Cory speaks to business woman and social leader Aria Finger, who is best known for her role as the CEO of DoSomething.org, which is one of the world largest organizations for young people and social change, boasting over 5 million members in over 131 countries. In this weeks episode, Aria talks about her 12-year journey from joining as an associate to becoming the CEO, she also shares her method of overcoming hard decisions, the importance of transparency and her thoughts on the future of non-profit organizations.
[00:01:00] Cory: Thank you Aria you for joining me on today’s show. For those of you who don’t know DoSomething.org, Aria would you share a couple sentences about DoSomething.org?
[00:01:13] Aria: Absolutely, DoSomething.org is actually the largest organization for young people and social change in the world. We’d like to say we’re a tech company that is actually a nonprofit by status. We have 5.7 million young people aged 13–25 who take action with us on our social change campaigns. We focus on everything from homelessness, poverty, discrimination, Black Lives Matter, immigration — anything that a young person could care about: we have the campaign to help you take action on that course.
[00:01:41] Cory: You joined as an associate 12 years ago, how did you hear about DoSomething.org?
[00:01:46] Aria: I heard about DoSomething.org in the most cliché way that young people who care about social change can, which is on the idealist.org. I sent my resume and they called. I was lucky to join a small mighty team of five.
[00:02:00] Cory: Wow. How did you become the CEO?
[00:02:04] Aria: Yes,12 years later, I’ve been now the CEO for two years. There was about a decade in my career here that I made the shift. One reason I became the CEO is because I had an incredible boss in Nancy Lublin who is now the CEO of Crisis Text Line who believed in me every step of the way and then a little luck and hopefully some hard work that led to Do Something really growing from five people to 60 people today. It enabled me to have growth opportunities as we built the company up and as I continued on in my career.
[00:02:34] Cory: When you joined in 2005, was it something that you knew in a decade or so “I think I could run this company,” or has this has been a complete shock to go from starting out as a team of five to now CEO of a much bigger team?
[00:02:47] Aria: During my job interview with Nancy, Nancy asked what the future holds for me. I told her that in two years I was going to leave DoSomething.org to apply to the Woodrow Wilson School for Public Policy at Princeton.
Luckily, she didn’t believe me and she hired me anyway because what a dumb thing for a job applicant to say they’re going to leave in two years go back to school. I thought I would say I’d do something two to three, four years if I really loved it and then I’d move on. I don’t think anyone, any of my good friends or people I have known forever; no one is surprised that I’m still at DoSomething.org because I’m so passionate about it. But I definitely did not expect to be here 12 years later.
[00:03:26] Cory: Let’s talk a little about Nancy. She’s amazing and she runs Crisis Text Line right now. What are some of the things that you’ve learned from her? How long have you known her? Was 2005 the first time you met and what are some of the things you’ve learned?
[00:03:39] Aria: Nancy and I met in 2005 right when I started working at DoSomething.org. One of the great things about our relationship, and I think why it worked so well is because anyone who meets her knows that she is blunt and candid and tells like it is, and that’s something that I appreciate so much. You always know where you stand; you always know if you’re are doing good work or not. There was no passive aggression or anything like that. Everything is really out in the open. I think similarly, when you’re the CEO, sometimes people don’t disagree with you, or they don’t tell you the truth or they just try to please you.
One thing that I really worked hard on over the last 10 years that I worked with Nancy is I told her the truth. I always told her when I disagreed with her or when I thought she was making the wrong decision. She really counted on that and then I became someone she really relied on in the organization.
[00:04:25] Cory: How did you do that in a way without offending people?
