author, founder, and CEO of Empathy for Change. And the book that I wrote was called Empathy for Change, How to Create a More Understanding World. Amy, what would you say is your personal why? You know that thing that drives you to get out of bed each morning and do what you do. Yeah. I I would say that it's it's definitely related to my book. And when I released it about two and a half months ago, it was it it just, like, it speaks to my heart and who I am as a person. And when you bring in these two concepts, empathy and change, that's who I am. So number one, it's as the in the empathy side of things, I'm an empath. I'm also a highly sensitive person, and I also, have a lot of empathy. That's my biggest strength. And if you take the Gallup strength finders test, you know, you take all those things and it spouts out what what it is for you. So empathy is is the number one strength, and I thought it was like I was like, what is this crap? Right? When I when I got it, I was like, yeah. Empathy. But then as I've gotten older and gone and done my work, done this work, I realized that empathy is my superpower, you know, and my extra superpower. And then, also, change is another theme that's throughout my life. I am a change maker. I'm a public entrepreneur, and I also, I, you know, I've been a director of innovation in many different aspects. And so I always change and and and try to, challenge the status quo, which is kind of something some sometimes to my detriment and sometimes to my, success.

I I write about this this one in my, in my book because it's so important. It's great storytelling. It's a room line from NPR. Not sure if you've heard of it, but it it the whole theme behind it is to look to the past to understand the present. And it it is so educational. Like, I've learned so much about it. Like, I just earlier this week, they had session on the Black Panther movement and what what that means for today. And, so there's just so many like, so much richness there. And, also, you know, as we're going on this journey of, like, anti racism, learning about ourselves and who we are, this podcast, which is a smaller lesser known podcast, but so impactful, but seeing white and so, so good. It's down in, from, Duke University, I think. And you can look at it on on Spotify. They have a playlist around it, but it's really this one, so documentary set series where just looking at, like, what whiteness is and how that's showing up in the world. And that has been so incredibly, like, impactful for me, and I share it with so many people, like, of so many origins because they're just like, I didn't know. Right? And if you don't know, then you, you know, you're not going to, make change and you have to have awareness. So those are the ones that, like, really get me. Oh, and then one last one I love is Hello Monday by it's on LinkedIn. It's the changing nature of work, and it's a conversation around that, that you know, a lot of these are podcasts, but, yeah, those are the most impactful things for me right now, especially in the pandemic.

I know. There's lots of indicators, and a lot of people have been talking about it, that that we have a big empathy gap, especially in The United States. And I go back into history to see where that empathy gap, you know, comes from, but also who historically has talked about it. And I think that empathy gap is creating a lot of challenges for our country today and our world. And so I the way I structure the book, which is kind of how I'm, like, structuring a lot of the things I do in my my work in this, my start up, in my collaborative I put together for this, is exploring this thing called the empathy deficit. So the first chapter is really about, you know, our empathy deficit. So owning it. Owning why do we have empathy deficit because there's a lot of misunderstanding around what empathy is, it truly is, and how do you practice it. Right? And so it's a skill, that that anybody can learn, but many people choose not to learn it. Right? So so just having this awareness around this, that that's something that really, jumps out to me because the the deeper why for that is I have been in consulting. I've been in working in the White House. I've worked in profits. I've worked in startups. I've done I've done all these different places. And the moments that I felt the most, like, lost was when I wasn't getting empathy from from people, and it wasn't it wasn't engaging with people in a in a very authentic way. It felt like it was stilted or something like that was happening. And it gets in the and and so I just was like, I I know, you know, and stepping into my truth and my my experience there. Empathy is so crucial to interacting. And I just did a a pod well, like, a empathy power up yesterday. We talked about empathy as a skill is like hard skill or soft skill. And what we're finding is that empathy is not just is not a soft skill anymore. It's an essential skill. It's always has been, but we've relegated it to this place that seems like it's lesser than. And I think it's just a central skill that we all, like, have inherently, but we're not really using it in the best way. And we could be doing a lot more healing in the world. And, you know, research is showing that our workplaces, the like, our communities don't have the empathy that we need to thrive. So, like, I was like, what's a better thing to do than to try to have more empathy in the world? That's my that's my why.

