#2: Carrie Murphy (Venture for America)

It's really easy to be siloed and to kind of get into routine and stick to that
routine and so i think part of it is we have to have a little bit of a culture
shift and change into proactively kind of going out of our way. To think about
sharing information or bringing other people into the conversation let's discover the
ecosystem. We are telling the stories of its entrepreneurs and those supporting them.
Welcome to the Lay of the Land podcast, where we're exploring what people are
building in the Klee. I'm Jeffrey Stern here with my fellow cartographer, The Taken.
And we're coming to you live from Cleveland. Today, we'll be speaking with Kari
Murphy, who knows all about what people are building in Cleveland as a venture for
America's Senior Director of Community Partnerships.
Because you are from Cleveland, how does it feel to work in a city you grew up
in? Yeah, it feels good. I mean, I had a great experience growing up in Cleveland.
You know, loved the community and friends that I built and the life that I had
when I graduated college. I don't know that I expected to be back in Cleveland or
to be having a career that I have now, but it's been rewarding to come back to a
city after working in New York City for a while where I really feel like I can
hopefully have an impact on a city that I love and also being able to be in a
place where I feel like I can really grow and take care of my family and hopefully
create the same, you know, life that I was afforded for my daughter.
That's amazing. And the boomerang effect seems to be common in Cleveland.
What made you come back? There were a couple things that made me come back to be
like cut like the city was getting smaller and smaller and smaller. So that was
really what started to drive the itch to think about moving back. I don't think it
was like one specific trigger and it wasn't like there was a job opportunity or a
huge life moment. You know, eventually we kind of made this decision based off of
our lease being up. But it all started when my husband and I were planning our
wedding back in 2014 and every time it was a date. So ironically Ironically or not
ironically, but my husband I decided to move back to Cleveland without jobs in
Cleveland And I would come back to Cleveland because we got married in Cleveland. We
were living in New York at the time. I Just felt like a happier person when I was
home. He quit his job and I Was able to continue working remotely,
but we just took the risk We made the move and fortunately we both were able to
find really great job fairly shortly after moving. It was easier to be outside and
explain, you know, had more space in a home and could drive a car and then regret
doing it. - Nice, you came back and you really took over the city and now you are
really what I would call a community connector. Can you explain what that is?
- Sure. So, you know, there's absolutely a part of my job that is right now about
kind of connecting different people in the community, and I think if I had to
describe my view of what a community connector is, you know, it's someone who has a
give -first mentality, and really I kind of like to take the approach of having the
mentality to do whatever it might be to help others succeed, even if there might
not be a direct benefit for myself. And I think that's something too, that I find
a lot of reward and satisfaction in being able to help connect two people that
might not have otherwise met and could create a great partnership or find a new job
or a new friend or whatever it might be. So that's kind of how I would describe
being a community connector and obviously with VFA now and bringing young
professionals to Cleveland and finding ways to connect them to new careers, new
organizations to get involved in, new mentors, things like that. It's really rewarding
work. Yeah. Could you take that community connector concept and kind of rooted in
Venture for America and your role as the senior director for community partnerships?
- Yeah, sure. So Venture for America, for those not aware of the fellowship program
for recent college graduates who are interested in entrepreneurship and have a goal
one day to either start their own company or become leaders in organizations that
are gonna have economic impacts and be able to really create a lot of opportunity
in cities like Cleveland. So my role on our community partnerships team based in
Cleveland and really is about building partnerships with potential funders and
supporters and people from a philanthropic standpoint given that we are a nonprofit
are also aligned with our mission and want to help support our organization and kind
of getting them involved in our work here locally. I also spend time getting to
know a lot of the different startups in the Cleveland community and in venture for
America is an opportunity for them to have access to talent that can really
hopefully help them scale and grow their businesses and be 10x multipliers for for
their organizations and really try to be a thought partner and a connector for those
businesses as well who are navigating all of the different highs and lows and
challenges when it comes to growing businesses. And then the third major part of my
job is, you know, fellow support and programming here locally for our fellows who
come to the city and helping them be able to navigate life in their first job,
life in a city that they've never been to. For many of them, Cleveland under the
new home, as well as, you know, finding different ways and events for them to
continue to build a community amongst each other, but also get connected to the
Cleveland ecosystem so that they can build meaningful relationships themselves. Yeah,
and to be a community connector, you have to be connected to the community. And for
VFA, how do you find your partners and how do you make those connections? - So,
you know, I think my prior life to VFA, I was in HR more specifically,
spent a lot of time in talent acquisition and recruiting. So I've spent a lot of
time talking to a lot of different people and there's just contacts and connections
that I've been able to maintain those relationships with. And I think a lot of it
is about being present and involved and engaged in the community. It's obviously
really challenging and different now with COVID, and not being able to have in
-person events like we used to. But a lot of it's about taking the time to be
present and to meet other people and making myself available for those conversations.
