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Jane Leu
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Anthony: Jane, what led
you to start this project?
Jane: I started
Upwardly Global because I saw a problem that nobody
was doing anything about: there are nearly 250,000
permanent immigrants and refugees in the US who have
skills, education and experience that go underutilized.
These people are lawyers, accountants, doctors, and
marketing directors in their countries, and here in the US
they end up working as nannies, security guards and cab
drivers.
Anthony: Describe the
process you use to help your clients.
Jane: We have two programs:
The Job Seeker Services Program and the Employer Network.
The goal of the Job Seeker Services Program is to help
immigrants gain the skills they need to enter the
mainstream professional workforce. It’s about a 3 month
program, during which we help them transform their resume
into the American standard outcome-focused resume style.
We also offer 5 workshops on interviewing, networking, job
search strategies, communicating and surviving in the
American workplace. We do intensive interview practice,
because interviewing is one of the hardest things for
immigrants. And we match each immigrant with a mentor who
is an American professional in the same field. Finally,
once the jobseekers are ready, we present them to our
employer network and get them hired into jobs that fit
their skills.
On the employer side, we are focused on helping
companies improve their hiring practices around
immigrants. It’s really an educational program that helps
them understand foreign experience, foreign education, and
how to interview immigrants. We have online training on
cross-cultural interviewing techniques. We also get
employers comfortable with immigrant candidates by having
them look at our candidates and work with them closely so
they can hire these individuals. This process is
facilitated by our online resume database, where we post
the resume of every immigrant we’re working with.
Employers can search through this database by using a
variety of search criteria.
These two programs are successful, thanks to our strong
network of 150 volunteers, 50% of which are either
immigrants or children of immigrants. So they are closely
connected to our cause.
Anthony: Can you share
some statistics about the people you have helped since you
launched Upwardly Global (number of people, type of
positions, etc.)?
Jane: We’ve worked with more
than 300 immigrants from over 60 countries. About 50% are
here as refugees who had to flee their countries because
they were persecuted or had a well founded fear of
persecution. They are generally between the ages of 28 and
50, and have approximately 9.5 years of professional
experience in their home country on average. Nearly 40%
are unemployed and 60% are underemployed. Those who are
underemployed are not generally working full-time, and
they’re making about $10/hour or less. We put them into
permanent full-time benefited positions that pay anywhere
from $24,000/year to $82,000/year, with an average of
about $18/hour. So their mean increase in income is more
than $15,000 in the first year. If we could solve the
underemployment of all immigrants, getting them jobs with
compensation on parity with their native-born peers, the
US would see an increase of $131B in annual personal
income.
Some of the different jobs we’ve placed people in are:
personal banker at Wells Fargo, AdSense coordinator at
Google, management consultant at BearingPoint, staff
accountant at Wells Fargo, social worker with the state of
California, energy analyst with the City of Roseville, and
civil engineer with the City of Palo Alto. The positions
we place run the gamut. Generally they’re entry to mid
level positions, and one can move up pretty quickly.
Anthony: What resources do
you use to fund your operation?
Jane: We have a variety of
different resources. We receive donations from individuals
and families (about 230 individual donors). Some of our
notable donors are Isabel Allende, the author; Alfred
Chuang, CEO of BEA Systems; and venture capitalists Bill
Draper, Robin Richards Donohoe, and Sy Kaufman. We also
have support from private and corporate foundations like
the San Francisco Foundation, Wells Fargo Foundation, the
Omnia Foundation and other smaller foundations. We’re
funded by groups who support social entrepreneurs like the
Manhattan Institute and Ashoka Innovators for the Public.
Finally, 18% or our revenues come from money that we earn
from the services we provide to corporations, and from the
small fee we collect from job seekers. If anyone wants to
donate to Upwardly Global, they should know that we create
incredible impact on very limited resources.
Anthony: How did you get
started with venture capitalists?