Yeah. So empathy is is if you look on the front of my book, it has three images. It has a head, a heart, and a hand. And I had this realization that empathy there's three different kinds of empathy. Most people don't know that that's the case. And empathy requires you to have not just, you know, just, you know, taking somebody's perspective. Or a lot of people say it's when they talk about empathy, it's like I'm, you know, sitting in the shoes of somebody else. Right? That's number one thing that people say when I they talk about empathy. And for me, that was like, I that just seems very nebulous. It's like, I'm just going to like, well, how do how do I do that? What does that mean? How do I feel like you're doing that? And it doesn't seem like it's very action oriented. It's just like, okay. I'm just taking your perspective. And that that is really related to, like, the so the head is is called cognitive empathy, which is this the like, how can I take your perspective? But we've also the research is showing that empathy is both a skill and a choice that you made, like I referred to a few minutes ago, is that empathy, since it's a skill and a choice, you can you can you can work that muscle. It's like an it's going to the empathy gym. Right? Some of my friend colleagues say, you know, like, you can work that muscle, and it's like building that cognitive empathy. Like, am I taking your perspective in the right way? But the heart piece is where is where you the emotions come in. And what's interesting is that in empathy, it requires you to have an awareness of yourself, how you show up in the world, and also your your emotions. Right? Can I pick up on am I feeling sadness? Am I feeling, like, anger? Am I feeling all these different things? And then recognize that in somebody else. So it's that's a deeper level of, like, understanding. And then the third one is the hand, which which often is and that one is called, that one's called, compassionate empathy or simply compassion a lot of people talk about. Right? And when I when what that version of empathy says is it's I'm willing to help you if needed. So you're opening up to your them. You're doing the things. You're you're, like, taking their perspective. You're feeling them, but you're willing to help. But what is what I what I found and based on my own career in working in change is that that's great that you're willing to help, but then help. Right? Take the action. Right? And that's that's what I'm I'm saying is that after being working in innovation for more than a decade and and being a director of this is that really what we're trying to do in innovation, it's such a buzzword, is is talk about positive change, creating a better future. And in order to do that, you need to have empathy plus action. So you need to bring those two together. You need to act upon the empathy that we have for each other. And that's been lost, I think, in in our society in a bigger way. An idea that that you communicate

The the piece about that is when we talk about change today, because of a number of factors that has happened, globalization, climate change. You know, I was just listening to a podcast that's more about climate change and the the stakes that we've got going. There is a lot of complexities that that has that's changed over time. We definitely have more people in the world than ever we've ever had. Right? And it's just getting bigger and and larger. Pandemics. Right? Like, there has been pandemics before, but it's this one is, like, very far reaching as well and and hitting us in a hard way. So those are those are specific things that are leading us to having a more complex world. And, there's this phrase called VUCA, which is stands for we're in a living in, like, a VUCA world, which is volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous. This actually comes you mentioned earlier you were in the military, and so it comes from the war college, from the the army war college, I think. And it talks about it they they started realizing in the nineteen nineties that the world is getting a becoming a lot different, right, than than we have seen in the past, and more complex. And so in order for us to change, we need to understand and sense what the world is doing. And the and often, we talk about solutions and problems and solutions. Like, there's a silver bullet solution to everything that we do. And I saw I see this all the time in innovation. It's like, okay. You have a problem and a solution, a solution. But what I talk about in my book and the people that I talk to from across the the country and the world mentioned that it's not just a silver bullet solution. It's a compendium of solutions. It's approaches. And then those approaches that are happening in the world, need to be kind of, like need to be tested and make sure that you're having the right impact that you're having you're having on the world. And the last thing I'll say about this is that what's really interesting is that what's happening with, you know, the Chauvin trial and, like, death of George Floyd. And there's a lot more awareness of, like, white supremacy culture and how that's showing up in our world. That adds a level of complexity because it is showing that the systems that we're in is broken, and and the system is creating the space for us. And so so because we're affected by the system, that's that adds another level of complexity that we're we're examining now. Right? And that that makes things so much harder to do change, but it's necessary. And that's the systemic change that we need to do to really make progress.

