#61: Making change happen

A Q&A with writer, advisor, and early-stage startup leader Zoelle Egner

Hello!

Breaking the usual monthly Q&A rule this week as I couldn’t wait to publish my conversation with Zoelle Egner.

Zoelle is a writer, advisor, and early-stage startup leader dedicated to giving people more control over their online experiences. She is currently the Head of Marketing and Growth at Block Party, working to ensure that everyone has the tools to participate in social media conversations safely. Previously, Zoelle led the early marketing and customer success teams at tech unicorn Airtable. In an inspiring act of public service, Zoelle left her role at Airtable in 2021 to join a temporary non-profit (VaccinateCA) working to accelerate the US COVID-19 vaccination effort. In her spare time, Zoelle writes poetry and science fiction and enjoys reflecting on the relationship between narrative and technology.

In other words, she’s a damn interesting human.

Let’s get to the interview.

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Tell us more about the story behind VaccinateCA. What was the problem you were trying to solve? How did you end up getting involved?

VaccinateCA was born from a Tweet. In response to widespread confusion at the beginning of the vaccine rollout, Stripe's strategic advisor Patrick McKenzie suggested that a simple solution would be to call pharmacies, ask which vaccines they had and what the requirements to get them would be, put that info in a spreadsheet, and publish that spreadsheet online so other people wouldn't have to make the same phone calls. That suggestion quickly spiralled into a full-blown non-profit dedicated to providing the most accurate and comprehensive vaccine availability data in California—and, eventually, the entire United States.

💡Learn more about the VaccinateCA story at the start of this podcast interview

I was looped in a few days after the first Tweet to advise on engaging with inbound media attention. I quickly discovered that my expertise was more relevant than I had realised. I got so involved that I quit my job at Airtable to work on the project full-time and became a board member. Things escalated quickly :)  

VaccinateCA doesn’t exist anymore. We shut it down six months later once the public system caught up, proud to have provided a crucial stopgap during an unprecedented time.

In your recent podcast interview with Lenny Rachitsky, you said Tech doesn't tend to jump into these problems. And that the technology behind VaccinateCA wasn't that sophisticated. Are these two points connected?

While I think Tech folks are more likely to get excited about problems requiring cutting-edge technological solutions, I'm not sure that's the primary barrier to broader civic engagement from the industry. There's a fine line between not wanting to come across as clueless tech solutionists with a saviour complex and deciding to just sit out every thorny problem. On top of that, many of the civic challenges that would benefit the most from Tech's involvement aren't going to make you money. And the tech industry tends to focus on problems with monetizable solutions.

I'd love to see tech folks becoming collaborators and supporters of more crisis response efforts because (a) interdisciplinary collaboration is vital to responding in the most helpful way, and (b) tech skills lend themselves so well to the vast amounts of coordination and information-sharing required during a crisis.

This is Zoelle

How did your time at VaccinateCA change the way you show up as a leader?

I developed a fundamental appreciation for the power and importance of repetition. Saying something a couple of times doesn't mean everyone has heard it in the way you hoped. This is as true for a non-profit relying on a large volunteer base as it is for all kinds of leadership. You have to be intentional about getting your message out there in practice so everyone stays aligned. Some best practices: 

1. Use multiple channels and methods to share your message. Everyone absorbs information differently, so mentioning it live, in writing, through videos, and so on can improve the likelihood of your message being heard properly.

2. Become impervious to the boredom that comes from hearing yourself repeat the same thing over and over again. It just comes with the territory!

3. Find other messengers who can also repeat the message. It will ensure those people get it AND help with your repetition challenge.

You write science fiction in your spare time. How has your ability to inhabit these futuristic worlds affected your attitude and participation in the tech world?

I like to joke that working in comms is all about having a finely honed sense of risk management. You have to constantly anticipate how a wide range of audiences will interpret anything you do or say and allow yourself to imagine all sorts of potentially horrible outcomes—so you can prevent them. This is exactly what you do when writing science fiction: act as a translator (or buffer layer) between bad future paths and the present. In that sense, my comms work and science fiction writing are different expressions of the same underlying impulse.

On a more practical note, I do worry about the impact of "classic" science fiction on our current attitudes in Tech. There's a very narrow set of visions of the future—and fears for what it could mean!—written decades ago by a pretty homogenous group of people. People who have, in some ways, limited our imagination about what the future can be like and what role technology can play in it.

Take artificial general intelligence (AGI). Right now, it feels like many people are stuck on an abstract fear of future AGI-provoked issues rather than grappling with the real harms current AI could introduce, particularly for vulnerable communities, today. "Will the AGI destroy the world to extract paperclips" is a much less productive question to work against than:

"Who is labelling the data that trains our AI efforts, and how does that reflect our priorities as a society?" or

"Why do we think all technology is inevitable?"

I also blame classic science fiction for the aggressive anthropomorphization of AGI. Why do we assume it would have the same concerns (or experience of time) as humans? Why would it not just do interesting math in a corner?

That said, when I look at the wide range of diverse contemporary science fiction writers out there today, I feel hopeful. As we grapple with technology’s road ahead, these writers are helping us explore new visions of the future.

On the academic side, you're fascinated by the interaction between narrative and technology. How has this interest shaped your approach as a marketer?

The interplay between narrative and technology has been an obsession of mine since college. I'm fascinated by how a story's mode of presentation—the codex (i.e., manuscript) or screen you read it on, the page layout, the interaction model—changes the story itself. It's a critical part of how I think about marketing, too. The structure upon which you build your narrative, whether in an art or a business context, is an overlooked yet essential step in the process.

An example from the literary world is House of Leaves. The book intentionally breaks traditional codex conventions by telling large portions of the story in footnotes or through unconventional page layouts. Much of the story's horror is about this abuse of the page itself. It's very cool! 

On the marketing side, it's all about where and how you choose to tell your story. It's not just about the words you use—it's where they appear, who says them, etc. Are you making claims directly or allowing your customers to do that for you? It's often less flashy than its literary equivalent but just as important in shaping outcomes.

What's one thing you wished the tech industry understood about the non-profit sector and vice versa? How can the tech and non-profit sectors come closer together?

I wish the tech industry better valued the non-profit sector's tough and unscalable work of movement and community building. It's a different paradigm that fills a critical need in society, and it's unwise to dismiss it. I also wish tech folks were more familiar with the non-profit concept of a 'theory of change.' You see a lot of daydreaming about transforming the world in the tech world and not nearly enough about how change actually happens. 

On the flip side, I wish non-profits were a little more fluent in the incentives and structures underpinning Tech. Both sectors carry assumptions about the other, and that hampers collaboration. So my advice here is to spend time understanding each other’s motivations and business models from a structural perspective. With more openness and understanding, we can use technology to build a better future for everyone.

Which three books or other media have impacted you most as a leader and why?

I'm having a bit of trouble pointing to specific books here. (Both because I've read too many books on leadership and, ironically, because most of my biggest leaps forward have been related to experiences rather than specific books!)

The #1 most valuable concept I've spent time with as a leader is role power. Role power is the idea that you inherently have a certain amount of power due to your title, and it will fundamentally change how other people interact with you. Awareness of—and learning to anticipate—how role power impacts the behaviours of my leaders, peers, and reports has dramatically improved my ability to show up positively and effectively within organisations. It's something I wish everyone was more fluent in! 

I'll also give the Manager Tools podcast a quick shoutout for its extremely practical and handy recommendations.

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More questions for Zoelle? Catch her on Twitter and LinkedIn.

Thanks so much for reading!

Lauren