Yes, and it seems like Cleveland is a great friend of VFA as the accelerator was
here last year and planned to be here this year, but of course COVID -19 had
different ideas. But why was Cleveland VFA's favorite,
as we'll call it? Venture for America does run a four -month residential accelerator
program for our alumni who have a business concept that they're ready to go full
-time working on. And so really it started as an opportunity to give new founders
time and space to start building their companies. And in that accelerator,
we help provide stipends to cover the cost of food and housing and things that when
you start a new company, you don't necessarily are not generating revenue and you
might not have funding. And So having a little bit of air cover can really help
get your business off the ground. And over the years, we've built a curriculum in
which whatever city the accelerator is based. We have local subject matter experts
and founders, and individuals kind of help teach and become mentors as part of the
accelerator. And so in the fifth year of the accelerator's existence, We were looking
to bring it to a new city and we actually Ohio 3rd frontier is a Supporter of
Cleveland and they had given us funding to be able to bring the accelerator to the
state of Ohio There are bench for America's in three cities in Ohio Cleveland
Columbus and Cincinnati. So at the end of 2018 we actually launched an RFP process
across all three cities to see, hey, we're bringing our accelerator to the state of
Ohio. These are the three cities, these are the things that we're looking for and
that we need in order to run a successful program. What's the best you got,
ultimately? And through that RFP process, we had really, really great partners. We
did a lot of work with Start and CLE and we had several, I think the first
meeting, we had probably about 25 different people from the ecosystem to kind of
talk about what are the things that we could pull together as a community to help
make this possible and to just show it to venture for America that we want this.
And ultimately, Cleveland ended up winning the RFP process that we brought the
accelerator to Cleveland in 2019, which was really, really great and exciting. Yes.
And an accelerator is a great place to make connections. So what connections has the
VFA accelerator brought for companies that participate? I mean,
there are so many different members from the ecosystem who are involved in our
accelerator. So we had, you know, we do sessions to meet with different investors
and to do mock interviews. And so we've had, you know, Todd Federman from North
Coast that joined and Lin -Ann Grease and several other investors to help provide
some coaching there. And also, you know, we've had during our,
another example, during our demo night, which is at the end of the Accelerator
program, we actually had one of our Accelerator companies who at the time was
started and founded in San Antonio. But one of the founders is a Case Western
graduate and one of his professors, Scott Shane, happened to be in the room and
watched him. They reconnected and now Scott Shane is an investor in their
organization. And Ryan Cleary and Floatme has now gone through the G -Beta Accelerator
here in Cleveland in their first cohort. So there's been a lot of ability for
companies going through the Accelerator here, being able to get further connected into
the Cleveland ecosystem. Another example, gather another one of the fellow founded
companies that went through the Accelerator last year is now based in Cleveland. One
of the judges for our pitch competition who is the chief of staff at Insight to
Profit really liked their business concept and was willing to be a beta pilot
customer for them, and so it's been able to help businesses get connected to
potential mentors, potential customers, to potential investors, all the different things
that you need in order to be able to grow a business. It's crazy that you
mentioned FloatMe and Gather because the accelerator is for VFA companies across
cities, but those are both Cleveland companies, so. - I will say, float me with not
a Cleveland company until the accelerator, so. - Oh, wow. I guess the accelerator
changes things. (laughing) - It can have that effect. - Yeah, I think that can really
relate to the brain drain, actually. - So I guess with, and COVID is like the
purple elephant in the room at the moment. But the effect that it's having on at
least anecdotally, people, you know, exoduses from larger cities, the rise of remote
work, people living at home with their parents, just for context, you know, taking
it myself or also Venture for America fellows for everyone listening. But one of the
ideas that Venture for America originally sought out to address was this idea of the
brain drain. And so I would love to hear your perspective just on it as a topic
and expand upon it. And then why was it important to VFA and how do you think
that is coming into play now and how is COVID kind of affecting that? I think
there is a huge trend in a lot of particularly recent bachelor degree talents as
you know graduating school going to the coast and going to a lot of the bigger
cities and that was creating a problem for cities in the Midwest and in the South
the middle of America who were having a much much harder time retaining young
professional talent that's really critical to the growth and long -term sustainability
of any business whether you're talking about your big Fortune 500 organizations, your
manufacturing companies, or your startup. You need to make sure you're continuously
building that talent pipeline. And so it was certainly a big issue. And I even