Yeah. I mean, there's interesting interesting things when, like, for example, when the pandemic happened, it changed a lot of people's like, it just, like, took over the entire agendas of organizations. I was working at the time with, the city of Oakland when the Aspen Tech Policy Hub, and they had, like, an $80,000,000 shortfall because of COVID. So when I think about that in a bigger way, you know, externalities, problems that push folks, towards outcomes that aren't ideal, that's what's interesting is that what I've learned in teaching innovation, working in innovation related work is that we have to live in, there's, some other works that is important is to be like, everybody talks about being agile. Right? And, like, agile, and that comes from development. You know, as a developer, it's just realizing, like, the way like, one big example is being, like, the difference between Waterfall and Agile is is kind of, like, how we need to manage the world. Right? Waterfall, like, you know, for those who, you know, who are on the the podcast who don't understand the difference between those two things in development, is that, you know, waterfall is being like you create requirements upfront and you say, these are all the things that this thing needs to have, like, that I'm building. And then at the you pretty much build it over time, and then in the end, you have hopefully, right, have that thing that you create the requirements at the beginning is what you have at the end. But it does not in say that, like, oh, this you know, you know, the direction needs to change because, you know, a pandemic hits. Right? So, like, what if a pandemic hits in the middle of this thing and you're like, oh, gosh. We we can't do the things that we had hoped for. On the other end of the spectrum is is agile, and agile this agile development is talking about you might have at the beginning a series of things that you, like, which are they call a backlog of activities that you wanna do. And you kind of envision what do you think this is, but it's a lot of, working with agile. And then we also have, like, lean start ups concepts of building something, measuring, and learning from that experience, which is a lot of this, like, when we talk about change. So you build something and then you test it with people, and you measure the effectiveness of what you do. And it's a lot of it's like a dialogue, I would say, between you and the people that are using the work that you do and the things that you have. So yeah, it's for me, it's like that agile, like, mindset is so necessary. And, you know, you might you're gonna build this thing over time, but then you allow for those externalities to come in and to to have a gut check. Right? So and often, this is related to something I was saying earlier, is, like, we have an intention, but then the impact that we have, often, we don't measure as much as impact, you know, especially when we talk about human centered design. There is this this desire for us to have this intention to be impact to have impact, and then we don't measure if we don't measure the impact and how it's affecting the system and the world that we're in, then we are creating we are creating in a bubble. And I think that's that's something that we need to to talk about. Like, when we have or dealing with these externalities, we need to be able to have work on our sensing. And there there's two activities that I I mentioned in the book where it's called the OODA loop, which is also something coming from the military, which stands for observe, orient, decide, and act. And it is it is, you know, is it very, in that space of being, like, you're observing. Alright. Make your gut decision. You orient yourself, like, what is this? And then you decide upon the the course of action and then you act upon it. That that's a activity. And then there's also this this framework called Kinifin, which is, which is Welsh for Habitat. And it is this great framework that shows that toxic talks about we're in this world where it's like, on one side is an ordered world, and the other side is an unordered world. We when we're in VUCA, sometimes we're in an unordered space. So one of the it's like four quadrants. One of the quadrants could be chaos, right, which is where everything's unordered. And this is just one example, and there's three others in there, but not to overwhelm everybody with theory here. But if you have this space where you are in a space where where chaos is happening, you do not have a mindset for how chaos is happening. So, like, so in the middle of a hurricane, for example, everything's topsy-turvy. You just have to act and then see what patterns emerge over time, and then then you can you know? So it's that responding first and then finding patterns. But if you're in an ordered world where you can understand what's happening, it's different where, yeah. So the the ordered world essentially talks about, how can we you know, we can if we have best practices, we can use that.