Jane: Foundations generally
invest in non-profits with a very small amount of money
for one year at a time. There’s really no commitment on
the funding side that they’re going to be with you year
after year. As a result, you can execute on programs, but
you can’t really build the company, staff, capacity,
technology, etc. There is a movement going in philanthropy
based on the general idea that venture capitalists want to
apply what they know from the business sector to
non-profits. There are a number of funders who now want to
do venture capital-like philanthropy, or venture
philanthropy, by investing over a period of years and
becoming a partner for the non-profit. They not only want
to hear the good news but also the bad news, so they can
figure out how to make things better.
We were really lucky because we connected with one of
these venture philanthropy foundations, the Draper
Richards Foundation for Social Entrepreneurship, started
by
Bill Drapers and
Robin Richards Donohoe of
Draper Richards L.P. and
Draper International. They decided they wanted to do
something for early stage social entrepreneurs. So we were
their very first grant. They gave us $100,000 a year for 3
years, and took a seat on our board for 2.5 years, very
much like the VC model. They were truly a partner for us
in that they helped us build our organizational capacity
and made introductions to some great people who became
supporters. Their support helped us grow faster and made
our model more efficient so that it could scale better.
Such an approach is quite different from that of most
foundations, which are happy with very small incremental
growth and aren’t really interested in expansion and
building a replicable model.
There is also
Sy Kaufman from
Crosslink Capital, who has been supporting us as well.
We have often worked with him on business plans and other
matters.
I think working with venture capitalists is a good
trend. I hope more people get into it. I also think that
for venture capitalists, this a very rewarding way to give
away your money – to dig in with a non-profit and use the
skills you have.
Anthony: You've won a
number of awards for being a social entrepreneur. What
does it mean to be a social entrepreneur?
Jane: Social entrepreneurs
are just like business entrepreneurs. They are obsessive
about what they do, driven, creative, and always looking
for the next opportunity to grow their project. It starts
with the social entrepreneur seeing a market opportunity
or, as in our case, a problem in the market. Non-profits
exist because there’s a deficiency in the market and
because there’s not a clearing between supply and demand.
In our case, there is a supply of talented people, but
companies aren’t demanding it because of bias and
xenophobia, or because they’re not familiar with how to
evaluate the job seekers’ foreign experience and
education. A social entrepreneur comes in and creates a
solution that solves that problem. And it’s meant to be a
systemic change, not a band-aid solution. That’s really
the goal in the work we’re doing. Our work isn’t about
fixing immigrants. It’s about fixing the hiring practices
of employers so that they don’t overlook the vast supply
that’s available to them.
I’m part of this group of social entrepreneurs called
Ashoka: Innovators
for the Public. They have about 60 social entrepreneurs in
the US. Most of them are outside the US (2,500 in the
world). Of the 60 in America, 18 are in the Bay Area. This
is really a hot bed of social entrepreneurship as well as
entrepreneurship. Because of that, I know so many people
who have started non-profits. There’s really no difference
between starting a business for profit vs. non-profit.
Generally, you’re very much connected to the business
world and have the same kind of personality and mindset as
for-profit entrepreneurs. Starting a non-profit business
is harder. You’re not working in a market environment
where you can rely on regular forces at work. And you have
a lot more constituents/customers such as funders, job
seekers, companies and volunteers. All those people are
vested in different ways. And you have to satisfy them
all. So I think it’s a little bit more involved and
challenging.
Anthony: What criteria do
you use when recruiting a new member into your team?
Jane: With staff members, I
look for professionals who are entrepreneurial. A couple
of people here have started their own companies, and they
have that experience of starting something. I also look
for people who can deal with ambiguity because things are
changing quickly and they have to be comfortable pitching
in a lot of different ways. They also have to be
multitalented, smart, self-directed, self-motivated,
resourceful, and work well in a team. By resourceful, I
mean that they know how to leverage the resources and
assets we have. For instance, by efficiently and
productively using the people involved in our network to
get things done, since we have only 4 paid staff members.
Anthony: How do you
leverage technology to gain efficiencies at Upwardly
Global?
Jane: We use technology in a
number of ways to try to be as efficient as possible and
keep our staff costs low. We use it for our own internal
performance measurement: to see how we’re doing, if we’re
meeting our goals, and how our job seekers are doing as
far as outcomes. We have extensive data on each person
we’ve helped.
