Chicago.
00:11:25.519 --> 00:11:25.840
Yeah.
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And so, you know, I think that part right there is what I would love to kind of dive into a little bit more because what you're doing is you're literally teaching these kids.
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And yes, you know, there's older individuals that are there too, but you're teaching these like specific.
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And the reason I'm harping on the aspiring change makers on these kids is because to your point, there wasn't accessibility in other ways before.
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Before it was like write your papers, be a part of a community organization, be a community builder.
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And it would have just put them into that same kind of pattern of looking at it.
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And now what you're doing is you're empowering them with actually seeing that change can happen within their own hands and that it is possible to build something.
00:12:06.559 --> 00:12:18.320
So I'd love for you to like talk about an experience where you saw a student actually like their eyes just finally like they it clicked for them of like, wow, like look what I can do and how that shifted the trajectory of like their life choices.
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Yeah, I mean, we I don't want to speak on behalf of my students or the students that work with us, but perhaps what I can share is like the results that that uh that indicate that, you know.
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So we just had a a wonderful young person who um one of our board members is Canon, Canon Corporation of America.
00:12:36.639 --> 00:12:45.759
And uh one of the ways they support the Difference Engine is they provide us with a student who does kind of does calm social media work and they're also involved in the projects.
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And she was only with us for a short period of time, but she, you know, got very emotional because she got another job, full-time job, and wrote very nice emails.
00:12:54.960 --> 00:12:56.639
And that's really nice to see.
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Uh, one of our original students, we've been around five years.
00:13:00.639 --> 00:13:06.320
Um, she was a PhD, she was a master's student, she became a PhD student with us, master's PhD.
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And now she's graduated.
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She has a full-time job, she has a beautiful child, and she's still volunteering with us.
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The first ever student that started working with us.
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Another student who started with us three years ago, stayed with us for all three years, and now we've hired her as a full-time employee.
00:13:21.679 --> 00:13:25.519
So her first job ever out of college is to stay there, still work with us.
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And so I think that this that speaks more in terms of the volume, of in terms of how the students feel about working with us and in terms of some of the ideas that you asked about.
00:13:35.600 --> 00:13:40.159
I mean, this March, a couple of weeks ago, we had our creative justice lab for this year.
00:13:40.240 --> 00:13:50.799
And the grand challenge we gave the students was to build practical solutions to help immigrant communities because of what immigrant communities are going through right now with the Trump administration.
00:13:51.039 --> 00:13:53.759
People are dying on the streets of American cities.
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And so, can we build a product?
00:13:55.840 --> 00:14:02.159
An example of that, this is not one that we worked on particularly, but uh is in Long Beach called Whistle Mania, which I thought was really cool.
00:14:02.320 --> 00:14:08.879
So the idea behind that is that ICE comes to places like Home Depots to interdict and arrest and apprehend people.
00:14:09.039 --> 00:14:10.000
So now people know that.
00:14:10.080 --> 00:14:13.600
So they'll send observers, organizations will send people with phone cameras.
00:14:13.679 --> 00:14:16.799
So ICE is like, okay, now we'll just go to random places.
00:14:16.960 --> 00:14:20.480
So what if you had a whistle that makes a unique sound?
00:14:20.559 --> 00:14:24.240
You can 3D print that whistle, it makes a really unique sound.
00:14:24.559 --> 00:14:29.759
And people within a 200 feet radius can hear and know, oh my God, ICE is here.
00:14:29.840 --> 00:14:30.639
I better get out.
00:14:30.879 --> 00:14:36.320
Because the difference between a whistle and a phone is if I don't know Dr.
00:14:36.559 --> 00:14:39.120
Barry, I don't can't text her, right?
00:14:39.360 --> 00:14:42.639
But she may be here passively, an undocumented person.
00:14:42.799 --> 00:14:47.279
But my job as a citizen is to let her know you need to leave because ICE is here.
00:14:47.360 --> 00:14:53.519
So I'm not going to call her because I don't know her, but she can hear a very sharp, like unique whistle sound.
00:14:53.679 --> 00:14:56.639
So you hear them in this area as you're driving around.
