Want to Change the World? Nonprofit Leader Trish Tierney Offers Solutions
Show Snapshot:
Want to make a difference in the world? Nonprofit leader Trish Tierney runs an organization that harnesses the power of volunteers working in teams to advance social justice and women’s rights. She shares ideas for how women from around the world can come together to collaborate and design solutions for a better future.
Plus, we dive into the science-backed benefits of volunteering and finding purpose including better mental, physical and spiritual health.
In This Episode We Cover:
How Trish’s nonprofit connects volunteer experts with nonprofits around the world who need their expertise.
Want to volunteer? WAKE’s pandemic pivot from international trips to domestic programs now makes it easier to volunteer than ever.
From efforts to combat sex trafficking to period equity to legal justice initiatives, Trish shares a slice of WAKE’s programming and work.
Why every person has something to offer as a volunteer.
The science-backed benefits of volunteering.
Why midlife teaches us “we can do hard things.”
You are never too old aka the joy of new hobbies.
Worried about the state of the world? Look to women who are the change makers.
Quotable:
I always tell my kids if they see something that’s bothering them or think something is wrong, that they need to figure out how to contribute to creating the change. We shouldn’t sit around and complain, we should find solutions. And what I’ve seen is that women around the world are creating that change.
WAKE is a convener of two powerful sources. One is the group of community leaders all around the world that are doing just what they need to advance social justice. The other side is these huge tech companies with amazing talent and amazing resources. We’re a matchmaker between those two groups. We feel that when you bring those two groups together, you can change the world.
More Resources:
Learn more about WAKE:
Sign up for the WAKE newsletter to learn more about upcoming volunteer opportunities.
Links from the show:
The nonprofit in Rawanda that provides sanitary pads for girls — Kosmotive.
Transcript
Katie Fogarty (0:01):
Welcome to A Certain Age, a show for women who are unafraid to age out loud.
Creating and hosting a podcast has two amazing benefits. One, you can reach out to women you admire but don’t actually know and invite them to be on your show. Two, you can reach out to women you do know who are doing amazing work, the kind of work that deserves great fanfare, standing ovations, marching bands, bells and whistles, all the things, and invite them to be on the show so their work reaches more ears.
I am so delighted to welcome a friend of 30 years to the show; social impact, nonprofit leader, Trish Tierney, the co-founder and CEO of WAKE, which stands for Women’s Alliance for Knowledge Exchange, which harnesses the power of volunteers working in teams to advance social justice and women’s rights across the globe. Trish’s career includes work at the World Bank, the Institute of International Education, Cisco Systems Social Impact arm, and partnerships with the US State Department and the Clinton Global Initiative. She joins me today to share ideas for how women from around the world can come together to collaborate and design solutions for a better future. Plus we dive into the benefits of finding purpose, which are better mental, physical and spiritual health. Welcome, Trish.
Trish Tierney (1:15):
Thanks, Katie, it’s great to be here with you.
Katie (1:17):
I’m super excited, I touched on this in the intro but I have known you for 30 years. We met when we both lived in Washington DC when our husbands worked at AOL. We go so far back that AOL used to be called America Online at that time, [Trish laughs] when it was like, famous, infamous for mailing people floppy discs and encouraging them to get onto this weird thing called The Web. But I have stayed connected with Trish ever since and I’ve actually had the total privilege of joining WAKE for their trip to Cambodia in 2015 which was an incredible, transformative, eye-opening experience. We worked with phenomenal nonprofits on the ground and I cannot recommend WAKE and its programs highly enough. So, Trish, I would love it if you could start by telling our listeners more about WAKE and your mission.
Trish (2:11):
Sure, thanks, Katie. Yeah, it’s crazy to think about how long we’ve known each other and how our friendship has evolved, and that we’ve gotten to work together over the years as well.
So, I cofounded WAKE with a dear friend, Heather Ramsey, six years ago and in that time we’ve supported over a thousand social justice leaders from 11 different countries and all across the United States. And the way we do that is by leveraging resources, primarily women and others in the tech world. So, we partner with over 50 top tech companies, and really, Heather and I had an idea that over the years we had met so many incredible women in their communities doing exactly what was needed for the people that they served, the women and girls in their own communities, but so often nonprofits and social entrepreneurs lack access to resources. And we looked around and we’re in San Francisco and the resources that we see are really talented people in tech.
