EqualReach connects displaced individuals on the move to tech gigs. In this conversation with host Lars Peter Nissen, the founder Giselle Gonzales uncovers the invisible barriers for that prevent skilled individuals on the move from working and accessing freelance opportunities. And how Equal Reach is breaking them down one project at a time.

Just like hiding your kid’s broccoli in a brownie, Giselle kickstarted Equal Reach by using her corporate wisdom to align her social impact project with the KPIs of a Fortune 500 company. Tune in for a blend of reluctant entrepreneurship and impact. 

[Lars Peter Nissen] (0:57 - 2:48)

[Giselle Gonzales] (2:49 - 2:50)

Thank you, happy to be here.

[Lars Peter Nissen] (2:50 - 3:01)

You're the founder and CEO of something called Equal Reach. And if I understand it correctly, it's a platform that connects people on the move with tech companies that want to outsource work. Is that right?

[Giselle Gonzales] (3:02 - 3:38)

Exactly. So think of a fair trade version of a freelancing marketplace where essentially, if you're a company, you might have a digital project, whether it be digital marketing or website creation, or some finding someone or a team to run your social media. Right now, if you go to any random freelancing marketplace, you might meet 16 million freelancers that are out there in the world. What I see is the opportunity to embrace and utilize this digital work opportunity and channel this to individuals that would otherwise not be able to access these platforms.

[Lars Peter Nissen] (3:39 - 3:51)

And why is it that people who are on the move can't access the normal platforms? Why don't they just go into whatever they call fiber or a bunch of them, why don't they just use that?

[Giselle Gonzales] (3:52 - 5:48)

Most people, at least this was my perception before I started looking into this, I just assumed that everyone had access. But when you start peeling back the layers and you actually start testing it yourself, you'll realize that in practice, there are a bunch of invisible barriers that exist. So on the platform level, there are block lists that exist where not all countries have access because of real or perceived risks that a platform might see in a country or just lack of capacity to deliver in that country. They might have a country that is block listed and yet their neighboring country is allow listed to be able to access that work. So oftentimes what that means is practically if you're a national in that country that has block listed restrictions, or you are, let's say a displaced individual that is temporarily located in that area, you might see the opportunities on those platforms, but then not be able to actually sign up yourself. Another invisible barrier that many encounter is payment solutions. So let's say you can enroll and access this work. So let's say a UK based startup reaches out to you. I say UK, because that's where I'm based in London. And if you get to the point of you agree on terms, you have a project, you have the skills that they want, you go to deliver that project, you might find that upon payments, you don't have access to the payment solutions that they use. Let's take PayPal, for example. I looked just the other day at their block list, and it's just in the Middle East region, the Middle East and North Africa, about 35% of countries are not allowed. And so that's over 200 million people that do not have access to a payment solution that most small medium businesses use day to day to pay freelancers or anyone outside their business.

[Lars Peter Nissen] (5:49 - 6:20)

So really, what you're saying is that fears around not being compliant with anti-terror legislation means that a good chunk of the Middle East is excluded from working on these platforms. And I would imagine that maybe countries like Angola, or Guinea-Bissau, or whatever, some of the smaller countries that may be not at the information highway, that is sort of a bit marginalized, they simply don't bother because it's too much work to add another country on there.

[Giselle Gonzales] (6:20 - 6:37)

Yeah. And the hard part is when we look at displaced communities, the countries where they're most likely to be displaced, let's say for 20 plus years, are the countries that are at the highest risk of not having access to these payments and platforms.

[Lars Peter Nissen] (6:37 - 6:41)

So if only somebody would figure out how to overcome that obstacle.

[Giselle Gonzales] (6:41 - 7:29)

If only, yes, that is the question I spent about eight years asking. I came to founding Equal Reach almost as a reluctant entrepreneur because I kept looking around, hopping on calls with people and saying, don't you see what I see here? You have this incredible world of opportunity in the digital ecosystem. And you have this talent that is completely untapped. You have a growing shortage for talent all across the US, Europe, especially for technical talent. And you have young populations that are eager for work. And I kept on looking at the two sides of the coin here. And it just did not make sense to me why no one was filling this gap. And a lot of it was because it really is complex. And someone needed to be able to take the step to wade through that complexity.

