Phaedra Ellis-Lamkins, co-founder and CEO of Promise: "When you feel like you're fighting for justice, it empowers you in a different way because it's not just for you…. And I think that makes you very powerful."

9 to 5ish with theSkimm

theSkimm

Entrepreneurship, Careers, Business

4.7 • 1.9K Ratings

🗓️ 9 September 2020

⏱️ 35 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Phaedra Ellis-Lamkins has always been focused on creating change. She started as a leader in the labor and environmental movements, and she’s now using tech to create impact at scale. Her company, Promise, is a financial services tech platform tackling criminal justice reform. And this week, Phaedra joined us to share how she’s become a strong advocate by tuning out critics. It’s something she learned from the late musician Prince… who was also her old boss. More on that in the episode. In this episode, Phaedra told us why she’s good at managing crisis (4:16), what she learned from her time as Prince’s manager (13:40), and her approach to fundraising (28:00).

Transcript

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0:17.6	I think that when you feel like you're fighting for justice it empowers you in a different way because it's not just for you it's for other people and I think that makes you very powerful. I'm Carly Zaken I'm Danielle Weisberg welcome Welcome to Skim from the couch. This podcast is where we go deep on career
0:26.4	advice from women who have lived it. From the good stuff like hiring and growing a team.
0:31.0	To the rough stuff, like negotiating your salary and giving or getting hard
0:35.6	feedback. We started the skim from a couch so what better place to talk it all
0:39.6	out than where it began on a couch. Hey everyone, it's Carly.
0:47.0	The show might sound a bit different today
0:52.0	because the skim is still working from home for the time being due to COVID-19.
0:57.0	Today, Fadra Ellis Lampkins joins me on skim from the couch.
1:01.0	She's the co-founder and CEO of Promise, a financial services technology company tackling
1:06.2	criminal justice reform. Before founding Promise, Fadro ran revenue and operations for the
1:11.4	Health Care Tech startup Honor and has built her career around creating change and improving lives.
1:17.0	Fadra, I'm very excited to get into this conversation.
1:20.0	Welcome to Skim from the couch.
1:22.0	Thank you so much for having me.
1:23.0	I'm happy to be here.
1:24.4	So I have so many questions for you.
1:26.3	And just to level set, I was reading an article
1:29.0	like a few months ago and you were mentioned in it
1:31.0	and I just became obsessed with you and your story.
1:33.0	So I kind of cold reached out to you through a mutual connection and just really excited to see this happen.
1:40.1	So I'll start with the question I like to ask everyone, which is please skim your resume for us.
1:46.2	I think I've spent most my life trying to figure out how to understand social change on behalf of working people, people of color and so almost all of my work is really through that lens.
	...

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