00:14:56.720 --> 00:15:03.600
And it's a multi-directional tool that accomplishes a social good purpose built by and for the community.
00:15:03.759 --> 00:15:04.879
And so that's what idea.
00:15:05.120 --> 00:15:08.480
Another idea, one of the earliest ideas we had was a creative justice lab.
00:15:08.639 --> 00:15:10.559
We didn't even call it a creative justice lab back then.
00:15:10.639 --> 00:15:12.639
We just had a hackathon on transportation.
00:15:12.720 --> 00:15:17.440
And the winning idea was an app we built called Ride Centric that our students built.
00:15:17.600 --> 00:15:23.919
And the mandate was like, get make transportation more accessible, mass transit in particular, but make it more accessible.
00:15:24.000 --> 00:15:25.200
It's a big problem in LA.
00:15:25.360 --> 00:15:32.240
So they came up with a very simple idea that was very, is I think is very innovative, but it's super simple, and like a lot of innovative ideas.
00:15:32.399 --> 00:15:37.120
And they came up with this app that would track, you would give it permission, it would track you when you're moving.
00:15:37.279 --> 00:15:41.840
So if you're in a car or if you're in a public transit system, it knows.
00:15:42.000 --> 00:15:44.000
If you take a car to work, nothing happens.
00:15:44.159 --> 00:15:55.679
If you take the train to work, the moment you get out of the transit system, um, up, pop up in like a quarter mile radius, discounts, like pretty awesome discounts for all the businesses there.
00:15:55.759 --> 00:15:57.360
But only if you took the train, right?
00:15:57.600 --> 00:15:58.480
Oh, wow, that's true.
00:15:58.639 --> 00:16:01.679
And so, yeah, and there were pretty significant discounts that were negotiated.
00:16:01.759 --> 00:16:03.120
So you only if you took the train.
00:16:03.279 --> 00:16:09.840
And so what that does, it's great for the business because they're still getting something out of it because otherwise there would have been no foot traffic.
00:16:09.919 --> 00:16:10.799
So it's better than zero.
00:16:10.879 --> 00:16:13.519
So yeah, it's a discounted, but you're making some revenue, right?
00:16:13.679 --> 00:16:16.879
It's great for the environment because it's encouraging more people to take the train.
00:16:16.960 --> 00:16:21.120
It's great for people because they're spending less money on transportation and maintaining their cars.
00:16:21.279 --> 00:16:26.080
It's great for the city because it encourages transportation to be used that they've invested in.
00:16:26.159 --> 00:16:35.600
And it's tying uh, you know, a community good, a social good, anything commons related to and you you can't do that with litigation.
00:16:35.759 --> 00:16:42.480
You can't do that with protest, you can't do that with writing a book, you can't do that with a speech, but you can do it with an app.
00:16:42.720 --> 00:16:44.960
Something only a product can accomplish.
00:16:45.200 --> 00:16:46.879
So that's the kind of work that we that we do.
00:16:47.039 --> 00:16:50.320
And we have we launched 20 products this past uh March.
00:16:50.399 --> 00:16:54.240
Uh, this is our largest year with our largest number of community entrepreneurs.
00:16:54.399 --> 00:16:56.320
So we're very proud of the work that our teams are doing.
00:16:56.480 --> 00:17:02.240
We have 77 now difference engineers that work with us and we're growing every single day.
00:17:02.480 --> 00:17:04.079
Wow, you should be really proud of yourself, Ess.
00:17:04.160 --> 00:17:05.440
And I know it's been what five, six.
00:17:05.759 --> 00:17:06.720
It's a team effort, yeah.
00:17:07.039 --> 00:17:09.920
Yeah, no, definitely five years of you building this.
00:17:10.079 --> 00:18:00.000
And you know, what I'm hearing in all of this as well is that not only are you making a difference for the community and for the for the businesses, but it's like because these kids or these individuals are building out these apps and these products that are helping and benefiting everyone, I can only imagine how much then the community actually wants to lean in to being a part of the difference engine because they see that how this is going to benefit like my neighborhood, how this is gonna benefit so how much of that are you noticing as well with your corporate partnerships, your sponsors, and everyone who's coming in and looking at this as a to your point, it's that you're not asking to do another research that's just gonna, you know, write out statistics about what's happening, but how are corporate partners also looking at this as wow, you just built something that we could even benefit from to be able to service our clients?