[00:04:29] Aria: [laughs] Yes, clearly you need to build that rapport first. I think that’s important. I always like to say, if you’re in an organization and there’s going to be a controversial decision made, you owe it to the organization, the company, the brand to speak out and tell the people in charge or the people who are going to make the decision how you feel. Once the decision is made, even if it’s a decision you don’t like, you have to follow in line. Your only option is to say okay, I understand the decisions made and I fall behind you. Your other option’s leaving the company of course, but there’s no place for pouting or being angry if the decision’s done. I think I did a good job of when we disagreed, and if I didn’t win, I said, “Okay, I support you. I get that that’s the decision being made and I’ll follow along.” I think that’s really important for everyone to get on board with.
[00:05:18] Cory: Do you have a science for making hard decisions? There’s a major company decision that has to be made and you’re 50/50. Do you have any tactics on making hard decisions?
[00:05:30] Aria: Well, I’ll say that I’m always too slow in making them and I think that often the best thing that a leader could do is probably make them more quickly so that you’re not keeping your company in paralysis or keeping your employees waiting for months and months. Of course, you want to take time to get the right information but I do think that you need to figure out what information you need and it’s never 100%. Layout, do I need 60% of information? What is key pieces of information that I need so that I can make the decision as quickly as possible? Then move fast because every time I’ve made a decision too slowly, I’ve always regretted it. I know that that’s one place where I can certainly improve.
[00:06:07] Cory: Do you have an example of something more recent that came about where you did it the correct way?
[00:06:16] Aria: You know what? Here’s the incorrect way. I think with everything happening in the news, we need to respond immediately. Whether it’s a hurricane, whether it President Trump’s announcement of DACA, whether it’s an unfortunate police shooting of an unarmed black man. I think every time that we haven’t spoken up or we haven’t made a decision about how to respond, every time that’s been too slow I’ve regretted it. The minute something happens you need to respond both for your employees and for your consumers.
[00:06:44] Cory: When you make those fast responses have mistakes been made? Have you had to go back and say, “Well, actually here’s what we meant by that.” Does that ever happen?
[00:06:51] Aria: You always make mistakes and I truly believe that transparency is the most important thing especially when you’re thinking internally with your employees. If people don’t know what’s going on they’ll fill in the blanks. They’ll try to question, they’ll try to see what’s going on, but if they see that you’re being thoughtful about decisions and that you’re talking through them and they know that you’re walking through whatever decision you’re making, then I think they forgive you. Because they see you as human and they see you as walking through those decisions. Now with corporate leaders lately, sharing their ideas with their consumers and their employees has led them to have that goodwill along the way because they see they’re trying to make the right decision.
[00:07:28] Cory: How transparent is DoSomething.org?
[00:07:32] Aria: Personally, I’m pretty transparent. I have my gynecology appointments on my work calendar so there’s really nothing that’s hidden on my side. We try to be transparent where it’s necessary. I think a great example is we have a Tuesday morning management meeting where we have probably about 12 of the 60 people on the team coming to a room to decide upcoming programming, what we’re going to focus on, and how we’ve done the past weekend. Someone asked at a quarterly dinner — we have these anonymous quarterly dinners where anyone on staff can ask a question on the C suite.
They said like, “Hey, I want to come to that. I want to see what’s going on.” and we just thought like, “We can’t fit 60 people in a room.” But there’s no reason why we can’t just open that up, and videotape it and let anyone who wants, come into the Google hangouts. Now that Tuesday morning meeting is entirely transparent because there was no reason we were keeping it closed. It was just a question of how many people we could fit. I think when things need to be confidential they need to be confidential but if there’s no reason make it transparent.
[00:08:27] Cory: I like that. What would say the coolest part of your job is?
[00:08:30] Aria: Hands down, the coolest part of my job is that we can have an idea, Tuesday at 10:00 AM to make social change and then Tuesday at noon we can have tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of young people joining us and taking action on that issue. There’s just nothing more magical than that.
[00:08:48] Cory: Do you have any people that mentor you as a CEO?