Yeah. Well, storytelling is so so important. Definitely. I have so I've one of the things I didn't mention earlier is I I on the on the side, I've I've worked in a documentary film organization in DC, to help people tell stories of other people. And then also there's an organization in DC that I've been involved with for many years called Story District. And it's the whole theme behind that is us sharing our personal stories. Getting up on stage, like, story district is there's a theme, and people tell stories based on that theme. And I have been steeped in that kind of world, for about fifteen, almost twenty years now. And being in a space that allows you to share your story just is like there's not a lot of places that have that today. Right? That have a place where we can come together and say the power of an individual story and everybody else's stories that are out there. So when I think about that, like, that's that's the the culture. And when I look at, you know, the aforementioned, like, lack of empathy in a lot of our workplaces, there's an absence of story. There's an absence of of work, that we see, of, like, of personalization. So I think when we talk about, you know, something that's especially effective is being able to share pieces of yourself and aspects of yourself in through story is important in the workplace. But it's also, mixture of being, like, trying to figure out who you can trust and who you can trust yourself with that that story because, you know, in a lot of ways, you know, the systems, like I mentioned before, is is not is not working as as we want to. It's might be, like, not safe for you to share your story. So how do we get into more spaces where you feel safe and can trust, others to have that? So I would say share your story with people, your personal story and things that that matter to you with people that you can trust that you can find in your workplace.

So towards psychological safety, I think, number one, find people who are authentic. I think and and authentic and listen. And and those are the people that you want to spend the most time around because you don't necessarily feel like you don't you don't feel like you are that person's gonna stab you in the back or or, like, that person's not gonna take your idea. But it's hard to to suss that out in a workplace. Right? And so it's hard to trust that freely. But but I think as we see with empathy, for example, in empathy, people you can sense, you know, in your gut that you're not getting empathy from somebody. Right? So a lot of it is just like, let's get in touch with ourselves, in our like, our and how we feel. Right? And the feel in the moment with people. Like, if there's something like I've met so many people who I'm like, I don't really inherently trust this person. There's something about this person that I don't trust in my spidey senses coming out. So I think that's something that, like, to be in touch with that. And then, also, there's a lovely quote that, is the the person who founded Under Armour says, that trust is earned in droplets and lost in buckets. And that quote, like, is just really something I bring with me. Somebody shared it with me once, and I was like, you know what? Like, this idea of trust is that the more authentic you are, the more you share your story, the more you are open about you know what? I'm in the the pandemic is happening, and I am I'm struggling. Right? When when you know everybody else might be struggling too, that opens a window for you to be able to, as a leader in particular, opens a window to say for others to share. And it's so incredible when you can actually share that. And, and then on top of that, just listening. Like, I just in my in my number one thing that I do in one on ones with people is just, like, I just sit there and listen and repeat back to them what I'm hearing. Right? And it's such a space to be like, I feel fully heard. And that's what's really fascinating is feeling like people when you repeat back to them what they're saying, like, number one, you're you're able to, you know, say you know, you have to focus. Number two, they hear what they're saying, so they're able to reflect back, reflect on what they just said.

