YouSaid · the spoken record

Zo Orchingwa

lines on the record: 27
first: 2022-06-30
most recent: 2022-06-30
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“Opportunities that they didn't have that led to their incarceration in the first place. 95% of folks in prison are going to come back to our society. So we have to ask ourselves, you know, what kind of citizen do we want them to be? Do we want them to be folks that have opportunities and are able to rebuild and contribute to our society or do we want them to be folks that have no opportunities and are likely to go back into prison?”
2022-06-30 · Masters of Scale · Rapid Response: From ‘delusion’ to criminal justice revolution, w/Ameelio’s Zo Orchingwa · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Experiences, right, on the outside, we went to the same schools, we played on the same AAU teams and played basketball together, but our home lives were drastically different. My parents were college educated from day one. I was going to college, but my friends were from single-parent households. They had siblings and parents who had been incarcerated. Their home lives were so different. And so I think we often overlook the hidden causes of incarceration and we often blame folks for the worst thing that they've done. But when we look at the data, over 50% of folks who are incarcerated had no income. Up to eight years prior to their incarceration. And a year prior, 80% had no income. So poverty is a tremendous driver. Certainly, we should hopefully confirm before their actions. We should also understand that there are systemic issues that have caused this mass incarceration problem. And if we want to solve it, we need to be pragmatic, give folks those resources and those critical.”
2022-06-30 · Masters of Scale · Rapid Response: From ‘delusion’ to criminal justice revolution, w/Ameelio’s Zo Orchingwa · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I think what's at stake for us right now is how do we scale beyond these five states that we've been able to partner with? I think that often we get asked, what is the plan to get to the 2.2 million? There's over 4,000 conning jails across the country with their own unique needs. What we're really trying to do is partner with strategic organizations thinking about in order for us to scale effectively, focusing purely on software as a way to go. So thinking about how do we work with companies like Google or Microsoft that not only has great software, but cloud storage, hardware, et cetera. And so we're now in talks to a handful of these companies. So we often kind of hear why the incarcerated, right? These are folks who have committed crimes. These are folks who may have done terrible things. You know, why should we care? And I kind of meet folks where they're at. I think that my friends who are incarcerated, we had very, very similar.”
2022-06-30 · Masters of Scale · Rapid Response: From ‘delusion’ to criminal justice revolution, w/Ameelio’s Zo Orchingwa · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Exactly. For a lot of our users, they want to get certifications. They're going to help them be able to get jobs post release. They're thinking about, you know, how do I support my family? How do I rebuild my lives right away? So we want to have an eclectic array of options for students. And so when you log onto the platform, you're actually given an option. Do you want to be a do? Do you want an AA? Or do you want vocational job training opportunities? And so students are actually able to pick and guide their own bath. Nationally, we spend over $35,000 a year to incarcerate someone. over $80 billion a year spent on just corrections alone, not even talking about courts and the impact on families. So it was extremely expensive problem. We believe that by realigning and giving DOCs options to be able to help folks get educated on the inside, it's not only the right and moral thing to do, but it's also the pragmatic thing. It's going to save states a ton of money in the long run.”
2022-06-30 · Masters of Scale · Rapid Response: From ‘delusion’ to criminal justice revolution, w/Ameelio’s Zo Orchingwa · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That allows folks to guide their own education. The second component is the actual real time post secondary education to engage with the incarcerated directly in their cells or in their classrooms. The challenge there is that you can't use Zoom because DOCs don't want students to be able to interact with each other. There are a lot of security restrictions and fears. So we have to build a system that enables the professor to be able to engage with all the students at once, but the students can only engage directly with the professors or the TAs. We've been able to sign a bunch of colleges. MIT has a prison education program that's going to be leveraging our system. All the colleges in Iowa are planning to leverage our system by enabling the incarcerator to have access to these opportunities. They can actually shorten their length of their sentences.”