remember when I graduated from college, the number of young professionals that were
moving back and starting their careers in Cleveland, was significantly lower than what
I just said. I don't have like the actual data points, but I even Just remember
reading that recently about downtown being, you know, at close to a hundred percent
capacity and we've already been, we've been building new apartment buildings and
things that like, that was not the case a while ago. But I think that the hope
was that the population downtown I think has doubled over the past decade. And I
think the hope and, you know, with venture for America is not only Recognizing the
brain drain and the need for that talent, but also recognizing the impact that a
growing startup can have on a community in the city and that the two combined can
really have a positive effect on those cities. And that's where this combination of
being able to bring the best and the brightest of our recent graduates to cities
like Cleveland and help them launch careers and have the ability to build businesses
and create economic opportunity in our city is really important and that's kind of
where it stemmed. And as you mentioned, like with COVID and now there's obviously,
and I think this is even happening before COVID, there's more of a, the cost of
living is so significantly high and outrageous in some of these larger cities that
there is definitely starting to be a trend where individuals are thinking twice and
considering moving back to the city where they maybe once grew up or in a different
place where there's, you know, some other benefits outside of just the job that they
have. I think COVID is forcing companies to realize that you can actually have your
employees be very productive while working remotely, and they don't necessarily have
to be in a particular city. So there's certainly a shift that is happening, and it
will be very interesting to see what practices that COVID has required companies to
do to be more, to have more flexibility and how many of those actually stay after
the fact. Yeah, there's kind of like two sides of the shift, I think. One is from
the individual's perspective and one is from the company's perspective. And I'm
curious with your experience and background in recruiting, how do you see the levers
that people are looking to pull when they're looking at their career opportunities at
this point, compensation, mission, culture, and how is that changing?
And in the context a venture for America, how do you see people thinking about
careers differently maybe than they were before? Yeah, I think there's definitely a
shift. I mean, obviously, I spend a lot of time working with hundreds of young
professionals graduating college and trying to think about what's next. And in talking
to our fellows as they're interviewing with potential companies, compensation, I mean,
I think a lot of people are starting to realize this, but compensation is not the
number one driver anymore as to what individuals are looking for. It obviously
slightly varies, but there's even more so with Gen Z coming into the workforce,
mission and purpose behind a company is incredibly important. Our younger generations
are not going to necessarily put up with a company that's maybe putting,
you know, profit over safety or over integrity or impact.
I also think that there's another thing that individuals are really focused on is
thinking about peer trajectory and having that growth mindset. Whereas maybe over the
past couple generations, particularly, you know, entering the economy when there is an
economic turn down, which we are currently kind of in. So it's a slightly different
situation as well. But at times it's also just about being able to collect a
paycheck and having the stability and security of a job. Whereas now there's this
mindset of what's my career and how am I going to continue to grow as a
professional and what's that path look like? I think those are things that are
really important to individuals. And And the last thing that I'm obviously in light
of all the unrest that has been happening, it's becoming even more of a focus point
for the young professionals I work with as they talk to companies to understand,
like, what is the company's commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion, and is it
a mindset that is being applied throughout all aspects of the business or is it
more of a lip service and a statement and nothing more and I think with our
younger generation that's going to become something that is going to in some cases
really test leadership to really make that commitment and hold them hold them to the
fire. As someone on the job hunt I 100 % back that up.
So on So, on the flip side of that coin, what then is it as simple as the
companies just trying to align with those levers you see people pulling,
or what are the companies that are pulling in the best people doing that other
companies could learn from and do better? Yeah. I will first off say I'm no expert
in this myself. I am still learning every single day, but at first and foremost,
you have to be genuine in your approach and really want to do what you're saying.
But I think there are levels around how you think about building and recruiting your
team, making sure that all of your processes, you're avoiding implicit bias,
you're creating an equitable interview process, you're taking the time and effort to
look at talent pools that you wouldn't maybe otherwise look at.
You know, there's an interesting, even one example, a lot of companies statistically
like referrals are sometimes the best way to bring new people onto your team.