[00:08:51] Aria: Yes, so in addition to Nancy I’m such a big proponent of talking to other people who are in your job function. We started this group called CEOs for good and once a quarter Nancy and I get together with other awesome and fun and nice nonprofit CEOs in New York who are running tech companies and we just gab over dinner and we talk about out the problems we’re having and complain about funding and talk about our amazing employees and it’s such so necessary for folks to have that network of people who you can completely be yourself with but who also know what it’s like to go through what you’re going through.
[00:09:25] Cory: What are some of the common challenges that CEOs are going through right now?
[00:09:29] Aria: A common problem for everyone both nonprofit and for-profit I think that we see across the space is how much to engage in the political system that we’re in right now. Because everything has become politicized. You might think, “The smart thing for anyone to do is just not engage in politics.” Well, it’s not really politics anymore when you have an undocumented person who’s one of your consumers or it’s not just politics if you have three trans employees or DoSomething.org has 280 members who are dreamers, and so it’s not just politics for them. It’s real life and so I think that’s a big question for everyone. It’s like how do you engage without turning people off because you want to make sure that you support your consumers and employees that you really care about. I think another question, and this is again for any company for-profit or nonprofit that’s focused on technology is, how do you hire and retain amazing engineers and product folks? If we’re going to live or die by our technology, we better have the best technology in the business.
[00:10:21]Cory: How do you retain awesome employees and keep people happy?
[00:10:25] Aria: The number of things I’m sure is too long to list, but I’ll say three categories. One is, you stay at a place when you feel like you’re doing important work that you personally are contributing to. Just as I said my favorite thing about DoSomething.org is the fact you got to come up with an idea and execute it immediately, that immediacy and that we’re not just talking about things, we’re doing them. We’re clothing homeless people, we’re delivering cards to Muslims during Ramadan. We’re making sure that young people have self-esteem and aren’t cutting and are engaging in self-harm. That ability to actually make a difference and feel like your job, in particular, is contributing to that. It’s a huge reason why people stay.
Number two, we do have great perks. We have a sabbatical program. After you’ve been at DoSomething.org for just two years you can take a month off to volunteer anywhere in the world and paid, you come back and you have to commit to a third year with DoSomething. It’s an amazing four-week of volunteer vacation that you’re going to take, and on the DoSomething side, we get you to commit to that third year in the organization, we’re happy to have that retention.
Then the third thing I would just say is your coworkers. You want to work with smart brilliant people and we’re very lucky that we’ve put together an incredibly diverse, in every way whether that racially, religion, geography, interest, just a diverse group of really smart people. It’s a pleasure to come to work every day and work with them.
[00:11:45] Cory: That sabbatical is such an awesome idea. Was that always the case or is that more recent?
[00:11:48] Aria: Well, it’s definitely not recent because I’ve been on three. You can take one every two years, we actually put it into place about eight years ago. Then we had someone volunteer with Hillary Clinton and our CTO just got back from volunteering as a CTO with WIBO, we have someone heading to Indonesia next month, someone else went to Japan. It’s just an incredible opportunity to open your eyes and see what other organizations are doing and really utilize your skills in new ways.
[00:12:14] Cory: Do you have any routines, morning, afternoon or evening?
[00:12:17]Aria: I’m the worst. It’s like when you read those articles, it’s like you know what you shouldn’t do like don’t sleep with your phone, make sure not to check email first thing in the morning. I’m like, yes, I do every single one of those things. I’ll say the one thing that keeps me going is that I don’t drink coffee. I’ve never had a cup in my life, there is nothing that I rely on to get me going. I just have to rely on my own personal energy and that served me well. I haven’t fallen into that vice trap but in terms of routine, no. I only have bad habits. I can’t impart any good ones, I should just stop there.
[00:12:52] Cory: What are some of the bad habits that you’re trying to solve or fix?
00:12:56] Aria: Stop using social media. it’s embarrassing to talk about the same failures as everyone else. But no. I think that the thing that I at least struggle with that I’m sure everyone struggles with is are you doing the things that are urgent but not important? One of the things I do try to do is at the end of every day, and at the beginning of every week, I list out what are the important things that I should be focusing on that aren’t urgent, that aren’t hitting us in three weeks, three months, three years down the road. I actually spend time on those because you can just get eaten up by urgent not important and then your business will have no strategy.