2022-06-30 · Masters of Scale · Rapid Response: From ‘delusion’ to criminal justice revolution, w/Ameelio’s Zo Orchingwa · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Prisons are predominantly in remote areas, which means it's very, very hard for educators and colleges to be able to reach them. So we all know about really successful programs like the Bard Prison Initiative, the Hudson Link, or the Wesleyans program. But those are very, very small programs that are geographically limited with the reinstatement of Second Chance Powell, you now have 500,000 incarcerated folks who now have access to federal funding to be able to support their education. But there's not enough supply of educational opportunities. And so our vision was how do we leverage technology to be able to scale virtual education or reach as many incarcerated people as possible? There is a synchronous component. So being able to leverage existing educational content through partnerships with, say, companies like Masterclass or LinkedIn Learning allow folks to be able to watch TED songs or Khan Academy, we call that Amelia Gutenberg, just a free resource library.”
2022-06-30 · Masters of Scale · Rapid Response: From ‘delusion’ to criminal justice revolution, w/Ameelio’s Zo Orchingwa · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“End of the day is not to be extremely profitable, but we want to charge just enough to keep the lights on, but to accelerate growth as fast as possible so we don't want to go to a DOC and say, hey, in order to use our service, you have to pay us.”
2022-06-30 · Masters of Scale · Rapid Response: From ‘delusion’ to criminal justice revolution, w/Ameelio’s Zo Orchingwa · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yes, when we think it's a motto that other nonprofits should follow. So for us, it was important to divorce profit from our modus because we realized at the end of the day, the most profitable group to charge in this space is families and the incarcerated. So we didn't actually want to raise venture funding for this because ultimately we felt that it wasn't kind of an ethical business model that would allow us to really generate the profits that theses would want. But we knew that we didn't want to rely on philanthropy. It's very hard to fundraise, especially as a tech nonprofit. I think kind of your typical foundations aren't used to software solutions, right? The huge support that we've received from folks like Jack and Reed has allowed us to build the technology and to build out the team that we need to make this thing happen. But long term, as I mentioned, charging attorneys or DOCs directly or educational organizations would allow us long-term to be able to generate enough revenue to be sustainable.”
2022-06-30 · Masters of Scale · Rapid Response: From ‘delusion’ to criminal justice revolution, w/Ameelio’s Zo Orchingwa · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, it's frightening. I'm not gonna lie. We launched at the height of COVID. So, our very first product was actually launched in March of 2020. So pretty much all the fundraising we've done has been virtual. And I actually recently met Reed Hoffman in person and very, very nervous. I was reading every article I could on read. I was trying to figure out how do I impress this guy that's built one of the biggest technology companies and now is a VC that's funding incredible companies. And so, you know, I think a lot of it is just embracing your delusions, right? So to think that the Jack Dorsey or the Eric Schmidtz of the world have the time to even listen to kind of this small upstart company, I just had to believe that it was possible.”
2022-06-30 · Masters of Scale · Rapid Response: From ‘delusion’ to criminal justice revolution, w/Ameelio’s Zo Orchingwa · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Really kind of pitch them on the work that we're doing with Jack Dorsey, who's very similar. I got connected through a friend to Duray Mcessen. And he flagged for me that Jack, you know, had just started the Start Small Initiative. And so we took a long shot. We wrote up a proposal and sent it to them. And it took a while, but they finally got in touch with us and we were able to pitch to them. It's really been a whirlwind, these tech luminaries. They understand the power of software. They understand that once that initial investment is made, the scaling opportunity is incredible. And we're so appreciative of them. And we've been able to serve now close to a million people.”
2022-06-30 · Masters of Scale · Rapid Response: From ‘delusion’ to criminal justice revolution, w/Ameelio’s Zo Orchingwa · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“My co-founder Gabe likes to say that I'm very delusional and that I'm able to leverage that delusion. For me, you know, being a first-time founder, not really having much social capital, as I mentioned both my parents are Nigerian immigrants, we moved back to the States when I was nine years old, living in a one-bedroom apartment in Hartford. And I've always had the vision that my parents instilled in me that if I worked hard enough, if I was humble and was committed to my goals, that it'd be possible to make really big things happen. So really how I got in touch with most of those people was cold emailing. I actually cold emailed Reed Hoffman. And as I was told, he never responds to cold email. So probably not a good thing for anyone else to do. But luckily he had been passionate. He's obviously a great philanthropist, been supporting voting organizations and education groups, but was really new to the criminal justice space, but did his due diligence and learn more about the space and about the work that we were doing. And I was able to connect with him and his team.”