But there is also now some companies are actually shifting away from referrals
because referrals tend to bring more of the same people. And so if you really want
to diversify your talent and open up to other pools, you have to open up the
network and the places in which you are trying to attract that talent. And that's
just unlike the talent front. I think there's a lot of things you think about, you
know, who are the vendors that you're partnering with, what's the culture that you're
building, because it's not just about bringing and hiring a diverse team,
but then actually how do you make that team feel like they can bring their full
self to the office and it's an inclusive environment where they can feel comfortable.
And so there's a lot of internal practices and culture shifts as well that I think
are going to need to be taken more seriously and an approach. This is a couple of
examples there. And from the COVID perspective, what are some of the things that you
think will outlive when life returns to some semblance of normal,
whatever that means, and whatever that is? What are the trends that it's accelerated
that you think are here to stay, and what do you think is more just a short -term
effect? So, I think remote work is here to stay.
I think there will still be a return to the office, not to the same extent that
it was before COVID. I was talking to another friend who has owned the company out
in LA and he's like, I never want to have a physical like pay for real estate
again. Like I can have my team be wherever they can be productive and like that's
so much overhead business, like I can put that money out for it. So there are some
businesses that are completely changing their mindset. But I think I remember before
COVID talking to people who were like, "I just want to be able to have like one
day where I work from home and have that." And it was like such a, such a fight
to try to get your manager to like let you do that. And now hopefully companies
have been able to set up the infrastructure to allow someone to be able to work
successfully remotely and hopefully employees have been able to prove and build the
trust that they can be just as if not more productive when they're working remotely.
So I think remote work is definitely still here to stay. It will look slightly
different, but I don't think that is necessarily going away. But I'm sure a lot of
people right now are like, I would do anything to get out of my house. like, can
I please go back into the office? So I don't think that's not going away, but
there might be some shifts in that in terms of what's just temporary.
Interesting question. I think there's still a, we're figuring out how do you build
connections and like a community virtually? And so I think there is still something
that you can't replace the bond and the experience you have interacting with someone
and meeting someone in person. I think there's still an aspect of programming,
whether it's different like pitch competitions or events that bring the community
together and young professionals together. We're trying to accommodate and do as many
things virtually, but how long are people going to want to continue attending
conferences sitting in their dining room looking at a computer? I think that's going
to come back. One of the things kind of building on that that I think it's easy
for us to take for granted right now is that everything that we are doing is
predicated on the fact that we have internet connection. We know that you're spending
some of your time right now working to kind of address this problem here in
Cleveland, which is particularly not good. So I'd love to hear the work that you're
doing on that and kind of more of the situation that we face here in Cleveland.
- Yeah, absolutely. The digital divide is real and it's bad and it's particularly bad
in the city of Cleveland. Cleveland's not the only city but it's it's certainly not
good and I think what COVID has really just exaggerated that how bad a situation is
particularly when you have young students who are now having to go to virtual
learning and they don't have access to the internet or they don't have a device to
be able to do that. And so it's really only going to continue to widen the gap
And so there's been a lot of studies talking in particular about how African
-American businesses have also been among the most impacted by COVID -19.
And so one of the things that we did when this got started was in partnership with
Cleveland Can't Wait, talking to Justin Bid, and we were just like, what can we do
to help and to make a difference? And so it actually, what began with an ideation
session with some of our fellows and the Mount Pleasant and Union Mile Community
Development Corporations, which are both based on the east side of Cleveland. We had
a ideation session with them just to kind of understand as a minority owned
businesses, what are the challenges that you're having and what impact has COVID had
and what are your biggest biggest team point to kind of understand where there were
needs so that we weren't making any assumptions and then if there were ways that we
could come up with potential solutions to help them, we would do that. In that
ideation session that took place, there were several kind of key themes and problems
that came out, the digital divide and not having an online because our identity to
be able to indicate to customers that your business is open, these are your hours,
these are the protocols that you're taking for COVID -19. Here's how you find where
we're located and communicating out with your consumers. That it doesn't exist to the
extent that it does and maybe another community. Information sharing between the city,
the county, the state and understanding like where their access to potential funds
and support and resources is another issue, particularly with the digital divide.