[Lars Peter Nissen] (7:30 - 7:37)

Just take a step back and tell us, where were you? What were you working with when you had this discovery phase?

So eight years ago, up until eight years ago, I had never engaged with displaced communities. I grew up in a somewhat small town in Seattle or just outside of Seattle. And I was a freelancer myself right after college. I was doing writing and online branding work. And I had the opportunity to work with an NGO that was trying to figure out what was happening in Europe at the turn of 2015, 2016, when there was this mass migration during the Syrian refugee crisis from individuals from the Middle East going into Europe. This was when Germany opened their borders to a million people. There was a lot of movement and not a lot of information about what was happening. So I had the opportunity to essentially travel throughout from Lesbos, Greece, all the way up to Germany, going into refugee camps along the way, being on trains and boats and planes with individuals who were making that same journey. That was when I experienced firsthand just how unjust it was that someone just like me had the unlucky draw of being born in a place where there was conflict or there was a reason where they had to flee. And yet, when they came to a new country, they were treated as this other, someone that was more likely to be feared or distrusted purely because they were not understood. And yet, they had so much to bring to these regions and these new communities that they were being based in, whether temporary or hoping to be based more long-term. So there was that immediate emergency response that I saw firsthand. And then there was also this longer development question that I experienced in Germany, when I would go and talk with people who were based in hotels for nine months plus with no ability to work locally, no ability to get documentation. They were just in this limbo period. And I just saw how that strips the dignity away from someone. So at the same time, that kind of unlocked the emotional side of why I started caring about the plight of displaced communities. And then moving into COVID, I ended up working in the private sector in a corporate role. But before that, I had gone back and got my master's, and I was focusing on this emergence of digital work among displaced communities. Again, looking at that question of, okay, if someone can't work locally, if they are displaced for a number of years, what are the options to them beyond relying just on aid? And through that research, came up with this thesis that digital work is this incredible opportunity, but it's also really messy for the same reasons, you know, those invisible barriers I talked through with you. So when I was in my corporate role, I realized that rather than being a freelancer myself, I was now the person that owns the type of freelancing projects that refugees were struggling to access.

And this was in the tech sector?

Yep, it was. It was in a fortune five company.

And so you come to this, you come to the private sector, we're in the middle of COVID, which was a really weird time anyways. You have had a very emotional and personal journey through Europe, experiencing your peers from other countries in a very difficult and very different situation. How much resonance was there inside this big corporate entity for your thinking?

I'll be honest, I came in with a lot of pre existing perceptions about what the tech world was. And I think many listeners even might share, I thought that perhaps it was a sector that was cold, that was just about making money. And there are seeds of truth in all of that, you know, big corporations have to be earning profits for their shareholders and all of that. But then when you get to the individual level, when I started meeting my teammates, meeting my leaders, and meeting people, just like me across the organization, I realized you had people who cared so deeply and were so distraught about what was happening in the world. And more importantly, just on a simple personal level, people wanted their lives and their work to have purpose. And a corporate structure and mandate to earn money isn't super profit or super purposeful unless you bring in a deeper reason. And so when I actually approached team members, I approached almost like an apologist of, okay, I know we have, you know, very structured ways of doing things. But what if we were to bring in, you know, a social impact element as well, and embed that within our work? I thought people would, you know, push it aside. But actually, I was met with a lot of excitement and green lights to say, yeah, why not? I think the biggest realization I had is that no one had really asked that question of, well, why can't we do it differently? Why can't we drive both profit and purpose? And I was continually surprised at the excitement and encouragement that I received, even from top leadership to keep pursuing that.

So Giselle, when we first met and discussed this, you said it's like broccoli brownies. And please explain, what does broccoli brownies have to do with gig works for people on the move?