2022-06-30 · Masters of Scale · Rapid Response: From ‘delusion’ to criminal justice revolution, w/Ameelio’s Zo Orchingwa · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So, the very first product we actually launched was a mobile app that allowed users to send letters, postcard games that we then convert into physical form and mail into the facilities. So that product has close to 500,000 users now. The reviews are tear-jerking. A lot of families can't even afford a 50 cent stamps. You'll see, you know, in the reviews, folks talking about spending all their money on health services and not having enough to be able to send letters. Just seeing that alone was added momentum and added feel for us to expand beyond just that letter service to get into real time video communications. We have folks who've used our system that are actually released now and are serving as a million ambassadors. The stories we get are incredible, but this is really only the beginning, right? We see this technology as breaking that digital divide that exists between prisons and the outside world.”
2022-06-30 · Masters of Scale · Rapid Response: From ‘delusion’ to criminal justice revolution, w/Ameelio’s Zo Orchingwa · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You probably hear this from a lot of nonprofits that say, you know, they don't want to exist, they want to work themselves out of existence in a very near future. But for us, that's really at the core of our work. If we are successful, we are going to shrink the size of the prison system and ultimately will put ourselves out of business. And in order to be transparent, we've actually partnered with the University of Chicago to be able to evaluate our impact. So all of our work will be available in published articles. And so basically our work at Chicago team is to study four key questions. What's Emilio's impact on cost savings and the finances of families? So there's over 27 million Americans with incarcerated family members right now. It's close to 10% of the entire population. So we're looking at what are we doing to fundamentally reduce that financial burden that they're facing to help folks get out of the”
2022-06-30 · Masters of Scale · Rapid Response: From ‘delusion’ to criminal justice revolution, w/Ameelio’s Zo Orchingwa · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Forget is that a lot of people in this space went into it as public servants, right? Are not very well paid and it's a challenging job. And so what we've been able to do to Miriam is really find those champions within the system that have really want to revolutionize the space and are able to work and partner with them.”
2022-06-30 · Masters of Scale · Rapid Response: From ‘delusion’ to criminal justice revolution, w/Ameelio’s Zo Orchingwa · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, it's both. Both were lean startup, and so we knew what we needed to start small. We needed to start with systems that we can manage. We've gone to the stage now where we can serve the entire correctional population. For us, it's really just about opportunity. So Colorado being the second DOC that we partner with has over 20,000 incarcerated folks. Iowa has over 9,000 in Maine. It's much smaller at 2,000. But we've recently signed a contract with Mississippi DOC. So we're getting bigger and we're scaling. But yes, it's a disparate group, right? I was a red state. Maine is kind of purplish and is much smaller on Colorado, very similar. And then Mississippi, obviously, you know, it was kind of shocking to us. They were very, very eager actually to work with us. I think a lot of the assumptions we had going in, a lot of folks from the outside are very rightfully so, very skeptical of Department of Corrections, right? We all watch the documentaries. We all see the articles and the prisons look like very, very terrible places. But I think what we also...”
2022-06-30 · Masters of Scale · Rapid Response: From ‘delusion’ to criminal justice revolution, w/Ameelio’s Zo Orchingwa · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“In them, but our flexibility is a competitive advantage because we can do both. We can work off physics and systems, but we can also deliver tablets to the facilities”
2022-06-30 · Masters of Scale · Rapid Response: From ‘delusion’ to criminal justice revolution, w/Ameelio’s Zo Orchingwa · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Of our competitive advantages is that we're the only player in this space as hardware agnostic, so we don't mandate that DOCs have to use any particular hardware. That flexibility enables us to be able to scale relatively quickly. So in Iowa, we're actually leveraging Google Chromebook. So Iowa had Chromebooks across their facilities and that they weren't using. And so what we were able to do is leverage that, lock it down with an MDM system, and enable our web app. So the incarcerated are able to just log in. They enter their PIN code. And family on the outside through a mobile app, they're able to schedule these calls as well. But we do also offer DOC's the ability to purchase hardware from us. So we've customized our own proprietary casing that we put off-the-shelf Samsung tablets or Apple iPads that DOCs can directly purchase from us. So some DOCs do like bundled services. It's kind of the way the incumbents have been able to really dominate the space because they can say, hey, you buy our tablets and it has everything.”