00:18:00.240 --> 00:18:01.599
Yeah, yeah, that's a good question.
00:18:01.759 --> 00:18:05.599
You know, one of the tools that we have is called the Women's Power and Influence Index.
00:18:05.680 --> 00:18:08.640
That was our original, that's a tool we built in-house.
00:18:08.799 --> 00:18:10.640
And it was a way to test our model.
00:18:10.960 --> 00:18:17.279
It's still a tool that we have that uh we launched the version, uh, we launched, we don't call it version 2.0 anymore.
00:18:17.359 --> 00:18:18.720
I've been told to not call it that.
00:18:18.799 --> 00:18:22.960
We launched the WPI 2026 and a couple of weeks ago.
00:18:23.039 --> 00:18:25.200
It measures 121 companies.
00:18:25.440 --> 00:18:28.880
It's the most comprehensive measure of gender fairness in the country.
00:18:29.039 --> 00:18:34.960
And uh the interesting thing is it tells you a lot about your workplace that even you may not know as a company leader.
00:18:35.039 --> 00:18:40.799
And so we've had conversations with instance with PayPal, and they've changed their policies on the basis of that.
00:18:40.960 --> 00:18:43.759
Um we've had conversations with Netflix.
00:18:43.920 --> 00:18:57.599
Uh, just sent the index to the leadership at Starbucks um because Starbucks went up in um in their um kind of the power that women enjoy at that workplace, and they're doing really, really well.
00:18:57.759 --> 00:19:00.240
And uh A, it's good news for them.
00:19:00.559 --> 00:19:07.599
B, you know, we can we serve as a consultative entity for some of these partners, and that's a revenue generation piece for us, right?
00:19:07.680 --> 00:19:10.079
Because they're we're cons our students become consultants.
00:19:10.240 --> 00:19:18.240
And C, it's like, you know, you're you're seeing change because if you another thing that a tool can do is that it can keep data, right?
00:19:18.400 --> 00:19:20.799
And so that's live and actively updated.
00:19:20.960 --> 00:19:24.640
So you can't change what you can't measure, right?
00:19:24.799 --> 00:19:29.519
So, well, I guess you can change it, but it's not, you know, it's not going to be an accurate way of changing it.
00:19:29.599 --> 00:19:31.519
So that's kind of the philosophy behind the index.
00:19:31.680 --> 00:19:41.680
And we try not to pu make it punitive towards these companies, but uh we've seen remarkable uptake of our index uh with Fortune 500 companies.
00:19:41.839 --> 00:19:44.240
And uh we've had conversations with Blackstone.
00:19:44.319 --> 00:19:50.079
There's a number of companies we've shared our results with, some of whom have actually shifted policies on the basis of the index.
00:19:50.160 --> 00:19:55.119
And the more it gets out there, the more uh folks are companies are using it.
00:19:55.200 --> 00:19:57.839
Um we have 16 young women who designed this index.
00:19:58.000 --> 00:19:58.640
They're brilliant.
00:19:58.960 --> 00:19:59.839
That's so smart.
00:20:00.240 --> 00:20:01.440
Like, I want to take a moment right here.
00:20:01.599 --> 00:20:06.319
The fact that you said that there's companies, like you said, mentioned PayPal that has changed their policies.
00:20:06.400 --> 00:20:07.279
Like, walk me through that.
00:20:07.359 --> 00:20:08.559
What is that, what does that mean?
00:20:08.720 --> 00:20:16.799
Like you, you, you ran this data, you extracted these numbers, you know, and then you went to them and said, like, hey, we ran this research.
00:20:16.880 --> 00:20:19.519
This is what we see specifically about your organization.
00:20:19.839 --> 00:20:37.759
How do you really get them to listen and get their attention, especially in a time right now where things like DEI are so under attack and giving any kind of attention towards those things could also bring attention to the unwanted attention to their organization that they don't want to engage in?
