Welcome Back Everyone !
It seems there’s no respite from the recent streak of hot, sunny summer days but alas, there’s a new conversation to hopefully distract you from the heat!
I had a chance to reconnect with my friend and colleague, Aria Finger, who when I met her back in 2017, was the CEO of DoSomething.org. DoSomething.org is a global non-profit organization whose goal is to motivate 13-25 year olds to make a social impact through volunteering for a slew of causes and campaigns the organization leads throughout the year.
Aria started at the organization in 2005 after graduating from college, rising through the ranks over her 15 year tenure to becoming CEO. Over that time, DoSomething’s volunteer base ballooned to 5.5 million young people who were allowed to participate in 275 cause-related campaigns annually. When Aria started the organization was able to squeak out a couple campaigns per year.
As Aria will attest, the power of social media and technology allowed DoSomething to scale its impact - whether it was from text messaging (the organization when Aria left in 2020 was texting 3MM people per week), getting social creators involved with campaigns, along with being first movers on emerging platforms like TikTok. All of these digital strategies and tactics led DoSomething to create a vibrant community of young volunteers who wanted to make an impact.
Aria left DoSomething in 2020 who then became LinkedIn Co-Founder, Reid Hoffman’s Chief of Staff where she is able to participate on both non-profit and for-profit boards alongside Reid. As she mentioned, Reid Hoffman’s core fundamental values align well with hers.
“But the beautiful thing was Reid's whole goal for his life, whether it's his for-profit work, his not for-profit work, or his political work is to reduce suffering and to improve the world. Like how do I make the world better for humanity? So no matter what he's doing deploying capital in a social impact way, in a for-profit way he is always thinking about how to make the world a better place.”
Outside her roles both in the past at DoSomething and now working alongside Reid, she remains passionate about criminal justice reform which is a near and dear issue of hers for the past 25+ years.
Aria met Uzoma Orchingwa, Founder of Ameelio, which is an app that makes it free for families of the incarcerated to call and video communicate with their loved ones in the prison system. This is in contrast to making calls through many states’ prison system which could cost as much as a $1/minute.
In an effort to reduce recidivism, Ameelio also introduced an education product to all those incarcerated to get their GEDs or college education to provide them with the skills and know how to re-enter society.
Aria introduced Uzoma to Reid who issued Ameelio with a $3MM, 3 year grant. She also joined their board of directors.
To learn more about Ameelio and its mission, check out their website.
To learn more about Aria and to reach out to her, check out her website or follow her on LinkedIn.
My next conversation with Fyllo’s (and Former Buddy Media Co-Founder) Jeff Ragovin will be dropping soon!
Ep. 8: Aria Finger, Chief of Staff to Reid Hoffman