If you don't have access to the internet or a device, like how are you supposed to
find out about the resources that are available to you? We found out that a lot of
these businesses are actually being really significantly hurt by the food delivery
services that are losing a lot of their profit margins because of the costs that
are attached with that and just being able to like attract customers to their
businesses. And, and then also a lot of businesses are experiencing insurance
redlining. So, you know, we, we had this session and then from there, we're like,
okay, well, we don't want to play, we can't stop there. What, what else can we do
to, to help make it a, you know, help solve or work to improve on some of these
problems? So the first thing that we're doing is an initiative called the digital
land initiative. And ultimately it's really a grassroots effort to reach out to the
local businesses in Mount Pleasant and Union Miles and see if they have an interest
and a need to be connected and have online identities for their businesses.
And if so, like what types of identities do they want? if they want a Yelp page,
is it just being on Google Maps? Is it about having a Facebook community for your
consumers or whatever it might be? And then from there, we plan to solicit as many
volunteers as we can who are willing to donate some of their time to help these
businesses create those online entities as well as provide some training and resources
so that they can continue to know how to manage and upkeep those profiles to help
them be able to continue to attract more customers and and hopefully grow their
businesses. That's one of the things that that we're doing. I think there's there's
so much issues with our schools as well. You know, I think there's like over 50
,000 households in Cleveland that don't have an in -home connection to the internet.
There's a lot of work to be done. those are some of the things working on in our
spare time. - And it takes a team to really execute on amazing initiatives like
that. And you mentioned Cleveland Can't Wait and Justin Bibb.
What are partnerships in Cleveland like for VFA? And how do you find those that are
supportive of VFA's mission in particular? - I'm very much in favor of collaborating
as much as possible and trying not to, you know, recreate something if it's already
been done or if someone's already doing it well, like why, like let's, let's
partner. So I think a lot of another, you know, partnership that we've done and in
a relationship that's grown over the, particularly this year is with Case Western's
VL Institute for Entrepreneurship and really trying to figure out how can we, you
know, help our young professionals and students that are in Cleveland understand and
learn about the startup ecosystem and the different entrepreneurial journeys of diverse
entrepreneurs that exist in Cleveland. And so we've been partnering with them to, to
kind of connect young individuals and really anyone, but connect people to learn more
about founders who are doing really great things that maybe aren't always in
mainstream media. And a lot of like finding those relationships is just again, it's
going to an event, running into someone, making that connection and staying in touch
with people. And it's over time like the hopefully an opportunity rises where you
can, you can continue to connect and a lot of the events and programming that we're
doing now, again, it's about being collaborative. There's nothing that's necessarily
exclusive. All the things that we're doing, I sent emails to Teach for America, the
Cleveland Foundation fellows, like Engage Cleveland. For anyone that wants to attend
the things that we're looking on, we want to bring the community together. See,
you've So you've corralled the Cleveland community in a way that has brought a lot
of these organizations that we talked about today together, starting CLEE, Third
Frontier, North Coast. Cleveland can't wait a lot more. How do you think that all
these organizations who I think share an alignment on the trajectory of Cleveland and
Cleveland entrepreneurship that we'd like to go, how you know, bring these
organizations together and do more of that collaboration. You know, I think it's
really easy, probably in everyone in your own job, within your company, within your
own neighborhoods, in your communities, it's like really easy to be siloed and to
kind of get into routine and stick to that routine. And so I think part of it is
we have to have a little bit of a culture shift and and to proactively kind of
going out of our way to think about sharing information or bringing other people
into the conversation. So I think there's, you know, there has to be an effort.
It's not gonna happen organically. You know, you have to take the time to continue
to do those follow -ups or intentionally try to partner and bring in other
individuals versus, you know, I could, I could plan an awesome panel discussion with,
you know, myself and maybe some fellows. And it'd be fine. I don't know how much
how wide our audience would be that we would reach. But if I partnered with another
organization who has a great network and a great way to communicate out that panel,
and we can hit even more people and get the message heard by even more people
like, Why not do that? We just have to make the effort to think of others and to
not feel like we all have to do it ourselves. And others also have to be receptive
and open -minded to trying to partner and collaborate together. All that collaboration
has to lead to something great. So what is Cleveland doing well?
You know, I think there is, it's kind of a cliche you talk to everyone and people
will say what's the best thing about Cleveland and there are really, really as a
strong community here there are people who are very genuine and they want to help
and they want to make a difference. They're supportive. So we have the right people.