That's actually something that's key to one of the things that I've been talking in a lot of the civic text pieces recently. And I just hosted a clubhouse last week with Code for America on this exact topic. And I'm gonna be doing an encore presentation at the Code for America summit, just snaps to that, on the same topic. And what is happening so it's kind of an interesting concept because if we look at the way, so we talk about equity and usually contrast equity with equality. Equality is equal access to the bill two things. Right? And then the second one, equity is equal equal outcomes. Right? So they're not the same they're not the same thing. So that goes into impact. Like, equity is really the impact that our policies have, our projects or services that the government has. And so, one way that we can we can look at that is, like, through the lens of empathy. If you really take empathy to this place, I mean, like, I'm here. Like I said before, the head, the heart, the hand mentality instead of instead of just being like, I'm just gonna put myself in your shoes. That's not helping anybody. That's not, you know, changing the world in in a good way. That's just, you know, that's that's, not the best way to think about it when we think about empathy. When when we think about equity in particular, there's this idea of humility, is also or being humble is really important, like, to to come with empathy, is realizing that idea of, humility is, like, I'm not better than anybody else. And and and what's interesting is that that first piece of empathy, which is the head, the cognitive empathy, you're not even going to have empathy for somebody if you do not value them as a person. Because that's what the research is showing is that, like, you're not even able to do anything more if you don't think that that person is is valued. And so that brings in this idea of, like, dignity that we all have this this underlying belief that we're all inherently valuable and and have worth just by existing. And I think in a lot of the discourse that we have is that it's always an us versus them mentality. It's, like, either or. Like, especially when we when we go to the insurrection that happened at the Capitol, there's this the mentality being, like, there's somebody who's right and there's somebody who's wrong. And there's so many gray areas in there. So it's at the end of the day, like, empathy and equity go hand in hand and needed to have both of those together. Because when it comes to equity in particular, we need to be able to, like, understand you know, in design in particular when we're doing civic tech, is that when we're designing something, we need to have this equity lens that allows us to say, number one, we are we are aware of the power that what we do has. And number two, we're looking at the agency of the people who we're we're engaging with. Often, it's very vulnerable populations, like Medicaid, as an example. It's like you're working with people who are very poor in this country, and they're and how can we help give this agency to people who are on the ground who are to to change the world around them? And that's where the the change comes in is, like, there's we have the power to shift. We can we have the ability and power to shift, chef shift the power to people who are on the ground to give them more say. And as designers in the civic tech space, we are of responsibility to make sure that what we hear, change does happen. Right? Because if if if nothing changes, you're just you're just using that person. You're just using that story. And that story is valuable and important. And we need to be able to, like, make real change that happens in the world and make real progress. And, you know, we're starting to do that a little bit more with civic tech, but I think that's where the equity and empathy comes hand in hand is that the more empathy you're going to have and the more, you know, community you build, the better off you're going to be, you know, having that shift to power dynamic.

I'm inspired, connecting back to the equity that we just had, conversation. I'm inspired by one of the people I I profile in my book called Antoinette Carroll. She created this organization called the Creative Reaction Lab and trying to tackle issues of systemic racism and redesigning these systems. And so I was inspired by her to go and, and and and apply to the AspenTech policy hub because I realized, how can I take that one step further? How can I take these ideas of tackling a big systemic problems and using that to affect policy, which, you know, like I mentioned earlier, the people who shape policy shape the world and and and the world around us? And so I I just thought there was, like, a a loftier goal that we I could reach with this. And so people powered policy is at the heart of that. So the idea behind it is is the the nature of storytelling and the importance of storytelling to actively participate to have people who are affected by the policies actively participate in shaping the policy. So and one there's two sides to People Power policy. On one side, there is a a website where that we we envisioned and did some mock ups on that shows this is what the website might look like so you can collect stories. You can collect thoughts and questions about a topic area that might be important. So one of them we had in in Oakland, California where I was testing this out in is, housing is a major problem there. And so what if we we had a sec a space where people can talk about, you know, what are the stories, what are the questions, what are the concerns that they have around housing so that you can have a direct line from the city government to people on the ground. And it's not just, requiring us to take these stories, but it's also taking things like, what are people saying on social media? Using, like, artificial intelligence to understand what are people saying in Twitter, on Facebook, on on LinkedIn, etcetera, mostly on Twitter and Facebook, to about these different topics and how do we create this this space where we can be well informed about the policy that we we're going to be writing. Right? Instead of requiring people to come to city hall, and especially in a pandemic that's majorly challenging, right, to bring people to city hall. But that's that's the current dichotomy is being like, there are people who can't afford, or don't have the time or don't really you know, aren't engaged with civic the civic side of things. So we're requiring them to come to city hall and and participate in this policy making, but it's very there's so many reasons why they're not. Right? And we and so we we talked on both sides of the aisle. We talked to people who were affected by policy, in the most, vulnerable places in Oakland, and then we also talked to city council members. So the second piece of people People Power policy is focusing on on on how do we get the city government to say say, I want to change my digital engagement practices and the work that I do. So a big chunk of this was changing policy just so that we can have a digital engagement strategy so that we are going to go into from the government side of things to say we're gonna we're gonna lean more into the digital engagement so that we can have a website that allows this policy to be written. So it's like that's that's what we found out in our on our short time when we were in Oakland before the pandemic hit, that that there was two sides to the story. It's not you just create a website and then policy will change. It's creating a bridge from the website and the stories that are there, to city hall, which then can shape and inform policy.