[00:13:31] Cory: Regarding the social media stuff, one thing I did recently was I turned off, aside from text messages, all of my notifications on my iPhone. I don’t get any notifications on my iPhone except for text messages. Then one other thing that I did recently was I bought an alarm clock as I found myself in the same habit of waking up in the middle of the night and checking my phone to see what time it was, then going into email etcetera. To prevent that I got an alarm clock, where now, I look at the clock in the middle of the night. I see it’s 4:00 in the morning, then I don’t check my phone and I go back to sleep. It’s been super helpful.
[00:14:03] Aria: I need to do that. If this was 1985 and someone heard that the CEOs of tech companies were saying like, “I have a brilliant idea, buy an alarm clock.” Everyone would laugh, but it really is great advice Cory.
[00:14:16] Cory: Did you have anything weird, any bad habit that you do every day?
[00:14:19] Aria: Anything weird? No, I think the weirdest thing about me is that I love magic. I’m a huge sucker for magicians. I even had a magician at my wedding but I certainly don’t do magic every day. I won’t cop to that weird thing.
[00:14:33] Cory: What was your teenage years like? What was highschool like? What was college like?
[00:14:38] Aria: The thing about high school is that for the most part, you get props if you’re good at two things: if you’re going at academics or if you’re good at sports. In so many high school scenarios, no one is appreciated for being unbelievably creative or even good at coding. I took computer science in high school and no one cared and no one was lauded for those other talents — all that matters is academics and sports.
That being said, I was really good at academic and sports. I really loved high school. I had a wonderfully, economically and racially diverse public school that I attended. I had a great group of friends. My best friends to this day, I have known since I was 11. I got along with my siblings. I had a pretty awesome high school experience and as someone who knew that my parents weren’t paying for college that was pretty much thrown out since we were five. It also just pushed me to work hard because I knew that the only way I was going to get to college was if some college was going to give me a scholarship based on academics and that propelled me to work hard. Then I got into Wash U, which was awesome, and I had a great time there too.
[00:15:38] Cory: Did you know immediately that this is a type of work that you wanted to be doing or was there any confusion?
[00:15:45] Aria: No. I have known forever. I gave a big speech in ninth grade in my Social Studies class about the rising inequalities in our country and the difference between the rich and the poor, and someone actually graffiti-ed my locker with the word communist when I was 14 because of my crazy radical views. I always knew I was going to go into this work. I was an Economics major in college. I definitely saw my friends go off to Financial Services or Consulting but the minute I decided that, “No, I want to try my hand at non-profits. I want to prove to people that they’re efficient and effective and can be market-based.” That was a really great moment because it solidified what I wanted to do and then I haven’t looked back. I still use my love of Economics and my love of numbers and my love of statistics every day. I love the field I’m in.
[00:16:31] Cory: What would be your advice to someone in college or just graduating that doesn’t know what they want to do and they’re trying to figure that out?
[00:16:39] Aria: It’s so trite, but I would say, “Think of what you love.” Not the typical, “Do what you love,” but think about the things that you love to do, that probably signify that you’re good at them. My biggest takeaway for being at DoSomething.org for 12 years, is that there’s not talented people and untalented people. There’s people who are talented at specific functions and specific jobs, and there’s people who aren’t. If I was hired to be the creative director, I would fail and I would be fired. If I was hired to be a writer, I would fail and I’d be fired. I would really just think about what you love to do because that probably signifies that you’re pretty good at it and go all in on that. Just go all in on what you’re amazing at and then you will be the most successful that you can be. We’ve had people join DoSomething.org and we’ve been about to fire them, you switch their roles, switch their function at DoSomething.org and they’ve absolutely thrived and been promoted. I think finding the right fit for your skill set is absolutely crucial.