00:20:38.000 --> 00:20:38.160
Yeah.
00:20:38.240 --> 00:20:41.920
So, like I said, we don't, we're not punitive, and so we don't say that you're doing terribly.
00:20:42.079 --> 00:20:44.720
We just say, here's how you could do things better, right?
00:20:44.960 --> 00:20:50.960
Everybody's got, we assume good intentions, you know, of the people that work at these companies, and that's usually the way it is.
00:20:51.200 --> 00:20:54.720
We have never used, and I I don't personally prefer this word.
00:20:54.799 --> 00:21:00.960
I've never used it in any of my language, my writing, my materials, or the difference engine, the word DEI.
00:21:01.519 --> 00:21:03.599
So what we talk about is fairness.
00:21:03.759 --> 00:21:06.400
Everybody can understand fairness, and fairness is just equity.
00:21:06.559 --> 00:21:07.440
That's really what it is.
00:21:07.599 --> 00:21:14.160
But we talk about it in a way that doesn't make people square raise their hackles or get defensive.
00:21:14.319 --> 00:21:14.880
Yeah.
00:21:15.200 --> 00:21:18.240
Because there's a other side to fairness, which is unfairness.
00:21:18.319 --> 00:21:21.039
What you may think is fair is what somebody else may think is unfair.
00:21:21.119 --> 00:21:29.519
But inherently we have a compass that tells us, you know, my seven-year-old nephew understands what fairness is and what's unfair and what's fair, right?
00:21:29.599 --> 00:21:31.519
Your nieces understand what's fair and unfair.
00:21:31.680 --> 00:21:33.920
So that's the language that we build things around.
00:21:34.079 --> 00:21:42.640
And the fact that we're practically focused gives kind of sets us up to have conversations that are, it just makes it easy to open doors.
00:21:42.799 --> 00:21:53.759
So for instance, if I'm practically focused and I'm building this index, my my language is not can you believe how terrible you are in terms of how unfairly you treat people, which may be the case, right?
00:21:53.920 --> 00:21:58.319
But instead, like, do you know how much money you could make if you actually had a diverse workplace?
00:21:58.720 --> 00:21:59.839
They're definitely gonna pay attention to.
00:22:00.240 --> 00:22:00.400
that.
00:22:00.640 --> 00:22:00.880
Yeah.
00:22:00.960 --> 00:22:01.680
And it's true.
00:22:01.759 --> 00:22:05.759
Like diverse workplaces are way more profitable, way more profitable.
00:22:05.920 --> 00:22:12.160
And you're talking about investing a billion dollars in a factory, or you could invest$10 million in building a fair workplace.
00:22:12.240 --> 00:22:15.279
And the gains you would get are tremendous.
00:22:15.519 --> 00:22:17.759
Let me show you how and let us help you how to do that.
00:22:17.839 --> 00:22:18.079
Right.
00:22:18.240 --> 00:22:21.920
And it also helps that we're just a an academic institution.
00:22:22.079 --> 00:22:26.240
We don't really have a bone in this fight or we're we're incubated by an academic institution.
00:22:26.400 --> 00:22:29.200
So I'm not here to pick one company over another.
00:22:29.359 --> 00:22:30.319
I could care less.
00:22:30.480 --> 00:22:32.319
I'm just here to build a fair workplace.
00:22:32.400 --> 00:22:37.759
And so all of that kind of conspires together to lower the potential defensiveness.
00:22:37.839 --> 00:22:44.240
And to be honest with you, we found people are very willing to hear and listen, even if they're not doing super well because they all want to do better.
00:22:44.480 --> 00:22:45.680
We run on optimism.
00:22:45.759 --> 00:22:49.759
We're a very optimistic group and it just that's just my philosophy.
00:22:49.839 --> 00:22:52.559
And I think it's just a philosophy of the people that we bring onto the team.
00:22:52.799 --> 00:23:07.759
But I think that that's that's really powerful because when you think about optimism, you know, you talk about improvements, you talk about the strengths that you have, that's where you're also not creating the stunt that you're going to have in your brain, right?