So as I'm sure many parents would be able to relate to, when you're trying to get your kid to eat their vegetables like broccoli, sometimes if they say no, you have to get a little creative. And so I've heard of some parents and putting little broccoli bits into a brownie, and that way they get brownies served and their veggies served along with it. And the kid is none the wiser and the kid is happy because what they care about is the brownie. I say broccoli brownies as a way of saying, learn to speak the language of your audience and embed impact that matters into what matters to them. So in a business community, embed that impact into the operations and the KPIs, those key performance indicators that they truly care about.

And you are, of course, also saying that the most powerful companies in the whole world essentially are just children.

Your words not mine, but I won't. I won't argue with that.

I think it's a great way of explaining it. And I think it's true that if you want something to be sustainable, it really has to be in the interest of the companies. It has to be something they do as part of their business model. It has to make sense that it can't be a huge project underside. So sneaking the broccoli into the brownie is probably a great way of doing it.

I think what I've seen too from the inside is there are so many incredible big pushes that happen in response to crises around the world, but these are often very limited in the amount of time that leadership and the funding that they put behind it actually stays invested. And so you might have a blip on a radar impact or what I'm just surprised that more individuals and leaders aren't looking at is how can they embed that same drive to have social or environmental impact into their day-to-day operations and making that just a new way that business is done rather than this side CSR initiative that can get cut.

So what happens then? You mobilize your workplace to be energetic and enthusiastic about this and then what?

So it all starts with the pilot. In the private sector and especially in the tech space, everyone's big on having an MVP, a minimal viable product, prove it out, pilot, let's see how it goes, fail fast, all the buzzwords. And so that's just what I did. I put together a simple document saying essentially this is our current state, these are the KPIs this team cares about, key performance indicators. So what are the goals, what are the outcomes that my team really wants and needs to see in order for this not to be just a fluffy thing that is encouraged for one month and then dismissed the next. And so I put all this together. I essentially spoke the language of the business and said, great, these are the outcomes you care about. How can I embed refugee talents into our existing process so that we are not only driving better outcomes for the business, but we're also giving opportunities to individuals that would otherwise not have access. So practically I struck up a relationship with the International Trade Center. We identified an incredible cohort of graduates from their digital upskilling program. We then got them onboarded and allow listed onto the platforms that they needed. We got them allow listed onto the payment solutions they needed. And again, coming from a large company, I was shocked that it took one email with our payment solution provider and it took one meeting with the team that runs this platform to say, here's our business case, lead with the business case, and then justify, and this is the impact that will follow. So we piloted this out and in our first nine months saved millions of dollars while we were still paying these individual freelancers more than what we were paying freelancers before.

So how come that you both can pay people more and make it more profitable? How does that work?

At least for the team that I had, we didn't really have a strategy for the ways that we were sourcing this work. And so it was kind of the easiest option. It was set up years ago as, I think at the time, probably a test and maybe it wasn't optimized to see, okay, what kind of accuracy levels are we actually getting? Are we getting a good return for this process that we've set up? And so I just went back and I collected data on that and I realized they were not getting super great return the way that we are working with freelancers right now. So let's test a team-based approach. Let's test changing the types of freelancers that we're sending this to. And by working in a team-based approach, even if you take out the refugee elements away from it, a team was able to essentially become a team of experts on our exact project. So rather than sending out tasks to any freelancers in the marketplace, we were able to cultivate this team that knew the outcomes and deliverables that needed to be delivered for that project. And so just that alone would increase the accuracy rates that we were getting.

So if I hear you correctly, what you're saying is that because you had to be so careful in the selection of these geek workers, that you, in a sense, now that you were added, you didn't just pick, it wasn't the same quick process as normal. Actually, you stumbled upon a way of making geek work better. That's really interesting.

What I've seen is that, at least coming from a research perspective, before I even joined working in this and being a practitioner myself, there are so many risks that are so easy to call out, but it's really hard to put yourself out there to actually test something different. And I think because I came from a critical lens, I knew in advance and almost overcorrected because I knew what the harshest critics would say. And that's actually, even with Equal Reach, I want my biggest critics to have a seat at the table to help define, okay, what does fair digital work look like so that we can explore and hopefully learn together, but also not just stay in this loop of criticism, but actual practical learning?