So, WAKE really is a convener of two powerful sources. One is the group of community leaders all around the world that are doing just what they need to advance social justice and the other side are these huge tech companies with amazing talent and amazing resources and so often, people in tech want to give back and get involved in their communities but they’re really busy, they don’t know how to get involved. So, we’re sort of a matchmaker between those two groups. And we feel that when you bring those two groups together you can really change the world.
Katie (3:51):
Yeah, absolutely. So, what are some of the countries that WAKE has worked in, and what are the types of projects that WAKE volunteers work on once you activate them?
Trish (4:00):
Yeah, so when we started WAKE, Heather and I, both of us had spent our whole careers in international development. So, when WAKE started we really focused on international trips. So, we would take volunteers—like yourself, you mentioned going to Cambodia, which was one of our earliest trips—and we take a group of 15 to 20 women to a country and we work in the community with the partner; we always find a really great partner on the ground who is already very respected and knows the right people in the community and helps us to find participants for the work. And we work with social entrepreneurs and advise them on projects that they need help on that would help strengthen their work and then we also work with girls’ schools to introduce the girls in those schools to technology as well as to female role models.
An example of a project that we did a couple of years ago, we went to Rwanda which is a country where I’ve worked in other capacities as well so we already had a really nice foundation of great partners there. And we worked with a group of social entrepreneurs and one is a young woman named Blandine and she had started a company that focused on child and maternal health and she was doing a lot in that area but she had just launched a new product, which was she looked around and saw that so many girls in Rwanda can’t afford menstrual pads and so they often miss a lot of schools when they’re getting their periods. So, you know, a lot of girls would miss like one week out of every month of school just because of the simple fact of not being able to afford pads. So, Blandine had just launched a product which was a kit that provided girls the opportunity to make their own, reusable pads. Really cheap, cost-effective, and she had a plan for how to get it out to the villages and out to schools but she needed a pricing plan and a marketing plan. So, we matched her up with a team of really dedicated advisors, mostly from Google, and they helped her to create a marketing plan and also to start a fundraiser and they raised $5,000 with her and she was able to get all the materials she needed to get her first batch of pad materials out to girls. And she’s really changing the way that young girls can continue to benefit from education in their communities in Rwanda.
Katie (6:37):
So, I absolutely love this story because I know that even in New York City where I’m based, that period equity is still an issue, that menstrual pads are something that stands in the way of getting an education. Your organization really is making a difference at a very important level. When we were in Cambodia, we worked with a university that was providing dormitory housing for Cambodian university students. I think there were easily a dozen organizations that came in for the programming that you developed which were fighting sex trafficking. So, the work really makes a difference in these communities.
What are some of the other countries that you’ve worked in and what happened during COVID, when international travel and international programming were hard to do logistically?
Trish (7:26):
Yeah, so our very first program was in Ukraine and then Cambodia as you mentioned, Rwanda. We’ve also worked in Peru and a couple of times in Guatemala, and one of the workshops we did in Guatemala included women from all across Central America. So, we had plans to really scale up our work right before the pandemic came and that year we were planning to go to Nepal for the first time, which was hugely popular, we had 30 women signed up to go to Nepal. And then we also had planned to start a project in Colombia that year and then we were also going to do a return trip to Rwanda to revisit Blandine and some of the other entrepreneurs with whom we had worked.
But of course, just as we were about to scale up, COVID hit and that was rough on everyone and especially, you know, we just kept canceling everything. At first, we’d postpone and say, okay, we’re gonna go to Nepal in May instead of April, and then very quickly it became clear, this COVID thing is here to stay for a while. So, we put everything international on hold. We did have already a USA-focused program and that was something that we did once a year in San Francisco and so we worked with social justice nonprofits from all over the US. They would come to San Francisco and then we’d have volunteers, mostly from the Bay Area, and that was just a three-day in-person program, so it was sort of giving some tech training, we’d get hosted by like, Twitter would have us for the day, and YouTube. So we would take the groups to the companies and they’d get training and then we’d have one day where we’d match them up with advisors and they would work on a project. But it was really kinda drinking from the fire hose. They got a lot done in a day, but not, you know, not as much as we would like, so it was very intense and short.