So Better Government Movement. One big thing I learned from my experience, you know, that I brought into my work as a PIF, when I worked at Booz Allen Hamilton, I realized that empathy, I mean, empathy is is really key in the world work that we do. But in order to really make change happen, is culture change happens because of a movement and not a mandate that happens. That's a big thing that I learned in the Booz Allen my Booz Allen days is being like, you know what? You can and that's that's a key part of change, right, in a lot of ways. People will change themselves. Right? You can't force people to change. Right? And and that is that's something that is really fascinating. And so I really took that to heart when I heard heard that idea or thought about that idea. It's like, that's why I called this a movement because, also, as we were transitioning between the Obama to the Trump administrations, we started talking about this word innovation. Might not be something that, like, this new administration might embrace because it might be tied to the last administration. So we start thinking about, like, what are the outcomes we're hoping to have? And that that that was that's where we start talking about better government at the end of the day. We wanna have a government that works for most of the people most of the time. Right? Like and and isn't something that is, like, you know, is is is able to serve the people. Right? Because, you know, it's for people by the people. And so we think about this in a bigger concept of, like, with a better government. And so I kind of took this idea of movement and better government together and, and and started thinking about how can we create change the it's a power again, this idea of power, and how do we get the power within ourselves as public servants, to to actually start stepping up and saying, I'm gonna be the change that I wanna see in the world. Because that's how real change is going to happen in a bigger way. So how do we get get a cadre of people who are those change agents in the world and make that bigger, change that we wanna see in the world? So that that that was the whole idea behind the Better Government movement is to build community with each other, and to create a space where they can practice and get better at doing doing the work that is necessary. So if their agencies don't have it have have that ability to do that, they can practice it with us, and then they can they can build in a bigger way. And the the last thing I'll say about that with the Better Government movement is when we talk about the Better Government movement in a bigger way, the work that we did is is just just, like, really interesting and incredible, and we would we would have, like, a design challenge where we would teach people, you know, different skills, human centered design, lean, agile, over over a series of sixteen weeks or so. And they would take real world government problems and tackle those together. So so we could have a space where where people can feel comfortable. And I forgot the last piece of what I was going to say, with that aspect of it. But, you know, that's at the end of the day. It's like shifting power within ourselves to know that we have that magic wand. Now we have that magic wand, and we can use the magic wand to make change happen.

Yeah. I think for me, the concluding thoughts that I have is is the the current theme that I have is that, you know, we cannot wait for somebody else to change the world for us. We need to step up and be that be part of that that change that we want to see. As we're bringing in the Gandhi quote again. Like, the the change we must to see in the world. And, like, we're and, like and Obama says something to the effect of, you know, we are the ones we've been waiting for. We are the ones we are the ones who are going to change the world. And that's when I leave my book. My book is on a hopeful note to say that, like, we I give a ton of ways we can go into our society, into our systems, into our individual or even our teams, and be be the change we hope to see. So I think that's really what we're we're doing, and we're seeing a big influx of that happening and saying people standing up and for things that they value. So I think I just encourage people to to join join, like, the movement around, like, changing government for the better and changing our systems and rethinking. It was like, is this work that we're doing, is it necessary? And are is it is it important for us to you know, how important is it for us to build the next iPhone, as opposed to to really taking a service that is gonna affect millions of people's lives and, in a positive way. So I think, you know, I I guess it's also a call to action for people to join the civic tech movement, become a presidential innovation fellow. We actually have the PIF PIF program or which is presidential innovation fellow for short. We're hiring they're they're doing their their they're hiring right now for it. So I would say, you know, try to try to join the movement, get a taste of this. And then when you get a taste of it, you're like, oh, I wanna keep doing it. So so that's that's kinda where I am in my world.

Yeah. Thank you. Thanks for having me.