We have 1,600 people in our network, so we use contact
management to keep track of all of them. There are
interactive parts in our systems that allow us to do our
service better. We have online registrations for events
that we’re producing, and online applications for the job
seekers and the volunteers. We’re able to collect all that
information and have people get it right in the database
immediately, instead of doing the input ourselves. This
saves us a lot of time. Also, our website has been a
really good attractor. We have a couple of interactive
things on the website for companies, like the online
training on cross-cultural interviewing techniques and the
toolkit we’ve developed for companies on how to hire
immigrants. And people can also make
donations online.
The Cisco foundation and the Community Technology
Foundation of California gave us a grant a couple of years
ago to develop both our website and our database. The good
thing is that we invested a lot in technology much earlier
than I think other non-profits did. We were looking
towards scalability and knew that we needed to have some
way to track all this data not only for California, but
also for when we opened in other areas. And I’m really
interested, over time, in using data that can be taken by
a research institution and producing a report about what
happens to immigrant professionals as far as integration
in the workforce. That research does not exist now.
Anthony: How do you
measure success?
Jane: We look at success on
both sides of the program we’re offering. We look at the
numbers of job seekers we’ve served, the increase in their
annual salaries, and the relevance to their previous
careers (whether we were able to get them back into that
same career field or into what they wanted). On the
company side, we look at the number of companies we’ve
engaged. We have a system for measuring our level of
engagement with them and moving them along a continuum
from just getting to know us to really being a champion
for immigrant inclusion and having implemented those
practices across their companies. We’re also tracking the
way we are able to shift their mindset and their practices
on the corporate side.
We do an annual action plan for each program and we set
goals for such things as target number of job seekers,
salary, and companies we want to move along the continuum
this year. It’s a funnel approach. We always have a lot of
people we’re reaching out to on the corporate side and
trying to move along as we engage with more and more
people within that company. And as we place more people
within that company, they become internal advocates. We
then have a lot of crossover with those companies. Some of
our top employer partners are Wells Fargo, Bearing Point,
and California State Automobile Association.
Anthony: What are your
vision and objectives for the company over the next 5
years?
Jane: This is a pilot
project here in San Francisco. We’ve been going with staff
for almost 3 years. We’ve really worked out the model, and
now we want to scale it up in 3 other locations. We want
to focus on opening an office in NYC in 2006, in Miami in
2007, in Minneapolis in 2008, and to serve 5500
immigrants. We want to take what we’ve learned in San
Francisco and be at a bigger scale in those places
initially, instead of having to ramp up one staff member
at a time as we have done here. Those are the cities we’ve
looked at with a concentration of under-employed skilled
immigrant professionals who have work authorization. And
with NYC, which is our next target, there are 25,000
underemployed immigrants who could be our job seekers.
Also, 87 of the Fortune 1,000 companies are headquartered
there. So it’s a good alignment of the need and the
solution.
Anthony: Can you share
some of your success stories?
Jane: There are so many
interesting success stories. We worked with this guy,
Oscar, from Colombia, who was an entrepreneur. He had
started a couple of different food companies in Colombia.
He had to leave the country for his own protection and
came to the US with his family. He was working in a car
repair shop. He has a master’s degree with 15-20 years of
experience. Most of our job seekers need to be more
self-promotional. But Oscar had the opposite problem: he
was overly promotional to the point that he was turning
people off. We worked with him closely, had mentors for
him, and gave him feedback. He adjusted his strategy and
ended up getting a job as a site manager for a chocolate
company. Now he’s tasked with opening a factory for Barry
Callebaut Chocolate in American Canyon. He’s thrilled.
It’s exactly what he wanted. It’s also an entrepreneurial
role, because it’s a new factory. He had to hire 55 people
in three months, and he hired 3 out the 4 people on his
management team through Upwardly Global.