00:23:07.839 --> 00:23:20.559
So your amygdala, all of those the this is where my nerdiness comes out, but it's like that prefrontal context of when you start with fear, when you create that defensiveness, then automatically any of those decision-making processes just completely shuts down.
00:23:20.799 --> 00:23:27.920
So I think what you're saying again and what I think is brilliant is the fact that you're approaching this from a place of like, hey, we want everyone to do good.
00:23:28.079 --> 00:23:30.799
You know, we want everyone to to win in this.
00:23:30.960 --> 00:23:32.960
There's not like a you lost, we won.
00:23:33.039 --> 00:23:36.160
Like it's like you win, we win, like our society wins.
00:23:36.400 --> 00:23:43.440
And so we recognize that what you care about is how is this going to help your business bottom line succeed.
00:23:43.680 --> 00:23:47.839
And what we care about is how do we create a more fair workplace.
00:23:48.000 --> 00:23:56.400
And so by being able to look at those and be like what's that common denominator here and it's like we're providing you to that, you know, I think that's brilliant because you're now meeting them.
00:23:56.480 --> 00:24:03.359
You're not creating this idea of we're going to punish you, we're going to shame you for who you are, your identity of what your work is doing.
00:24:03.440 --> 00:24:14.880
And I think that that's where a lot of people in that conversation who stay in the let me just have a conversation about my talk, about my book, about my article and let's now compare about how you feel about it versus how I feel about it.
00:24:15.039 --> 00:24:17.359
That's where they get stuck and they just stay there.
00:24:18.000 --> 00:24:31.440
And what you're doing and I think what's so brilliant again is that you're showing that it doesn't matter generationally where you are change can continuously happen if we just like come and meet and look at that, you know, what that means and what that looks like for all of us.
00:24:31.599 --> 00:24:31.920
Yeah.
00:24:32.240 --> 00:24:32.880
I agree.
00:24:34.319 --> 00:25:00.319
I mean what would you say then that like you know when you think about the difference engine and where it's going and the vision that you have for this and what I'm sure from you know day one to day like five five years down it's evolved a lot obviously but more so than necessarily your vision of it because I know what matters to you is how everyone else around you is taking it and you want to kind of be in the just observing and seeing it grow like a proud father.
00:25:00.559 --> 00:25:11.839
But you know when you're when you're seeing these students who five years down the track are still staying involved who are building things that are actually getting investors involved.
00:25:12.079 --> 00:25:24.160
And how are you seeing them taking the difference engine and expanding on you know what is possible for for their journey as a change maker in their trajectory of their life?
00:25:24.480 --> 00:25:26.640
Yeah, it's actually quite phenomenal to see.
00:25:26.720 --> 00:25:45.359
I mean we're still pretty young as an organization but I mentioned one of the students I'm not going to mention her by name because I don't know if she wants to be embarrassed, but she's brilliant and she's probably listening to this when this is airing but she, you know, in the beginning I used to run the Women's Power and Influence Index alongside another professor, Dr.
00:25:45.519 --> 00:25:45.599
S.
00:25:45.759 --> 00:25:49.119
Miguel and she and I ran this together and she's still involved.
00:25:49.279 --> 00:25:55.599
But over time we had one student come in who kind of took it over a little bit and then this other student came in and she runs it.
00:25:55.759 --> 00:25:56.480
I don't run it.
00:25:56.640 --> 00:26:06.319
I just show up she sets the agenda she sets the meetings she runs the meetings she figures out what's priority what companies are going to be ranked how are they going to be ranked what she's going to say about them.
00:26:06.480 --> 00:26:12.559
She assigns the other students work she and she's a student on par with them same situation.
00:26:12.799 --> 00:26:15.920
What companies are we going to talk with she presented in March.
00:26:16.000 --> 00:26:27.440
She came up with the deck she had this detailed presentation she put the presentation together you know we just reached out to Starbucks she she created the document to send to Starbucks's head of talent their head of HR.
00:26:27.599 --> 00:26:34.559
She's going to be when we do a call and I'll send you a link to a highlight reel of the call we had with PayPal if you want to put it in your show notes.
00:26:34.640 --> 00:26:38.000
But absolutely she'll be leading that call.