2022-06-30 · Masters of Scale · Rapid Response: From ‘delusion’ to criminal justice revolution, w/Ameelio’s Zo Orchingwa · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It also presented us a great opportunity to enter this space because our competitors don't have attorney client privilege communications. They just kind of force everyone to use their standard system. So there's been abundance of lawsuits. Attorney calls have been recorded and leaked. So you have a lot of attorneys that really are fearful of using these technologies, which makes it extremely hard for them to do their work. That was what was really exciting to attorneys in that we were able to build a system for them that was not recorded, that we didn't have access to, and that was completely safe and secure, where we see challenges. I think those are great places for opportunity as well, right? And so this is one of the reasons we're able to kind of break into certain systems.”
2022-06-30 · Masters of Scale · Rapid Response: From ‘delusion’ to criminal justice revolution, w/Ameelio’s Zo Orchingwa · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It's not only their fault, though. We often get asked, you know, why doesn't Zoom or Google Meets or these other very, very large communication platform provide this technology? It's that their services are built for the free world, right? But for the correctional space, they need an abundance of security specifications in order to be able to enable technology to come in. So the way our system works is that there's actually three clients. There's a Department of Corrections that needs a managing dashboard. They need the ability to monitor calls, to access call recordings in a verify users. And then you have the incarcerated who need to be able to access the system. And then family members on the outside as well. The challenge is that there's not a lot of great technology available to DOCs. And so they've been stuck with these incumbent companies. And they were actually very excited that their new player was entering the space.”
2022-06-30 · Masters of Scale · Rapid Response: From ‘delusion’ to criminal justice revolution, w/Ameelio’s Zo Orchingwa · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Reduces recidivism. It makes prisons safer because it brings hope into these facilities. And it also saves their correctional staff a ton of time. We also provide scheduling. So right before we actually enter that prison system, in order for you to visit someone in Iraq prisons, you had to download a PDF. You had to fill out the information, send it to a central location, you had to call in to the DOC staff and request a visit. Thousands and thousands of calls every day became very, very unmanageable. And so what we were able to do is build an app for families that they can use to not only send any messages and make video calls, but also schedule in-person visits, which saves a DOC an abundance of time.”
2022-06-30 · Masters of Scale · Rapid Response: From ‘delusion’ to criminal justice revolution, w/Ameelio’s Zo Orchingwa · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It's extremely challenging industry to kind of break into because in the vast majority of the states, the DOCs are actually getting a kickback on the contracts with the vendors. So we often get asked, you know, how are you going to possibly convince Department of Corrections to not only take a chance on a startup, but also to forego the large amounts of money that they're making? So it's really a regressive tax on the most low income folks in our communities. But what we've been able to do is to be able to show DOCs the long-term benefits of working with Emilio, the long-term labor savings for their staff and an overall recidivism reduction and cost savings for the entire state. So the very first state that we actually partnered with was Iowa Department of Corrections, and they're a kickback state. They actually earn revenue from the phone contracts and the e-messaging contracts that they have, but they have a very visionary executive director. And we went to our Bet Skinner and we presented her idea and we talked to her about, you know, the long-term benefits. We see that more contact with family.”