Yeah, I think what's on my mind, because I don't think it is necessarily exploitative. I mean, I can see the arguments against the geek economy and all of that coming from a Scandinavian welfare, high level of geek modification sort of a background, right? So I get that, but that doesn't concern me as much as, are you cherry picking? Is this like the elite refugees, you can get to do this, the young, extremely well-educated, who might be better? Is this a solution for the more vulnerable parts of the population? That's probably what's on my mind.

It's a great question and one that I'm constantly asking and making sure that we have the individuals at the table from our side that we're getting feedback from so that we're not just building a little nice walled garden that isn't truly accessible. So taking a step back, when we look at the types of digital work available, it ranges broadly. It can be low complexity. So this is sometimes classified as micro work. So it's entry level. All you need is a smartphone or a computer and an internet service or an internet connection. And what that allows you to do is you can access typical work that is short in duration, but also low paying. That is a really great entry point for new individuals, let's say, who had never had anyone in their family who's accessed digital work, where they are still kind of learning the norms and the ropes of digital literacy. That is a viable entry point. Then you have more medium to high complexity digital work. And so when we look at this digital ecosystem, there is a broad spectrum of opportunity for people to step into and engage with it. The biggest challenge, though, is giving that person that first step onto the ladder. Because if you don't have access to the platforms, you don't have access to the payment, and no business knows that you exist, you will see this opportunity and not be able to access it at any low, medium or high complexity skill set that you might bring.

Okay, so that sounds fantastic, actually. It almost sounds too good to be true. And we met in London during a conference and you had me at hello. You basically gave me 25 words or less on your idea. And I immediately went, yeah, of course. It's fantastic because it provides a livelihood for people who are on the move. It is, if I'm correct, something that is financially sustainable because you, of course, will take a service fee for the matchmaking. So you actually don't need to get strapped into sort of the grant donor treadmill that the rest of us are stuck in. So this is really, really encouraging. So I think my question is, what's the ugly stuff?

I think the ugly stuff and the reality is a lot of digital work opportunities have big promises of we're going to connect people, we're going to connect 10 million people, 50 million people. And the reality is that when you have a scalable solution that is scalable to that extent, you can't serve everyone with the same quality of work that is likely enabling 10% of that population or 2% of that population to actually access work. So there is that hard reality of when you're working for scale, too big of scale is, I honestly don't trust a lot of those high level commitments just because I've seen the reality of even when you are a company that makes a commitment to hire full-time a couple of thousand individuals, practically when you come to the execution of that, that is really difficult to do.

Yeah, I think one of the dangers with tech is that we tend to look at the net positive and for a community who has to think about do no harm or minimize the harm we do, I think we have to be careful when we talk scale. I think that's very valid.

I think the other challenge that I have as well is if you build a solution that works for everybody, in a way it works for no one. And one of the challenges that we are overcoming is this perception of, well, do refugees or displaced communities even have high quality work that they can deliver? And the answer is absolutely yes. But one of the risks that exists is if we work with a business and say, all right, we've got a team for you that does web development. They do a web development project. And let's say it's a team that has never worked with the platforms or the tools that this business needs to deliver this project, but they've just had a three-week course in web development and they jump on the project.

Trust will be lost by that business and they may not choose to work with talent that is from a displaced background if they have a bad experience this first time. So there's this balance that we have to strike of, we need to make sure that individuals are equipped to succeed in projects. And oftentimes that means there is vetting that needs to be done to ensure that the quality of work is there, also the support structure that individuals have. And that's, again, why I'm a big fan of team-based environments where people can get mentorship, leadership opportunities. New individuals can come alongside more experienced individuals and learn on the job. But there is this risk of if you say anyone's invited and open it up without any sort of vetting or quality checking, that trust can be lost on both sides. But especially for the sustainability of encouraging more work and income opportunities to go to these populations, that trust needs to be there.

Yeah. So you're sacrificing scale on ensuring high quality.

Exactly. And I do hope that Equal Reach can fill a gap between those excessive promises of scale and the hyperlocal individual support that's needed then to protect the individual and the business on the other side. Because if we think of like ships that are teaching individuals how to fish and equipping them with the skills, the nets, the tools, whether it's a refugee-led organization that is collectively getting a group of individuals to earn income together or an NGO, there is this sense of, OK, can we create a harbor for those ships that are ready to participate in the marketplace to access opportunities and showcase their talents?

Yeah. Do you know what I think is an incredibly mature and smart way you're approaching this, because sometimes when we have pitched these solutions in the human center, I mean, there's nothing they can't act their way out of. It's incredible what they can do. And we all know that's not how the world works. And I think it's really great to hear your thoughtfulness and sort of very deliberate and careful way of going about this. My next question, of course, is how far have you gotten? Where are you in your journey of creating some kind of sustainable platform that can deliver these services?

We're in the early days. So I left my full-time role back in September. I knew well before that this was something that I needed to build if no one else is going to build it. It got to a point where I was getting emails every week from others within my organization and outside of my organization saying, hey, I see what you're doing with identifying talent and connecting them to work. We have projects that we want to connect as well, but we don't know how to do it. And so September I left, took some time to essentially formulate how I want to build this on the back ends. And then in December, at the end, last week of December, we kicked off our first project. In December, we got our first small grants from Amazon and social shifters to just basically give us some initial funding. But again, it was very low. And so we've been bootstrapped to date. But as soon as we opened the doors for that first project, we've done no sales pushes or marketing or outreach. It has all been word of mouth of individuals coming to us, coming to our website, equalreach.io, and either submitting our requests there or just even reaching out and saying, hey, I have a project. Can we get connected to a refugee team?

And so what's the volume of people who have been contracted in this way? And what's the volume of contracts that you've gotten from the tech companies?

I can tell you that today, but it'll probably change by the time we get this podcast out. But just in active and pending projects that were in the final stage of negotiating, we're already almost over six figures in opportunities that will be channeled to refugee talents. That is not income for me or equalreach. I'm not taking any salary at the moment. But our model is really equipped to be self-sustaining at scale. But even this early on, a few months in, we've already had that volume of interest.

Okay, so six figures within three, four months of launching. That's impressive. It shows you that there is a market fit and that you have something real here. Now, when you think about what does sustainability look like, how much volume do you think you need? How many millions of contracts do you need to run through equalreach to be able to finance the platform?

We're aiming for three to five million in projects for refugee talents because the associated revenue that we can then generate will allow us to be self-sustaining.

Okay, so if you manage to attract three to five million in contracts from the tech companies, you are able to run equalreach without having to go around asking for money. And you may even be able to take a salary yourself, which would be nice.

It would be nice.

Yeah, so that's really great. And it is one of the things I like most about what you do is the sustainability aspect here. That in a sense, you know, the tech companies are so huge, trillion of dollars compared to whatever we play around with in the humanitarian sector.

And so to get them to do some of the heavy lifting in terms of providing a livelihood for people on the move is such a great idea, right? And what, of course, what's on my mind is when do you think you'll reach that three to five million? Is that five years from now?

Is it six months from now? What is it?

I think it's by the end of next year. And that's the conservative estimate. But that is contingent on us getting the initial funding essentially that we're looking for with grant support to get up and running and actually meet that demand because we're purely restrained on our own capacity at the moment.

So here's a call out to all of the donors who are listening to True Monetary. And here's an excellent opportunity to invest a little bit of money in a project that actually will fly by itself in a couple of years. So get out your checkbooks and call Giselle.

Wow, I need to bring you along with me for every pitch events I do. That was brilliant.

Excellent. All right. Good, Giselle. I think it's great. And I really want to say thank you for your entrepreneurship and your drive and your passion and your want to make life for people on the move better. It's just so encouraging and wonderful to see somebody with your talent and your enthusiasm and drive do something like that.

Thank you so much. That means a lot. And thank you for the platform and opportunity to share a story.