We also helped this woman from Mongolia, Daria, who had
to flee her country and leave her two small children
behind with her parents. She had been a very well known
broadcaster/news anchor in Mongolia. When we met her, she
was working at a coffee shop in Oakland making $7/hour. We
worked with her and matched her with a mentor. Amazingly,
one of the volunteers on our network is Dana King, news
anchor on channel 5, KPIX. She helped Daria get a job at
KPIX as a production assistant. Now Daria does a lot of
the research for Dana’s stories. She’s very happy there
and was finally able to rent her own apartment and her
kids joined her last year.
Since then, she has made a video for Upwardly Global.
She wanted to do something to give back. She assembled a
team and went around for 8 days and filmed our job seekers
and employers for an 8-minute video. She did the all the
interviews, production, and editing.
Anthony: What is your Exit
Strategy?
Jane: One of the things I
think might happen is the following: we’re trying to
create a demand through our services. And we have to
subsidize the supply, because the supply is on the
immigrant side. And we need to help get them ready for
their job search. The market is never going to pay for
that. But there may be a time when somebody out there is
going to look at what we’re doing and go, “Wow! Here’s
this tiny non-profit called Upwardly Global that has
somehow been able to partner with Fortune 1,000 companies,
and has big corporations paying them for the placement of
immigrant professionals. Maybe there's an opportunity for
my huge placement agency to offer the same kind of
diverse, internationally trained, internationally
experienced, bi-cultural talent.” Upwardly Global has a
talent pool that, once people figure out how great it is,
I can’t imagine they wouldn’t want to access it. If the
income reaches a level where they could somehow
effectively subsidize the training of the immigrants,
there is a market opportunity for the for-profit world.
This means the problem is solved.
Some non-profits exist to provide relief. Others like
Upwardly Global exist to solve a problem where the market
doesn’t work. If you can get to the point where you can
bring those sides together and the market clears, then
there’s really no point for the non-profit. That’s because
a non-profit uses public resources that can then be
directed towards other problems. For me, solving the
problem in the marketplace is the exit strategy.
Anthony: What is your
advice to entrepreneurs?
Jane: It’s important to
remember that they call it your “life’s work” for a
reason. Real results, especially in the social sector,
don’t happen overnight. You have to keep going until the
world catches up with your vision.
If you’re inspired by Jane’s cause and would like to
make a donation to Upwardly Global, you may do so
online. Thank you.
Bio
Jane Leu, Founder and Executive Director
Jane is an internationally recognized social
entrepreneur and expert on immigrant workforce issues. She
has 15 years of experience helping immigrants and refugees
achieve economic integration. Before founding Upwardly
Global, she was the Assistant Director for Resettlement at
Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service, and the
Assistant Director of RefugeeWorks, which provides
technical assistance to refugee employment programs. Jane
has been on the founding side of numerous projects
including seven refugee Welfare-to-Work programs, the
early version of the Hauser Research Center for Nonprofit
Organizations at Harvard University's Kennedy School of
Government, and the Craigslist nonprofit venture forum.
She has won numerous national and international awards for
Upwardly Global's innovative model such as Ashoka:
Innovators for the Public, Draper Richards Foundation for
Social Entrepreneurship, Manhattan Institute Social
Entrepreneurship Award, and Rockefeller Foundation Next
Generation Leadership Program. Harvard University produced
and currently teaches a case study on Upwardly Global. A
frequent speaker on immigration issues and social
entrepreneurship, Jane has spoken to diverse audiences
including graduate students at Stanford and Harvard
Universities, the National Conference of State
Legislatures, and The Rockefeller Foundation Philanthropy
Workshop. She holds a master's degree from Columbia
University's School of International and Public Affairs
and a bachelor's degree from Tufts University. |
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Framing Your Brand
We've been framed and don't even know it!
By Reid M. Neubert
I just read a fascinating book: Don't Think of an
Elephant, by George Lakoff. Lakoff is an expert in
cognitive linguistics – I know that's quite a mouthful.
Cognitive linguistics is the scientific study of the
nature of thought and its expression in language. His
specialty is applying the science to politics, especially
the framing of public political thought.