So, when COVID hit, we thought what can we do? At first we just kind of took some time off, we had to lay our team off, we laid ourselves off and took a pause because we just couldn’t fundraise. We felt like fundraising at that time was inappropriate almost, when people were dying and there were so many urgent other issues in the world. But then last fall we decided, let’s go back to the drawing board and see what we can do and so we converted our USA program to an online program and now, we’ve settled on a program that is a six-week program and it’s all online and we were wondering at first, will people want to do this? Everyone was so Zoom fatigued, but it turned out that people were so desperate to have community, to meet new people, and to feel that they were a part of something positive. So, in our first round of virtual, we had almost twice as many advisors as we typically see, we had people just signing up to participate as volunteers, and then on the other side we had so many nonprofits signing up and wanting this because suddenly they too were having to look at, how do they do their work online? So, suddenly the need for tech and communications skills for all nonprofits was even more urgent than before.
So, we’ve since done several sessions, we’re just in the final stages of our fall session and it’s really incredible to see people coming together and the silver lining is because we’re doing it virtually we can have advisors from all over the US so we have companies and individuals in Boston, in Seattle, in Florida, in Indianapolis as well as the Bay Area so it’s easier for people to get involved and the nonprofits don’t have to spend money flying here. And so the collaboration also is much more in-depth because they work together over a six-week period, so they spend several hours each week working on a project that the nonprofits identified.
Katie (11:45):
Such a great pandemic silver lining and it’s nice that you were able to pivot and to make this happen. For women who are listening to the show and thinking, I’d love to get involved but I’m not sure if I’m qualified or if I have the skills, I want to hear what you would say to them after this quick commercial break.
[Ad break]
Katie (13:08):
Okay, Trish, we’re back from the break. For women who are listening to this show and thinking, I really do want to get involved, this sounds amazing, I want to make a difference, now that I know I can do it online versus having to hop an airplane, but I’m not sure if I’m the right fit. What would you say to them? What does a WAKE volunteer look like?
Trish (13:26):
Yeah, thanks for asking that Katie. So many women that I talk to say, Oh I’d love to get involved but what do I have to offer? My answer to that is everyone has something to offer. It’s really, very diverse and we you know, the program is called Tech2Empower and so sometimes people think, Oh I have to be an engineer to get involved, but that is definitely not true, we have people from all different backgrounds, and by the way, all genders are welcome, especially in the USA virtual program, we do predominantly have women but we have all different types of people and we love to have a diverse group of volunteers. We often have people that are engineers and have technical skills and they do things like building websites or CRM databases, but we also have a great need for people with finance backgrounds or with digital marketing or with organizational development or leadership skills.
An example that I can give you is, in the spring we were working with a great nonprofit called Court Watch NOLA, it’s a group based in New Orleans. Louisiana is the most incarcerated state in our country and Court Watch NOLA is focused on increasing accountability and transparency in the court system in New Orleans. And they were already doing amazing work but they wanted to be able to better connect with their community and with potential funders and supporters. So, we partnered with a group of really talented creatives from an agency called LIFT Agency which is based here in the Bay Area, and they sponsored a team of volunteers from their company and they worked with Court Watch NOLA to come up with a whole new branding strategy. They created a beautiful new logo, they created templates for social media and now they have really transformed their website, their marketing materials, and they’ve been able to reach out and share their work and attract new donors and new supporters.
Katie (15:35):
I can vouch for how gorgeous their branding materials were because in addition to doing the Cambodia trip in 2015, I joined Tech2Empower USA this spring and I worked with four women from my hometown on a separate project but at the end of the six-week session we got to see what everyone else was up to with their nonprofit organizations and we saw the new logos, the branding materials that were created, which was amazing. My personal team of three other women was working with a fabulous organization called the Me Too Organization founded by Tarana Burke and we were helping the organization come up with a pitch deck to better communicate their story their mission, their programming, and their impact to potential corporate sponsors. I will say that my background in communications, my background is in marketing. The three other women on my team were marketers and worked in finance as well. We were not coders, we were not engineers, we were not building things from the back. So, you have a whole different range of volunteers with your organization.