00:26:38.160 --> 00:26:51.680
And so what what's happening there is that what she is prioritizing or the way she's starting to think about the index is what the index is becoming, which is great because the index shouldn't be what I care about was my as an idea I had.
00:26:51.839 --> 00:26:54.079
But if it's all my ideas, we ain't going anywhere.
00:26:54.240 --> 00:26:56.799
We're just kind of it's a very slow growth situation.
00:26:56.880 --> 00:27:09.039
And so we serve community but we model how we serve community by building our own internal community and uplifting our team and our students and giving them agency.
00:27:09.200 --> 00:27:21.519
You know President Obama used to say like the only thing he looks for in in a kind of a somebody when they're he's hiring them is like if their attitude is like don't worry it, I'm going to solve it or don't worry it, I'll handle it.
00:27:21.759 --> 00:27:22.880
Which is kind of what we hire for.
00:27:23.039 --> 00:27:26.720
We hire for two things kindness number one and competence number two.
00:27:26.799 --> 00:27:26.960
Right?
00:27:27.119 --> 00:27:31.279
Kindness I can't teach you either kind or you're not competence I can try to get you a little bit better.
00:27:31.519 --> 00:27:32.799
And so that's who we hire for.
00:27:32.880 --> 00:27:38.400
And when you hire people that are kind and competent and let them go, they'll amaze you with what they're going to build.
00:27:38.480 --> 00:27:45.920
I mean there's no way I could have built the index I there's no way I could have done what she's done with the index because A, I'm not a woman.
00:27:46.000 --> 00:27:47.279
So there's things I just don't know.
00:27:47.440 --> 00:27:48.559
B, nobody's perfect.
00:27:48.799 --> 00:27:57.680
B, I just, you know, she's bringing kind of new information into it and I still collaborate with her and we I guide her and everything, but it's really becoming her project.
00:27:58.160 --> 00:28:01.039
And she comes up with ideas I'm going to talk about this here.
00:28:01.119 --> 00:28:02.640
I'm going to recruit these students.
00:28:02.799 --> 00:28:03.759
This is what we're going to build.
00:28:03.920 --> 00:28:08.480
She just built a beautiful you know I'll go off on a little tangent here.
00:28:08.640 --> 00:28:12.799
One of the problems with the index was that the data, some of the data was not visible.
00:28:12.960 --> 00:28:22.880
So they decided they're going to call out the companies that don't share she just sent me a message that don't share their data with the EEOC, with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.
00:28:23.200 --> 00:28:26.000
And they've built this amazing dashboard that calls out.
00:28:26.079 --> 00:28:35.599
So it's not just the fact that you're ranked on the index but there's another dashboard they built that says hey we couldn't rank you on the index because you don't even share your information.
00:28:35.759 --> 00:28:37.200
What are you trying to hide?
00:28:37.359 --> 00:28:38.240
Why not share it?
00:28:38.400 --> 00:28:44.319
Looks like you're doing pretty well right and then they've given that an internal ranking it's great.
00:28:44.559 --> 00:28:48.160
And we want companies to be transparent because that's the first pathway.
00:28:48.319 --> 00:28:51.920
Again, if you're not transparent I can't measure you if you can't measure you can't be profitable.
00:28:52.160 --> 00:28:53.279
Don't you want to be profitable?
00:28:53.519 --> 00:28:55.200
Costs you nothing to be transparent.
00:28:55.359 --> 00:28:57.200
You're probably doing better than you think you are.
00:28:57.359 --> 00:28:57.599
Right.
00:28:57.759 --> 00:29:05.440
And so we wouldn't have been able to build that if we didn't have students like her running and now she's going to be an employee running our our index.
00:29:05.680 --> 00:29:06.319
That's phenomenal.
00:29:06.559 --> 00:29:16.880
Essentially this entire conversation I think the most powerful thing and the most beautiful thing that's woven into all of this is not just about the fact of like how are we solving problems and actually doing something about it.
00:29:17.119 --> 00:29:26.799
And the second part of you know this is truly a form of education but applied education, which I think is now being valued significantly more than traditional education.