While the book is billed as an "essential guide for
progressives to understand the radical right," it was of
particular interest to me as a marketing and branding
consultant in its application to my field. The concepts
Lakoff brings to light in the books are 100% applicable –
and are in fact used already – in marketing the most
successful brands. But the way in which Lakoff explains
the concepts makes them especially easy to understand.
A Political Example
Here is a recent example of cognitive framing in the
political arena: When George W. became president, his
administration started talking up "tax relief." Tax
relief. They didn't talk about tax cuts, but tax relief.
Think of what a difference that choice of words makes in
the impression that is relayed. Saying "we're going to cut
taxes" is one thing, but saying that you are going to
provide relief from taxes is quite another.
As Lakoff points out, the notion of "relief" implies
that there is something, an affliction, to provide relief
from. The reliever then becomes the hero of the situation
when he provides the relief. This, at the same time, makes
people who are against the proposal seem like villains
because they oppose the hero.
That is how framing works. "Tax relief" is a framing
term. In the end, through repetition of the framing term,
people become convinced that this is a good thing,
something to support, even if it may be, in reality,
something very different than they think it is.
The notion of relief is common, of course, in
advertising medicines. The commercial shows the suffering
patient, talks about how the remedy will relieve her
suffering, then shows the happy patient, now relieved by
the medicine, which is the hero of the commercial.
Your Right to Frame
A sterling example of how terms can reframe a political
debate was the naming of anti-abortionists as
"right-to-lifers." "Anti-abortion" is a negative term,
cumbersome and off-putting. "Right to life" on the other
hand, is a positive expression, and a highly emotional one
at that.
What is brilliant about the new term is that it did
three things, as the best framing will do: First, it
completely reframed the debate. It was no longer about
being for or against abortion being legal, but about being
for or against life itself! Second, it put the
pro-abortion rights people at a distinct disadvantage from
a linguistic, and therefore cognitive standpoint. The
reframing moved them from the linguistically positive side
to the negative side. Third, they were now on the negative
side of what? Life! They could not successfully take up
that framing terminology and say they are
"anti-right-to-lifers"! That would not do at all.
In response, they came up with the term, "pro-choice."
From a naming standpoint, that was an exceedingly
difficult challenge, I'm sure. "Pro-choice" succeeds as a
framing term in its own right because, like "pro-life," it
is a positive rather than a negative statement. But, it
will never be as effective as "pro-life." The concept of
pro-choice requires a little rumination to integrate into
one's thinking: "Choice is a good thing to have. What
choice are we supporting here? Oh yeah, a woman having the
right to choose." It doesn't immediately resonate
emotionally like the term "pro-life" does.
But, our interest here is not about political
commentary, it is about marketing and branding, so let's
look at the applications of framing there.
Creating a Frame for a Brand
When we work on a branding strategy for a client, we
look for what linguistic and/or visual concepts we can use
to create an effective frame. In the case of a new product
or company, we can create the frame from scratch, which is
often easier. In the case of an existing product or
company that we are rebranding, we have to consider the
company's current perceptions by customers and prospects
and its position in its competitive environment. Because
brands live in the minds of the consumers, a new frame
will only work if it is reasonably consistent with the
perceptions now held by them. We can steer, but we can't
necessarily bulldoze.
The strongest brands are those that have framing
concepts that resonate with their customers. A classic
example is Nike's "Just Do It." With those three words,
the company effectively framed their brand as the one for
people who are serious about sports, conditioning, and
working out. That frame moved Nike out of just being an
athletic shoe brand, albeit the leading one. It
subordinates the weight of stories that their sneakers
were made in Asian sweat shops. "Just Do It" frames Nike
as being apart from the competition who are now "the other
guys" who also make athletic shoes. It makes Nike athletic
shoes somehow better than the other ones, because Nikes
are for Serious Athletes. It's a club that beckons us to
join, even if we are more couch potato than athlete.
That is how a resonant brand is built. Most companies,
however, take a much more pedestrian approach. It can be
risky to do something out of the ordinary, but that is
what it takes. If a company is to succeed in building an
exceptional brand, it cannot communicate from within the
same frame as everyone else.