Trish (16:42):
Yeah and Katie, also you mentioned that you did it with some friends from your hometown. You know, sometimes we get groups from companies, so it’ll be like a team from Salesforce and it is people that work together. But then we also get people like you and your friends, the Me Too team and we love all those different scenarios and it’s a really fun way for people who are either friends or colleagues and they want an opportunity to work together in a different way. On LIFT Agency, the group that worked with Court Watch NOLA, we have one woman who is now in her third time volunteering with us. So, LIFT Agency is doing it for the third time and Mandy has done it three times herself, she’s continually part of the team because what we hear from Mandy and others like her is that the opportunity to use her professional day-to-day skills in a new way is really exciting and empowering and it’s also great to see that you’re able to use your skills for social impact. Some people love to volunteer in person, going to a soup kitchen, or working at a shelter, those are really important opportunities as well, but some people that are out of their comfort zone and they want to use their existing skills and give back in a new way. So, I think it’s a really fun opportunity to try something new and to connect with friends and colleagues in a new way.
Katie (18:07):
Yeah absolutely. And I actually just recently came across some fascinating data on finding purpose, I was doing a little research for the show. I found a health and retirement study done by the University of Michigan that said that people who report higher levels of purpose and volunteering have objectively better physical agility, longevity, better rates of cognitive development and this is super, super weird but adults who report having greater purpose are more likely to floss their teeth [both laugh] than those without purpose and I was like, that is an interesting factoid.
Trish (18:42):
I think I’m an outlier on that one.
Katie (18:43):
[laughs] But I can speak for myself, I literally was so inspired by both of my experiences. Cambodia was, as I said earlier in the show, transformative, and when I did the Tech2Empower USA virtually, I did have that thought of, is it gonna be as amazing an experience, am I going to be as lit up? And the answer was yes. It felt incredible to be engaging with people that don’t normally interact with, which included my own team, the team of the three women in my town. And our contacts at the Me Too organization are, you know, inspiring barely even covers it. These women are doing incredible, incredible work that benefits so many and I felt so energized every time I would get on this Zoom. So, speaking for myself, I really felt it increased my mojo, I felt like I learned new things that my fellow volunteers blew my mind with what they were sharing. You can really leave with a new set of skills yourself.
But Trish, there’s a question in all of this and my question is, we’ve talked about some of the benefits that volunteers get from doing this kind of work. There are obvious benefits for the organizations that participate, but I’m curious because you’re the one that’s kind of running this show, how do you get this sort of energy in midlife for yourself? What are you doing to energize and feel inspired beyond running WAKE?
Trish (20:15):
Well, I definitely feel lucky that I got to create my own job and I love it so much. So, I do take so much energy from running Tech2Empower and from working with my team and the amazing people that volunteer and the nonprofit leaders. You know, during COVID especially when things were so dark for so many people, every time I get on a Zoom or read the applications, I see that there are so many people out there just fighting the good fight every day so it’s really inspiring work.
But I also do need to recharge for myself and the thing that I most recently started doing, which I’m loving so much, is rowing. I just in September joined a novice rowing team and I honestly have not been a sporty person in my life, my whole family is; my husband’s a soccer coach, my kids all play multiple sports and I was the one who was managing everyone else’s team snack and bringing the snacks to practice and now I have my own team snack [both laugh] and I love it. I get up at 5 in the morning and I row in the dark and it’s really, really hard and I’m not that good at it, but I’m dedicated to continuing it. I love it especially because it’s a whole new group of people and it’s new skills. You partly inspired me Katie because on one of your podcasts this summer you said something like, “We can do hard things,” and that is such a simple truth, but I don’t know why, maybe you just said it right when I needed to hear it but I was like, yeah, I need to do a hard thing, a new thing.
Katie (22:00):
[laughs] I didn’t mean do a hard thing at 5 AM Trish! That’s like, really hard.
Trish (22:05):
It’s so hard and I love doing new hard things, so thank you for saying that right when I needed to hear it.
