The Human Side Of AI: Strengthening Culture And Leadership In Nonprofits With Tadzio Smith, Co-Founder & CEO, Rapport

Welcome to the Discovery Pod, Tajo.

Hi.

Well, it is so great to have you on.

This is going to be a special episode.

Typically, we're talking to CEOs and founders of social profit organizations across Canada.

Today, we're going to be talking about a really interesting tool that I believe holds a lot of promise for leaders in social profit organizations to connect with and build the culture within their own organization.

And to talk a little bit about more of that, I'm so glad to have you here.

Tell us, what is rapport and what's the problem you're trying to solve?

Thanks, Doug.

Really excited to be here and thank you to everyone who's listening.

We're building AI to increase the emotional intelligence and people skills within organizations.

I think we're in a really intense moment that's not always fully appreciated how difficult it is to work together right now.

I think this is actually felt quite acutely in the social profit sector.

I have a really great co-founder.

He's been a social entrepreneur his entire life.

He's more known in the US than in Canada, but his name is Van Jones.

And he has a, you might know him if you watch CNN.

Of course.

He has a framework that he likes to talk about the workplaces that we're in right now.

He calls them 3D workplaces.

And these are often distributed.

You know, people spread across different locations and time zones and screens and diverse, right? Across age groups, gender, race, geography, but also increasingly divided.

And not just by politics, but by stress or overload or all the issues that can really turn a Slack channel into like a conflict zone immediately.

So, you know, I think this is really... you know the first time in human history that we're asking people to work together that might you know look different love different vote different pray different and then on top of this you're doing this over zoom you're trying to manage a team and you don't even know if the people you're talking to are wearing pants right it's a really difficult environment to to lead in and so

i find it best not to wonder about that last one