[00:17:35] Cory: What do you think the future of nonprofits looks like? What do you think the future of DoSomething.org looks like? How often should the company’s evolve? What should their KPIs be? Where do you see the future of nonprofit’s going?
[00:17:47] Aria: I think the future of nonprofits and the future of Do Something might diverge a little bit. The future of nonprofits, I think, we’re going to see consolidation in the space. Everyone complains about there being too many non-profits. There’s a new non-profit incorporated every 15 minutes, and we have over 1.5 million of us, and because of constrained funding sources, non-profits are going to have to either collaborate or close their doors in order to survive.
We think we’re going to see some really smart collaborations which I think is going to be fantastic. For Do Something, in particular, we’ve been pretty lucky and figuring out how to create both earned income revenue streams and revenue streams that come from corporate partners which is very rare for a nonprofit. I think for us, the future is all about how can we compete in the marketplace not as a non-profit but just for young persons’ time. When you’re 17 you don’t say, “ I’ll go to dosomething.org, or I’ll go or download the After School app.” It’s okay for DoSomething.org to have worse technology because they are non-profits. Absolutely not. We need to have the best technology, the best community, the best product possible. We’re going to be competing on that playing field, and I welcome that. Because folks who are doing social change should be just as sophisticated as everyone else.
[00:18:57] Cory: Very cool. What are some ineffective things that you see people do? Whether that be fellow CEOs, people on your team — what are some ineffective things that you see people do that if you are mentoring someone younger than you with less experience you would say, “Hey, here are some urgent but not important things that you should not worry about.”
[00:19:13] Aria: [laughs]That’s interesting. I looked at my to-do-list from a year ago because I had it online and I just laughed at myself. I was like, “Oh God. Did I really spend time on those things? That’s embarrassing.” For folks who are just starting out, I would just say, every single thing that you think is a crisis isn’t. [laughs] The things that are really going to bring you down are not the day to day fires that seem like such a big deal. It took me a long time to learn that lesson, that everything you think is a crisis isn’t. But one of the lessons that I’m trying to learn, to make myself more effective is just really to think about the outcomes.
You don’t have to win if you’re in a partnership dispute or if you’re talking to an employee or whatever it is. Just think about how to get the best outcome and what you need to do to get there. You might not have to be right to get the best outcome and you just want to get to the best place. Just again, really being strategic about how do we all reach the best outcomes and this plays a lot in the diversity space.
Everyone talks about women and people of color and technology, it’s such an important discussion to have but I think that the way to get there is probably not by vilifying white men. It’s by bringing white men into the conversation. That might not feel so great to some people, they want to punish some of the bad actors in the space but I would just say think about the end that you want and what is the best way to get there.
[00:20:35] Cory: I like that. One of the biggest questions that I get from people who attend Internapalooza, who are current college students, is how do I build a network? What would your advice be to these students who go to school all over North America that aren’t necessarily in New York, not necessarily in San Francisco, what would be your advice to them for how to build a network?
[00:20:53] Aria: I’m not just saying this Cory because we’re talking to each other but the point is moot — they have Internapalooza. You asked me about my mentors and who’s been the most helpful and certainly expert advice has been critical but the people who have been most helpful to my success have been my peers. I think that when you’re at Internapalooza instead of trying to meet the next big speaker that’s there or the next big person who’s 20 years ahead of you in your career, create deep relationships with your peers and support them because then they will support you. Then you create this awesome reinforcing positive narrative and they help you get places which I think is pretty awesome.
[00:21:32] Cory: I want to talk a little bit about controversy. Do you have any stories about DoSomething.org first-hand or second-hand of any controversial situations that have come up?