00:29:27.039 --> 00:29:41.920
But the third piece that I think is woven in so beautifully is something that, you know, I know, you know, Obama's been pressing and talking about a lot more is passing down the baton and being okay with the fact that I have yielded a lot of power.
00:29:42.079 --> 00:29:52.160
I have yielded a lot of things that I've done in my time in my generation but it is really important if we want to see this society thrive that we need to pass the baton.
00:29:52.240 --> 00:30:10.720
And I feel like what you've designed with the difference engine, regardless if it's the students, if it's the middle aged folks, you know, like yourself, I'm not there yet, but just kidding but um you know the the middle aged group and then the older generation is that there is this sense of like each one of you are adding value.
00:30:10.960 --> 00:30:20.160
Each one of you matter and it's okay to recognize where it stops with me and where it needs to go on with you.
00:30:20.480 --> 00:30:32.720
And that that seems to be what is really the culmination of being able to create such change is that you're not hoarding all of this power and this control and saying, I'm going to do this, I'm going to create this.
00:30:32.880 --> 00:30:39.440
And that is what's allowing all of these like you know scalable products, projects to actually like evolve.
00:30:39.680 --> 00:30:39.920
Yeah.
00:30:40.000 --> 00:30:46.799
I mean um you know I'll be honest sometimes every entrepreneur struggles with letting go and I am a human being just like everybody else.
00:30:46.880 --> 00:30:48.559
So I also struggle with letting go.
00:30:48.640 --> 00:30:53.039
But it's kind of hard not to let go when the people you're working with are so amazing.
00:30:53.119 --> 00:30:53.279
Right.
00:30:53.440 --> 00:30:56.240
When you're like I, there's not even a way I could have done this better.
00:30:56.400 --> 00:31:02.400
I mean I have another staff person, she's probably listening to this too and this is airing one of the best tires I've ever made in my life.
00:31:02.559 --> 00:31:05.440
And she reads my mind better than I read my mind.
00:31:05.599 --> 00:31:07.200
And so why struggle?
00:31:07.359 --> 00:31:11.599
Why not just let her do it because she's so good at what she does.
00:31:11.759 --> 00:31:12.000
Right.
00:31:12.160 --> 00:31:19.440
And so when somebody's that phenomenal you want them to have the same feeling as an entrepreneur that you had.
00:31:19.599 --> 00:31:25.279
You want them to feel like oh man I launched this thing and it's taken off and you want them to become an entrepreneur.
00:31:25.359 --> 00:31:26.240
You want them to own it.
00:31:26.400 --> 00:31:27.519
You want them to run with it.
00:31:27.599 --> 00:31:32.400
You want them to make it their baby and then you want them to do the same thing with other young people.
00:31:32.559 --> 00:31:35.359
That's how you build a phenomenal organization, right?
00:31:35.759 --> 00:31:43.119
And the your goal as a leader is not to control and build the actual products it's really two things.
00:31:43.279 --> 00:31:48.319
One is to set the vision and repeat that vision, clarify that vision, well maybe three things.
00:31:48.480 --> 00:31:51.359
Two is to find the resources to execute on that vision.
00:31:51.680 --> 00:31:54.960
And then three is to hire the right people to execute on that vision.
00:31:55.119 --> 00:31:55.599
That's it.
00:31:55.759 --> 00:31:58.960
It's actually quite an easy job if you just limit it to those three things.
00:31:59.039 --> 00:32:10.319
And I think leaders make it harder on themselves because they're like, oh my God, I have to I have to check the logo design and build this product out and I have to make sure that it works this way and da da da da it's all good.
00:32:10.400 --> 00:32:10.880
You know?
00:32:11.039 --> 00:32:14.960
So that's the those are the three things I try to focus on when I'm running the organization.
00:32:15.119 --> 00:32:16.559
I'm not always successful but I tried.
00:32:16.799 --> 00:32:35.599
Essentially so much for sharing about just this incredible work that you're doing with the Difference Engine and the change that you're helping to create the problems that you're helping to solve by empowering everyone around you to see that they have, they have the resources through what you're built, but also they have the empowerment to do so.