Owning the Market
It has traditionally been the case that the leading
brand in a market would usurp that market. In other words,
Hertz promoted rental cars. IBM promoted computers. In
doing that, they framed their brands as being synonymous
with those industries. That left their competitors as
also-rans, comparing their offerings with the leaders'.
When we rebranded a self-storage company, I researched
the market as usual and found that none of the other
companies had framed their brands as being synonymous with
self-storage. Public Storage perhaps comes closest just
because the brand is so ubiquitous, but that is not
sufficient. I realized that we could grab that
opportunity, at least in their local area. So, in
developing the company's marketing message, we extolled
the benefits of using self-storage rather than saying how
the company was superior to or different from its
competition.
Most companies make the mistake of saying they are
better, faster or cheaper in some way. The problem is that
that is not a framing statement. You can't market yourself
as being better/faster/cheaper if you want to be seen as
owning the market. You have to create an ownership frame,
and let the other guys try to show how they are
better/faster/cheaper than you are.
Good Frame: Game Over
The brilliant thing about a well thought out linguistic
frame is that as soon as the other side – or the
competition – starts talking about the issue in terms of
your frame, they've lost. As Lakoff points out, if one
side can talk about their position in two words, and it
takes the other side a paragraph to enter the debate, the
two-word side wins every time.
Another important point, as we touched on above, is
that a negative cannot be used either to create a frame or
effectively combat one. Saying "our product contains no
saturated fat" doesn't work. You'd think it would because
that is a straight-forward statement, easy to understand.
But it doesn't. It doesn't work because, first of all,
using a negative to express a frame or position creates a
negative impression. That's part of what we learn from
cognitive linguistics. Another part is that many people
will just start associating "saturated fat" with the
product rather than remembering it as having no saturated
fat.
What has to be done to create a new frame that will
counteract an established one is to come up with one that
presents your side, your position, or your brand in a
positive light. "Pro-choice" does that. It doesn't argue
the negative side of being "pro-life"; it presents that
new frame of being pro-choice, which is a positive
statement.
"Fat-free" is a positive way of expressing that a
product contains no fat.
Create the New Frame
In branding, the most effective way to compete with an
established brand is also to create a new frame. Hertz may
be synonymous with rental cars, but Enterprise is the
company that will pick you up. Coca-Cola, long the leader
in colas, has been extremely difficult for Pepsi to beat.
But once upon a time, Pepsi started to marketed itself as
"the choice of a new generation." Remember that? Great
framing! That moved Pepsi out of Coke's frame and into its
own where Coke was at a disadvantage.
Think about it: Who drinks the most soft drinks? Young
people. Pepsi's framing statement had the effect of
reframing Coke as the cola for older people. Older people
like their parents. Brilliant! The problem was that they
could only use that frame for one generation.
More recently, Seven-Up reframed their soft drink as
the Un-cola. That moved them out of the non-cola soft
drink category into the cola category, by far the most
popular one. In terms of sales, there was much more to be
had in third place in colas than first place in non-colas.
Perhaps the best way to reframe something is to invent
a frame that establishes a whole new category that it can
own. The term "personal computer" did that, not for any
one brand in this case, but for the whole product
category. At the time, a "computer" was an unfathomably
complex, hugely expensive, room-sized machine. The term,
"personal computer," made the new, small machines seem
like something regular people could relate to.
When Apple came out with the iPod, they adeptly framed
it through design, branding, and marketing. The iPod isn't
an "iPod MP3 player." Its framing created for the product
an iconic status, completely separate from the rest of the
MP3 player market. There is the iPod, then there are all
the other devices. Ask kids what they want, they don't say
they want an MP3 player, they say they want an iPod.
Reid Neubert + Friends
S M A R T E R M A R K E T I N G ™
http://www.neubertweb.com
Tel: 415.924.8037
Copyright 2006 by Reid M. Neubert
Reid periodically writes and emails out articles like
this one on marketing, branding, and the Web. If you would
like to sign up to receive them, you can do so on his
Web
site. |