[00:21:43] Aria: This really reminds me of a campaign we were running last May to June. We were actually looking at the issue of Islamophobia at DoSomething. We saw a bit of Islamophobia and United States, in particular, was increasing and hate crimes against Muslim Americans are on the rise. We were hearing from our Muslim members that they didn’t feel safe or they were being taunted for wearing hijabs in school and we wanted to create a campaign to combat that. Adam on our team came up with an amazing campaign. He wanted our members, DoSomething.org members to create homemade happy Ramadan cards and we would deliver them to every single mosque in America. To just show the Muslim community in the US that teenagers got your back, they won’t discriminate against you, they all welcome you into their communities with open arms. We were so pumped about this campaign, it was going to be incredible and we wanted to launch a few weeks before Ramadan so we could have time to make all these awesome cards.
Two things happened. First, we went out to lots of companies, corporate sponsors, and brands and we’re trying to figure out who wanted to sponsor this campaign. It was crickets, no one wanted to touch this campaign with a 10-foot pole because unfortunately Islamophobia was seen as too controversial. We said, okay, no big deal, we’ll just run this campaign without a sponsor, we can cover the costs. But then the second thing happened was that the Manchester terrorist attack at the Ariana Grande concert in England happened two days before we were set to launch this campaign.
First, all of our celebrities dropped out and refused to participate in the campaign and we were advised to just drop the campaign. “Don’t do it,” “give people time to heal,” “this is too raw,” “this is insensitive,” “what are you doing?” We didn’t want to be insensitive but we saw that this was going to be the perfect time to launch the campaign. After a terrorist attack, actually Islamophobia increases and we need to show the youth of America and have them show the world that a terrorist is not indicative of the vast majority of Muslim Americans. I’m really proud of my team. My team pushed forward, we launched the campaign anyway with no sponsor, with no celebrities, with no support and it was slow going. But in the end, the campaign was enormously successful.
We sent over 45,000 homemade cards to every single mosque in America and we got great media pick up. Everyone from Refinery29 to NBC picked it up and talked about the campaign. We got to highlight the incredible DoSomething.org members who are creating these cards. It doesn’t always work out that way but I’m really proud we stuck to our guns and said, we have to stand up for what we believe in and launch the campaign anyway.
[00:24:13] Cory: That’s awesome. Congratulations, how do you think people should deal with controversy? Do you think people should shy away from it, seek it or just not back away when it comes out?
[00:24:22] Aria: In general, if you don’t see any controversy with anything you’re doing maybe that’s a problem, you certainly shouldn’t be afraid of pushing the envelope especially if it’s for standing up for something you believe in. Not to mention, there’s always going to be haters and there’s always going to be trolls. DoSomething.org sees this a lot where we see on Facebook or Twitter or social media that all of a sudden people will be attacking us for some stance or another that we made. It freaks us out, we say, should we back away? But then we look more closely and we see two things. One is that most of the people who are trolling us are 40, 50 and 60 years old, they’re not our target market and two we see a much much greater chorus of young people supporting those very same actions. That what’s important to us. It’s like if we were alienating all of our members for being too controversial, that would be a concern. But if we’re alienating a few 45-year-olds then that’s fine.
[00:25:15] Cory: Do you remember the first time you were trolled?
[00:25:17] Aria: It’s really been too many to name but we’ve been called some pretty, terrible names and I think that the first time that we were trolled when I was CEO, that’s probably — that sticks with me more than ever because you also have to worry about your revenue model. Especially when you’re working with corporate brands. Yes, it was pretty scary.
DoSomething.org was attacked by a lot of super right-wing, alt-right Nazi ass websites. They went after us for our various point of views, anti-discrimination, really ‘controversial’ things like that and I think the thing that scared us was they started naming all of our sponsors. We had to worry. Wow, if all of our sponsors back out, then how can we run our business? But we also have to trust that the companies that we work with aren’t going to back away just because some alt-right websites are name-checking them, and we were right. No one backed away and it turned out okay but suddenly again as a first time CEO, I was like, “ I better not screw this up.”