I think we've got some core industries here that are doing well and have been
growing, But I think the collaboration we're doing,
I'm hoping, can be done by more others as well. I think there's an opportunity for
us to continue to connect corporates to startups and to be able to have non -profits
partner together or whatever it might be. I think there's an opportunity for us to
do more collaboration to your point to have hopefully an even bigger impact and on
the other side of that what do you wish Cleveland could do better how long is this
podcast I'm just kidding no I think there's a couple things that's a broad question
and so if I if I look at from a startup entrepreneurial ecosystem perspective I
think there's you know this we have them really incredible entrepreneurs and
businesses here that For the most part I feel have kept their head down and
continue to work forward and I think we could do a better job really Investing in
the wins and the good work that is currently happening Rather than sometimes feeling
like we have to create these new shiny initiatives or, you know, I think there,
there is good things happening. Um, like within three and Lakewood just to raise a
hundred million dollars, like that's a huge win. And so that's something that like
things like that, like let's learn from what they're doing and let's highlight what
they're doing and continue to focus on what's working rather than feeling like we
have to build something new. Um, So that's one thing I think from a also from a
just startup perspective, I think we need more risk capital. I think there's
certainly money in Cleveland and there are there are plenty of investment firms, but
I think really being able to provide the capital to help our companies grow beyond
a our startups grow beyond a certain point is is going to be critical as well for
us to continue to see growth in that ecosystem. - You have a great perspective as
the Senior Director of Community Partnerships at VFA as you manage not only
Cleveland, but Cincinnati and Columbus as well. So how does Cleveland stand out
amongst the big Cs?
Cincinnati and Cleveland, you know, I'm still, I'm still kind of getting to know the
Columbus and Cincinnati ecosystems better, but where I see Cleveland standing out is
obviously certainly in healthcare and biotech. And this is kind of thinking about the
startup ecosystem or specifically certainly more success in the B2B space. I think
there's, there's angel money and Cleveland. I think Cleveland has a ton of current
and prospective entrepreneurs. There are people that are great at generating fantastic
ideas and an entrepreneurial spirit in Cleveland. And so there's a lot of potential,
I think in the community here in Columbus, there's a lot of insurance tech.
Columbus has seen a ton of growth, particularly with firms like Drive Capital that
are really being able to invest a lot of money and bring a lot of startups to
Columbus, you're starting to see more unicorns in Columbus that we don't necessarily
see as much of here in Cleveland. And interestingly with Cincinnati,
Cincinnati has a ton of accelerators. And so that's something that definitely varies
compared to what I see in both Cleveland and Columbus. And I also see a little bit
more, might not be the case, but I see a little bit more of corporate innovation
and corporates that have innovation teams are partnering with startups in Cincinnati
in particular. Yes, Cincinnati does have a lot of bootcamps and accelerators.
I've been trying to get with that new But, you know, maybe they'll hear this.
Yes. So I think that we have a great idea of how Cleveland Entrepreneurs' Ecosystem
differs from Cincinnati and Columbus. Now, can we really learn our favorite question?
We love to paint a collective collage from our guests of what really resonates with
them about Cleveland? So what is your favorite thing about Cleveland? - You know,
I love that Cleveland has really just about all of the amenities and the extra
perks that you would get in a big city that are much more affordable and accessible
and just like at your fingertips. And so I think there's a benefit to having,
you know, an unbelievable metro park system and unbelievable theater district, a great
food scene, professional sports, three professional stadiums all within walking
distance. There's just a lot of things that we have in this city that even some
big cities don't have access to. So I think that's something that I really love
about Cleveland is if you really make the effort, there are so many incredible
things that you can do in the city and along the way meet really incredible people.
I believe that, I mean, even though half of my time in Cleveland has been post
COVID pandemic, I've been having a ball. It is a great place.
If anyone listening is interested in following up with you about the Digital Land
Initiative, about Venture for America. What's the best way that they could get in
touch? - Yeah, I would love to speak with anyone. So please feel free to reach out.
LinkedIn is probably the best. You can certainly find me on LinkedIn. Anyone can
send me an email directly. It's just my first name, Carrie @VentureForAmerica .org. I'm
on Twitter, but I don't know if I'll see your DM if you said me something. So I'd
say LinkedIn or email are probably the best, best, best. Awesome. Well, we really
appreciate having you on today and telling us your story and everything you're
working on. It's very exciting stuff. Yeah. Thank you both for having me. Thank you
for taking the time to put together this podcast and share everyone's stories with
the community. That's all for this week. Thanks for listening. We'd love to hear
your thoughts on today's show, so shoot us an email @layoftheland at upside .fm or
find us on Twitter @podlayoftheland, @theTagan, or @sternhefe,
J -E -F -E.