Katie (22:11):
I’m so glad, I’m so glad. That’s really, first of all, I’m amazed by that because my ninth-grade son rows crew and I just came back from a very wet regatta so I know exactly how much work and effort go into doing that so I love to hear that you sort of put yourself out there and you’re trying something new. It’s funny, I actually just went to a really good friend’s 54th birthday, she organized a dance party. It was in the middle of the day, she got her favorite dance instructor and he taught us all of these dance routines and what I learned was that I’m always going left when everyone else is going right and it was, very humbling and very hard but I felt so excited afterward and not because I was good, mind you, but I felt so excited because I literally would never have thought that I could do this or kind of, quasi do it and it just felt so wonderful to be in a room full of people all trying to go right together or trying to go left together and I love that you’ve pulled something new into your life. I think that’s very, very cool.
Trish (23:17):
And we’re never too old to do that, that’s the thing. To be in a boat with seven or eight other people who are also new. The age range is from forties to the oldest woman on one of the teams is 89.
Katie (23:32):
Okay, stop. [laughs]
Trish (23:34):
I’m not kidding.
Katie (23:35):
I need to...by the way of course she’s up at 5 in the morning because we do not sleep [Trish laughs] once we get to a certain age. [laughs]
Trish (23:41):
That’s true, maybe that part get’s easier. [laughs]
Katie (23:44):
That is so amazing, 89. You’re definitely never too old. You just reminded me about something because you’re talking about this big age swing that you have in these boats and I saw this big age swing also in the group that I went to Cambodia with and I really saw it on this Zoom that I was with because the people that were participating were ranging from, you know, they looked like they were my daughter in college to people who are older than I am. There’s really an intergenerational component around the volunteer work that you organize. Is that something that you see or do you recognize that? Is that something that’s deliberate?
Trish (24:21):
It started as very deliberate when we were doing the in-person trips. We really looked at the applicant pool and created as many different diversity factors as we could. And it was really great to see someone in their sixties who’s coming on the trip because maybe they’re nearing retirement age and they want to do something new, interacting and learning alongside someone who’s 25 and just starting out their career in tech. The interactions and the learning, it’s really beautiful, and then it just kind of naturally started to happen in the virtual program as well. I think people who choose to do this type of volunteer work are very open individuals and so we see people coming with really open hearts and open minds and both the nonprofit leaders as well as the volunteers, they all are so eager to learn from each other and share their work with each other.
Katie (25:19):
So, if somebody’s listening to this and thinking this really does sound amazing and I understand that all skills are welcome but when they hear the word “tech”… How would they know if they qualify for this? What would they need to do to figure out if this is the right fit for them? Walk us through that process.
Trish (25:38):
Absolutely. So, our website is the best place to start. And it’s wakeinternational.org and I know you’ll share it out in your notes. On there you can read more about our programs and our impact report and you can see also examples of past projects. You know the most important thing is that the nonprofits, they propose the projects, so it’s all demand-driven for them. And then you’ll be able to read some of those project proposals and say, oh I see how I might be able to apply my skills. And you know, if anyone has a question they can contact me but mostly my answer is always yes, I’m sure we can find a place for you. We have need for storytelling, we have the need for communication skills, finance, human resources. So, anyone who is excited to give back, we can find a place for them.
Katie (26:35):
Okay, fantastic. So, I wanted to switch gears for a minute and ask you a little bit about what you’ve learned while having run WAKE and Tech2Empower over the years because you’ve had a career in development, you’ve worked in Africa, you’ve worked in social impact. Through WAKE, you’re in regular conversations with women across the globe. What would be a big theme or learning that you’ve had from these conversations with women beyond San Francisco that stretch across the globe?
Trish (27:10):
Yeah, I think the, well there are so many, but I think for me my sort of personal motto is always that every person has something to give, which I’ve said in different ways throughout this conversation. But it’s something that drives me every day in that, you know, I always tell my kids if they see something that’s bothering them or they think something is wrong or there’s a need, that they need to figure out how to contribute to creating the change and it’s something that kids, grownups, everyone should be looking at. So, we shouldn’t sit around and complain, we should find solutions. And what I’ve seen is that especially women around the world are creating that change. And that we’re really more similar to each other all around the world than different. And as you know Katie from your travels to Cambodia and so many other places, you can land in another country or even in our own country in another place, and find connections. And you can do that by just being really curious and open-minded. And I think really important to my work is that we’re not going around the world to help, we’re going around the world to learn and to share. And so, that really drives us also, in that women, you know, I mentioned Blandine, but there are so many other women that we’ve worked with around the world and we learn as much from them as they learn from us. And so it’s really about two-way exchange and activating those connections and if you do that you can really create long-lasting, meaningful relationships which are the basis for all change.