00:32:35.839 --> 00:33:00.079
Last question for you is that looking back now at what you've created with Difference Engine, looking back at what with the passion that you were working with when you were in DC doing everything you were doing, looking at this entire trajectory of what you've done, how would you say that the Difference Engine has reframed your perspective on the power of change versus what you were able to do within a more traditional institution.
00:33:00.480 --> 00:33:05.920
You know, I think I I I have a kind of an internal theory of change which is pretty simple, right?
00:33:06.000 --> 00:33:09.519
So there's change that's broad and there's change that's narrow.
00:33:09.680 --> 00:33:21.839
And then there's change that's deep and there's change that's shallow right so my work I used to I started a legal aid clinic at one point and we were helping one client at a time, but really meaningfully.
00:33:21.920 --> 00:33:24.079
So that's narrow but really deep.
00:33:24.240 --> 00:33:25.680
But that doesn't change a system.
00:33:25.839 --> 00:33:27.359
You're just working within the system.
00:33:27.519 --> 00:33:41.599
And then when I was working in the government the change I was doing was very broad but really really shallow right like creating one little policy that probably nobody has any idea that it got changed because it's just a tiny little thing that got changed somewhere.
00:33:51.519 --> 00:33:55.680
Great feeling to do it meant multiple times, but also not changing a system.
00:33:55.839 --> 00:34:01.200
And the only ways I've found to meaningfully shift systems is through two ways.
00:34:01.359 --> 00:34:05.599
One is through entrepreneurship it's taking risks, making change happen.
00:34:05.759 --> 00:34:12.159
You know, the iPhone is a phenomenal systems changer only happened through entrepreneurship or getting a mandate of some kind.
00:34:12.320 --> 00:34:20.800
So somebody says to you hey you're now in power you're the CEO you're the president you're the governor and she has the ability to make that change happen that's a mandate.
00:34:21.119 --> 00:34:27.920
And the only way I've found to be entrepreneurial mandate is you have to do change that's both broad and deep.
00:34:28.159 --> 00:34:47.519
And for me my hope is that the difference engine is the start of something like that that we change the way that communities think about solving problems that when there is no clean drinking water in Flip Michigan, they're not just thinking, let me litigate, let me protest, let me lobby, let me write an op-ed, all fine.
00:34:47.599 --> 00:34:53.599
But that they also think could I 3 print a water filtration device and just plug it into my house and get clean drinking water?
00:34:53.760 --> 00:34:54.639
What would that look like?
00:34:54.800 --> 00:34:56.000
We know what it would look like.
00:34:56.159 --> 00:34:57.679
But what would that look like right?
00:34:57.840 --> 00:35:01.440
And does that just short circuit all those problems and give me agency?
00:35:01.599 --> 00:35:07.920
And then if I do it as a community group, could I actually sell that and make some revenue off of it, make it a sustainable community driven business?
00:35:08.079 --> 00:35:08.960
What would that look like?
00:35:09.119 --> 00:35:09.360
Right?
00:35:09.440 --> 00:35:14.559
So we want communities to have that in their toolkit and that's when you actually start to change systems.
00:35:15.199 --> 00:35:16.320
I think that's amazing.
00:35:16.559 --> 00:35:34.719
Again, it's agency to the entrepreneur it's agency to the community member it's agency to the individual and to wrap it up to what you know we said in the beginning is that entrepreneurship right now is so accessible and democratized in a way that wasn't a decade ago, wasn't even five years ago.
00:35:34.880 --> 00:35:38.960
And so take advantage of that, lean in and see what you can do.
00:35:39.119 --> 00:35:50.079
I'm going to obviously have all the links in under you know in the podcast for everyone to see if you're in the LA area you absolutely need to go to one of the labs, the Shark Tanks uh it's brilliant.
00:35:50.159 --> 00:35:55.920
It's incredible what these people come up with it you leave so deeply inspired and it's incredible.
00:35:56.000 --> 00:35:57.599
So thank you so much Essen for being here.
00:35:57.840 --> 00:35:59.199
It was my pleasure thanks for having me.
00:35:59.440 --> 00:36:10.320
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