[00:26:13] Cory: What’s something controversial today that you think won’t be tomorrow?
[00:26:17] Aria: Anything related to gay rights and the trans community. I think we’ve seen how — again, not quickly for the people who are over experiencing it but we’ve seen public opinion shift pretty rapidly. I think that issue certainly is going to become way less controversial. Then I actually think that — and I might be wrong on this but I hope not. Climate change for some reason has become politicised and controversial and I think the pendulum will swing back the other way and it will not be a controversial issue in five to 10 years because everyone will just believe in it and be fighting to figure out what to do.
[00:26:48] Cory: When you were growing up as a High School or College student, was there anything controversial that you did and you think your parents didn’t agree with or your family said, “Aria, I don’t think you should go that route?”
[00:27:00] Aria: I got my tongue pierced. [laughs] I had my tongue pierced for 12 years. My mom was so not happy with me. I was hired at DoSomething.org with a tongue ring. Luckily it didn’t stop me from getting a job but I actually think growing up the controversial thing for me to do would have been if I had become a lawyer or a financial planner. It was forbidden that I become a lawyer in my family. I would have been ostracized.
[00:27:26] Cory: What are some of the books and podcasts that you recommend to people that you really like today?
[00:27:32] Aria: I love so many podcasts. It’s just absurd that there’s way too many to name. I love the old favorites like This American Life and Radiolab and Planet Money but I also love so much of the new stuff coming out of gimlet. Whether it’s Reply All or StartUp. I just think they’re super smart and they’re not always related to my business but they just get you to think. You asked earlier about what college seniors should be thinking about, everyone should just be thinking about how to think.
How to just know more about the entire world. I love those podcasts that are slightly out of my comfort zone and I’m just learning something new and I write down every book I read and this is so embarrassing. In 2015 I read 26 books which I was like, “Okay, I feel good.” Then I had a kid and last year I read two. I’m not going to commit to any books just quite yet. I’m hoping that 2018 my new year’s resolution of more books will come true.
[00:28:27] Cory: How do we get hired by DoSomething? What would be your advice for people that want to work with you?
[00:28:33] Aria: My advice for people who want to work and Do Something, the two don’ts. Don’t say you want to work here because you’re so passionate because there’s 1.8 million nonprofits for you to go work at. Don’t say you want to work here because you think it’s fun. Those are table stakes. You know we know you have to be passionate. We know we’re fun.
Prove that you’re going to move the needle on our business objectives because we want to make sure that every single person here is not just passionate but also has a business sense and they are going to make sure that our KPIs are going through the roof. I think that’s the number one thing that impresses us the most. When someone can have a balance between business sense and passion.
I’ll also say one thing about hiring is make sure you get the culture right. This was a controversial thing that someone did. Someone was applying for a job on our campaigns team focusing on the area of sex and relationship. Domestic abuse, and HIV and all these very prone issues related to sex and relationships. To wither her application, she sent us a cake in the mold of a penis. It was the most hilarious thing that anyone had ever done but we immediately said that she could come in for an interview then we hired her.
This is true, a year later she transitioned from the campaigns team to the talent team and now she runs HR for Do Something. As long as you’re on brand and you get our culture, you can impress us with some quacky stuff coming through the mail.
[00:29:58] Cory: Just heard the craziest thing that’s come through the mail. Anything else? What’s second place?
[00:30:02] Aria: Second place is we got a pillow with Beyoncé’s face on it because everyone loves Beyoncé so much here. We’ve gotten homemade poems. We had — My executive assistant actually created a website, hireme.com, which was very impressive and amazing. Definitely, we’ve had people stand out from the pack.
[00:30:23] Cory: Well, thank you so much for doing this. I really appreciate it.
[00:30:27] Aria: Cory, I totally appreciate it.
[00:30:28] Cory: Alright. Thank you, Aria.
[00:30:30] Aria: Thanks so much Cory.
[00:30:31] Cory: Have a good day. Bye.