Katie (28:58):
That is a beautiful, wonderful note to end on. We’re gonna move into our speed round. Trish, I could not agree with you more about everything you just shared. I left Cambodia really feeling optimistic about the state of the world because I connected with so many people that were making a difference. It literally felt so inspiring and transformative. I would also be happy to answer any questions from any listener who’s thinking I would love to get involved with that. So, please feel free to reach out to me katie@acertainagepod.com I am more than happy to answer questions about what it’s like to volunteer with this organization.
So, speed round, are you ready?
Trish (29:39):
I’m ready.
Katie (29:41):
Okay, this is a one-word answer to complete this sentence. Running my own nonprofit is _____.
Trish (29:47):
Exhilarating.
Katie (29:48):
My superpower at work _____.
Trish (29:52):
Focus.
Katie (29:52):
My superpower at home _____.
Trish (29:55):
Multitasking.
Katie (29:56):
Favorite country you’ve traveled to for work with WAKE _____.
Trish (30:01):
Ooo, that’s a tough one… Rwanda.
Katie (30:07):
A country you could visit again and again _____. And this does not need to be a place where you’ve done work with WAKE.
Trish (30:14):
Zimbabwe.
Katie (30:15):
When I’m not volunteering my time through WAKE, I volunteer my time at _____.
Trish (30:23):
My kid’s schools.
Katie (30:25):
Me too. All right, social justice organization we should all have on our radar _____.
Trish (30:36):
That’s so hard… There are too many, I can’t pick one, I’m sorry.
Katie (30:41):
Okay, that’s fine, that’s fair. So anyone who’s curious should just be looking at all the organizations WAKE has worked with.
Trish (30:48):
Yes, yes.
Katie (30:50):
Dream country for a future WAKE program _____.
Trish (30:54):
Definitely Nepal.
Katie (30:56):
Perfect, we gotta get Nepal on that list. On weekends you will find me _____.
Trish (31:02):
Reading a book or rowing.
Katie (31:04):
Okay, that is not the answer we would have had when I first met you back in DC many years ago. [both laugh]
Trish (31:12):
I’ve evolved Katie.
Katie (31:13):
That’s true. We get to change. We get to change as we get older; we’re multifaceted. If I weren’t running WAKE I would be a _____.
Trish (31:22):
Journalist.
Katie (31:23):
Okay, I love that. I love that. Okay Trish, this has been such a pleasure I’m not kidding, one of my favorite things about having the podcast is connecting with amazing women. I’m so happy to share the work of WAKE, Women’s Alliance for Knowledge Exchange with our listeners. This organization is so close to my heart, you do such amazing work and I’m so thrilled that you were on with me today.
Trish (31:46):
Thank you, Katie, it’s such an amazing podcast and it was really wonderful to be on with you and I always love to be on with you and I always love spending time with you.
Katie (31:52):
Trish before we say goodbye, how can our listeners learn more about how they can get involved with WAKE?
Trish (31:58):
We would love people to sign up for our newsletter. If they just go to our website, wakeinternational.org they will be able to sign up for the newsletter and through that, they’ll get information about upcoming programs and opportunities. But our upcoming thing is that on December 14th, we’ll be opening the application for advisors, volunteers who would be part of our spring session for the USA virtual program. And then we are looking at in 2022, bringing back the international work, we’re looking at doing something focused on climate justice with Caribbean nonprofit leaders and potentially even a return trip to Cambodia. So, people can look out for that, and then of course Giving Tuesday is the Tuesday after Thanksgiving and we always need donations and that will be on our website as well.
Katie (32:52):
Amazing. This wraps A Certain Age, a show for women who are aging without apology. Join me next Monday when I talk with Grace Bonney, author of Collective Wisdom: Lessons, Inspiration, and Advice from Women over 50 who shares intimate, triumphant tales of more than 100 women living extraordinary lives.
Special thanks to Michael Mancini who composed and produced our theme music. See you next time and until then; age boldly, beauties.