2022-06-30 · Masters of Scale · Rapid Response: From ‘delusion’ to criminal justice revolution, w/Ameelio’s Zo Orchingwa · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Networks, but if those bonds are severed, you almost have no chance of successfully reintegrating in society and rebuilding your lives. So what Amelio does is we built a free communication platform and also we'll be launching an education platform as well. And so in the core of it is it's completely free for our end users. So the incarcerated never have to pay for the service. The loved ones never have to pay for the service. We have different revenue streams, be it charging attorneys out of a de minimis fee to use a platform like a Zoom or Google Meets. And then also charging Department of Corrections for access to the service and also access to our”
2022-06-30 · Masters of Scale · Rapid Response: From ‘delusion’ to criminal justice revolution, w/Ameelio’s Zo Orchingwa · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Were communications and education platform, and we started with communications. I think when we think about criminal justice reform, most of what we focus on is the policy. How do we lessen the sentences for the incarcerated? How do we address the outsized power the prosecutors have? But not enough attention is being paid to what are the technologies and what are the resources available to folks while they're incarcerated. So right now there are two companies that dominate all the prison communications, meaning that if you want to stay connected with your loved one or if you're an attorney and you want to stay connected with your client, you're having to pay exorbitant fees. So it's up to $15 for a 15-minute phone call, video calls are up to a dollar a minute, and e-messagings are up to a dollar for a single e-message. And so this is not only driving one in three families with incarcerated loved ones into debt, but is really limiting the reentry prospect for the incarcerated because the folks you rely on post-release are your families. They're going to be your closest.”
2022-06-30 · Masters of Scale · Rapid Response: From ‘delusion’ to criminal justice revolution, w/Ameelio’s Zo Orchingwa · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It was a draw. It was a draw. I think one of the limitations I see in the innovation in tech today is that a lot of folks are trying to solve problems of leisure. How do we build solutions to make life a little bit more comfortable? For me, what drove me to find the tech company was that they're intractable social problems that we've been dealing with for decades. And I thought it was very, very important for us to not forget the most vulnerable in our community, to recognize that DOCs had very limited technology. I saw that as a tremendous opportunity to fundamentally transform the correctional space.”
2022-06-30 · Masters of Scale · Rapid Response: From ‘delusion’ to criminal justice revolution, w/Ameelio’s Zo Orchingwa · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Exploiting the vulnerable families and the incarcerated and really limiting their ability to successfully reintegrate into society. So my vision was, you know, why don't we try to build a much more ethical platform that divorces profits from its motivation and is really focused on bringing the best technology to the incarcerated to help them stay connected with those vital resources that they need.”
2022-06-30 · Masters of Scale · Rapid Response: From ‘delusion’ to criminal justice revolution, w/Ameelio’s Zo Orchingwa · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“My parents are Nigerian immigrants, so I've gotten a lot of pressure from them and similar questions as to why not pursue a legal career or business career. But for me, growing up in Nigeria in a very, very poor part of the country, I've always been passionate about the issues of poverty and inequality. And upon coming to the States, unfortunately, I had a lot of friends who ended up incarcerated. So that set me off on this journey to try to better understand the U.S. criminal justice system and why it is that we incarcerate so many people and to try to devise solutions to solving it. So actually after my undergrad, I went to University of Cambridge to pursue a master degree in criminology. And where I was doing research on the causes of mass incarceration, the histories of it. And at the end, I realized that almost no focus is being paid to the actual carceral experience. So once someone's incarcerated, what are the resources that are available to them? What are the technologies that they can use? The more I learn, the more it became obvious that predatory companies that were really”
2022-06-30 · Masters of Scale · Rapid Response: From ‘delusion’ to criminal justice revolution, w/Ameelio’s Zo Orchingwa · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Not enough attention is being paid to what are the resources available to folks while they're incarcerated. If you want to stay connected with your loved one, you're having to pay exorbitant fees. Is really limiting the reentry prospects for the incarcerated. There's been research that shows that more contact with family, more video calls as a very, very significant impact on recidivin reduction. Systemic issues that have caused this master incarceration problem. 95% of folks in prison are going to come back to our society, so we have to ask ourselves, you know, do we want them to be folks that have opportunities and are able to contribute to our society? Jack Dorsey, we took a long shot. We wrote up a proposal and they got in touch with us, these tech luminaries. They understand the power of software.”
2022-06-30 · Masters of Scale · Rapid Response: From ‘delusion’ to criminal justice revolution, w/Ameelio’s Zo Orchingwa · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT