Marcia Drake | Jul 23, 2024

Ari Block (00:00) Marcia, welcome to the show. I have been really excited to talk to you because you are the perfect combination of stuff we love to talk about. So let me give you a few compliments just right out of the start. You do a lot of work that benefits humanity. You even do volunteer work, which I'd love to talk about as well. And you got quite the head to technology and AI. And on top of that, you've got a science background and you focus on decision -making and statistics and data, predominantly data. So these are all our hotspots. So I'm so excited to have you on the show today and a very, very big welcome. What is your proudest moment? Marcia Drake (00:44) Years ago when I was in college, I did a lot of volunteer work working with immigrants and refugees. in the Puyallup Valley area, and that's a place in Washington State here, where I learned that there is such a thing as the hidden poor, meaning there were a lot of people who in the area at the time were living under very difficult conditions. but they were not necessarily visible. didn't see them on the street corner. You didn't see them under the bridges and such. They actually, you know, were holding down jobs. They were living in apartments and such, but really some dire conditions. And I partnered with a older lady. She was in her 80s. And she and I would go out and we would actually deliver food. We would get food from the supermarkets and that was close to expiring or expired but still good. Like yogurt and cheese, those kind of things. And we would go out and we would knock on doors and we would find these people. A lot of them were through a list that the church kept at the time. What made the biggest impression to me was the amount of gratitude and the humanity that I witnessed. And I got to see a side of people and also contribute to being able to help somebody directly in a way that I don't know that most people have that experience. And I remember meeting this couple. that was they had a new baby, didn't even have diapers for the baby. mean we were bringing diapers, were bringing formula, all of the things. And this couple was so radiant, so beautiful in their state, so gracious. And I was thinking how can such people be so happy when you They really have nothing. And yet here they were, you know, they were both working multiple jobs, oftentimes at night trying to keep up with things. you know, it was very, very difficult. And I think from that point on that experience really set the tone for a mission for the rest of my life. And that is really to do good, to uplift. humanity and look at some of our social issues that we have and figure out, how can we make this better? How can we get the message out that everybody matters here? And even though to society they may not have had, they certainly were contributing, but I think society looks down on poverty. Ari Block (04:00) Thank Marcia Drake (04:12) they look down on that kind of a condition and yet I can say directly they impacted me, just their sheer presence and me being able to give back to them. And that has lit a fire for me going forward. So yeah, I would say that was my most impactful. event and you know I always had a heart for especially immigrants and refugees and that led me down some cultural roads. You know I got my degree in anthropology, I started learning languages, I started trying to really dive deep and understand some of the cultural needs. My grandmother was a Russian Canadian immigrant. who came from, the family came over from Russia before the communist revolution. Leo Tolstoy actually brought them out of Canada. But she lived to be, you 95, 96 years old. And she shared a lot of her wisdom with me about just how difficult it was even coming to the US from Canada, where, you know, she still had you know, language to learn and some cultural things to overcome. But I've always tried to put myself in the other shoes. And what I've learned in my experience is there, I mean, we can learn from other people. And so many of these immigrants and refugees are, you know, they have done things I would say the average American would never do, know, and step outside of the comfort zone, go to a different land, take all of these risks to try to, you know, live the American dream or to live a better life. And to me, that's also a big inspiration. So I like to learn other stories as Nikki (06:27) Would you say there was one kind of pivotal learning that changed you as a person and a leader? Marcia Drake (06:35) one of those things that built on the learning was the fact that we all have kind of a subculture to us. I I mentioned immigrants and refugees, but all of us have a heritage, especially here in the United States. My family is very diverse. I mentioned my grandmother, but I had Irish, had French, I had Native American, a lot of other roots that have contributed to who I am today. So to be able to hear other stories, number one, and number two, be able to understand the language that they And when I mean language, I don't mean, you know, like English or Japanese or French. I'm talking about the hidden language of just how we've learned to get along. And even in disciplines, so you look at law enforcement, you look at the judicial branch, you look at business, you look at government, you look at, I mean, there's all these different groups that we kind moves between. And professionals in each one of these groups has their own lingo, their own language, their own culture. And throughout my career path, I've done a lot of work in data, I've done a lot of work in government, I've worked with a ton of different sectors in society as well. And it's interesting when you get two different of these groups or more in a room. and trying to communicate and work on one problem. A good lesson for me was observing law enforcement and engineers, transportation engineers, trying to have a conversation about, how are we going to build a database? I was like, wow, talk about some smart swang. And there was misinterpretations all over the place because they were reading each other different one person would use one word, which would mean something different to somebody else. And I found myself often running interference or helping to translate between these groups as I learned the language. And I found I got quite good at that, helping to build those bridges so that we can actually focus on what matters. And that is, how do we work together to solve these problems that are bigger than all of us? How can we agree? mean, yeah, you may not take the same language as you. We may have some differences, but ultimately, we're focused on the same goal. We're trying to go the same direction. How do we get Ari Block (09:41) You know, my boss and my mentor from long ago, used to call that English to English translation. Marcia Drake (09:50) Absolutely. Ari Block (09:53) can we open our eyes to see and learn and know more about Marcia Drake (09:59) Well, I think that it all starts ultimately with listening deeply to people's we talked about the hidden poor. We talked about some of the challenges that many immigrants face. But there are also many people who have been here their whole life who are also in some of these situations for various reasons. I think that we can kind of break it down to, you know, there's a physical aspect, there is a emotional aspect, and there's a spiritual aspect of poverty that exists. And it's not an easy subject to unwind. I mean, it's wonderful that we have AI able to do some of the deeper learning capabilities we have because that's going to us to shed some light on some of these more difficult issues. But a lot of times what I've seen is there are layers there. It starts with your upbringing ultimately, know, who you are and what makes up your family, how you were raised, your background, who you've had around you. All of that influences your opportunities that you have around But then you also have your biology. And some people are just more resilient than others. And in the United States, we also have a health care crisis where from the physical body aspect to the mental health aspect, we do not necessarily have the best structures in place to support everybody. So depending on what category you're falling into, that's defined poverty. It can be defined many different ways. And I think at its core, this is also where we get some resistance and pushback on being able to support true poverty, physical poverty. or being able to support some of the immigration is the average citizen kind of says, well, what about me? I'm having it rough. I'm having a rough day. I'm not right. And everybody's got their own story. So there is likely truth to that. There could be, as I mentioned, emotional poverty. Maybe somebody's gone through some horrible trauma that they're dealing with. I think all of us have. have a degree of trauma. Same thing with spiritually, maybe there's a spiritual poverty and they're turning to alcohol or drugs or something to help feed a whole that could be dealt with in a different way. it really does come back to the story, which is why I love the name of your podcast so much, the story Samurai, is that our stories just have so much power to them, we simply need to listen to each other deeply to even start to find these solutions that can make a bigger change, bigger shift to humanity in Ari Block (13:44) of that. I mean this idea that learning, empathy, close your mouth, open your ears, and really just understand what's happening around you. And I would say more than that, I would say put yourself in a spot where you can be exposed and learn. There's the how you're doing, which you'll get the fine, yeah, I'm great, which you'll never get any real information from that. But then there's the, no really, how are you doing today? Like that's going to elicit a whole different response. And sometimes that second time that you ask it sincerely, not as a, you know, hey, good to see you, but as I care about you and I want to know if you're doing okay. It's a totally different thing. the mission of EcoHeart, as it shows up on the first page, is to up -level humanity through the power of data. I read that out and I was immediately, Nikki, you have to see this. This is wonderful. Marcia Drake (14:40) Yeah, so with Ecoheart, this really I would say my bigger calling in life and that is to bridge data and humanity to create a better world. There are so many things that I've observed in my professional journey and my personal journey as well. know, hearing people's stories, living different... career experiences. And what I identified was that we have a lot of issues in society. I mean, that's a given. But we also have a lot of research out there in academics that are doing great work. They're writing wonderful papers. They are giving wonderful speeches. But that information is going anywhere. It's just kind of going out into the void and into a nice collection. And I can hear it in the academics, the frustration of, well, we've got all the solutions. We know it would work. But if somebody would just listen or do these things, then maybe we could make a difference. The flip side of that is with government. You have a lot of governments right now in a very reactive mode and just trying to stay afloat. And never before have we had technology changing at the pace that we have. A lot of our systems are not able to keep up with the pace of technology. The courts are a great example where you've got a court case can take a couple years to go through the system. But a tweet or you can send a message around the world in a second. People expect things more on demand now. They expect the systems to also be able to keep up with that. And I can tell you there's a lot of work that needs to be done even to get to that point. So the bigger question is we philanthropists circling and saying, I've got all this money. I want to make a difference in the world. Where do I put it? That's a different kind of a challenge. And you have a large groups that have been formed to try to distribute money for that very purpose. And then you also have businesses wanting to help, but sometimes they're actually getting in there and they're making the situation worse. So how do you look at all of that? How do you actually bridge the gap? And I really believe that our opportunity right now is data. I've seen the power of data. when it's put in action to save lives. I've seen the power of data when it's put into action to make big changes that benefit society on the whole. And we can't get there if we can't see where we're going. Data helps us to see where we're going and can also give us a view of not only where we started from, but how big the impact that we made. was. So, you know, there's a cross -disciplinary approach that is also very much needed in society. And many of us have a tendency to look at things in a very narrow lens. So I gave the example earlier of law enforcement and transportation. Well, the engineers and we were looking at traffic safety for that and I was part of some fantastic multidisciplinary teams early on in my career that we were looking at ways that we could reduce traffic fatalities on the roads and by bringing together experts from multiple disciplines to really ask the questions we quickly discovered it's more than just something that one segment of society can handle. So, you know, for example, law enforcement would go out and do drunk driving arrest and I could hear the frustration in their voices when they would say, well, we got him off the street tonight, but, you know, the judges let him out or whatever, he's out of jail the next day. So what difference did I make? And I used to argue, you know what, you made a difference in the moment and you could have saved a life that night. Every drunk driver removed from a road is a potential life saved, was my motto back then. But we quickly realized, wow, we need the whole system to be working together. We need trauma response. We need. to understand what kinds of things are creating impaired driving. We need to know how our roads are built and where are the problems that the roads are causing versus where can we actually position law enforcement to do a good job in maybe slowing traffic down, for example. So looking at all of these things together and looking at the data, Ari Block (20:31) Amazing. Marcia Drake (20:36) we were able to design some very impactful on the ground programs that we really started testing and trying to make a difference. And we did have quite a bit of impact at that time.