A Media Founder's Pivot to Stories With a Social Impact

BY sagelazzaro | November 12, 2020

Welcome to She Leads, a series digging into the good, the bad, and the ugly of being a woman in business. In each piece, we chat with a different founder about her experiences, the issues women face in business, and how they’re powering through in the face of adversity.

At only 11 years old, Erin Ralph began freelance writing for fashion and lifestyle magazines. At 13, she launched her own, LuxuryFashion.com. She went on to help found Zink magazine, the Serene Social wellness community, and Bullett magazine, an indie fashion favorite. Ralph was working her way through the fashion media world, but she didn’t like what she was seeing.

“I had been in media for so long and seen the game. Back in the magazine days, I wanted to write an article about how there are toxic ingredients in makeup. But it was like, ‘No, you can't do that because then we'll lose our biggest advertiser, L'Oreal,’” she told From Day One. Ralph also cited advertiser conflicts as a factor in leaving Bullett, which she co-founded with five partners.

“It started to feel like a straw that broke the camel's back, where it's like, we have to do the right thing.”

Ralph was disillusioned by the industry, but she was feeling stronger than ever about the power of media itself. Not long after leaving Bullett, she started thinking about how media could be used for good, and last year, she officially launched CoCre. The New York City-based company, mostly bootstrapped in its financing, facilitates collaborative action between organizations, companies, and individuals. It also acts as a production company, capturing stories about the work to inspire people and make a social impact.

On the CoCre site, articles and videos tell stories about initiatives like refugee relief, urban farming, and work with organizations like the Trevor Project. CoCre also provides readers with simple ways they can get involved. One story, for example, spotlights an education initiative called Yoga Foster and invites readers to donate a used yoga mat or $20 to sponsor a student. Podcast and docuseries content was in the works for major streaming services too, though production was interrupted by the COVID-19 pandemic.

Overall, CoCre oversees dozens of initiatives with companies and organizations through its Giving Facilitation program, including those mentioned above. Recently, the company launched a new version of the program directed at Fortune 200 companies, the Impact Facilitation Program, in which CoCre is advising not just on their giving, but their operations’ own footprints on the world.

We talked to Erin about CoCre, her entrepreneurial journey, and how to jump into something new. Excerpts:

What inspired you to start CoCre?

The basis of the idea is that media and stories move people. We've seen it with this whole range of [craft] beers. We’ve seen this story of controlling the diamond supply, inflating their value and putting them out in the media as a girl's best friend. The whole entire concept of the engagement ring is a media tactic, you know what I mean? With all the ways people are being moved and influenced by media, it’s like, what matters right now? The only thing that matters to me personally is that we should all be living well together. The inspiration is definitely wanting to see the world be a greater place.

The other big part was knowing that so many of our problems are because of how we cultivate natural resources and the big business behind the things we need. So the idea was, can we just start exchanging resources differently? A lot of people think support has to be money, but your giving assets can be time, scale, network, overstock of goods, anything. You can give extra airline miles. If you're a graphic designer, you can give 15 hours work. There are so many ways we can all make an impact. So let's have a centralized location where people can make an impact and take action on the things that they care about.

You say CoCre aims to “gamify giving.” What does that mean, and why did you go with that approach?

It's almost like if you're playing a video game and you get really into it, interacting, trying to level up and solve problems, and you're working with people you don't even know. I was inspired by this true story of two engineers who read about a girl in need of a prosthetic arm. They were in different parts of the world, but online, on this little scientist forum message board, the two of them felt the story, collaborated, and virtually co-created an arm for her and sent it to her. Never having met, they came together and created a solution that changed that girl's life. It's just stories like that, and how we can have fun doing stuff like that. If people can get excited and motivated to get some extra points in a video game, imagine if they were actually making a real impact.

Of course, you’re also a serial entrepreneur and have been at this since you were 11. How did getting so much experience at such a young age teach you to hold your own in business, and as a woman in business?

I was a teenager, so a lot of people in the industry would just be like, ‘Oh, you're so cute. Come. I'll take you through.’ I was ushered in and taken under people's wings because I was so young. I definitely see the struggle women in business have, specifically in the corporate environments. In my experience, I've definitely been in rooms where I've been looked at like I was probably not going to say the brightest thing. I just think that if you walk in the room and you know what you have to offer, if you truly know you have something good and valuable to offer, you just walk in with that energy. I believe in the work that I'm doing, and I believe in what I'm offering to this world. I was always able to walk in rooms and be like, ‘I have something. Let's talk.’ I'm friendly. I've had different experiences where if someone has ever doubted me, I'll smile right through them, and then I'll intellectually override them.

One of your endeavours, Serene Social, was about bringing women together for experiences that would empower them socially and financially, from yoga to mentoring. What inspired you to launch that, and how did you carry that mission of supporting women into your companies that followed?

That was a pivot in my life where I was doing the fashion thing and then I started to question everything, and I just cracked, like, ‘Oh my god, life is not this.’ I wanted to grow and went into my own self-care. I had always been into wellness, but it had been on the back burner. My friend was holding these rooftop yoga classes in New York City, and she was gathering quite a great group of women. I was there for about three years as a partner with her developing it. We had chapters in London and Los Angeles and different events in all three places. We built up this really incredible beautiful community, and in that community is where I had a lot of the conversations where I started to learn how it was for other women.

You were also a co-founder of Bullett magazine, which was an impactful but quick project for you. What advice would you give to women about bouncing back and diving into something new?

Just think it through. So you want this dream to come true? Okay. So what does that look like? Why do you want it? Make sure you're doing it for the right reasons. In the beginning after Bullett, it was abrupt. It felt like I had birthed something and then it was just ... wild. I was in conflict with advertisers and wanting to speak the truth, again. There was a lot going on there. I think if you just trust in the process and detach, and you learn to let go, even if it's a dream that you birthed, just learn to let go and learn that it's a step in the process. Because I let that go, the idea of CoCre came to me.

Sage Lazzaro is a New York City-based journalist covering tech, business, culture, women and diversity & inclusion. Her work has appeared in WIRED, Refinery29, VICE, One Zero, Bustle, the New York Observer, and more. Follow her on Twitter here.

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It’s now the skills that matter—and the assessment of them.Workforce demographics further complicate succession planning. During the span of 2024-27, more than 11,200 Americans will turn 65 every day. Retiring Baby Boomers are vacating a record number of senior positions. Identifying and preparing the next generation of leaders is a key exercise for HR.Artificial intelligence may be the answer. Overloaded HR teams are already employing generative AI agents to write the first draft of job descriptions and benefits newsletters, but the tasks AI can complete for HR are getting increasingly complex, like identifying attrition risks. Why not succession planning?Succession Planning for a Skills-Based WorkforceArtificial intelligence is a promising solution because it helps identify employees who have the skills necessary for the role, not only the right career history. HR is already using artificial intelligence to identify skills within an organization, typically to match current employees to open roles or new projects, but “you could easily extend that to succession planning,” says Chris Pinc, the director of product management at consulting firm WTW.Firms like WTW and other industry experts are spinning up their own AI-backed agents. For instance, the Josh Bersin Company launched its new AI platform for HR, called Galileo, in 2024. It looks a lot like ChatGPT; users type a query into a search bar and the tool returns an answer. Galileo can suggest prompts or help you find specific content related to HR expertise.Chris Pinc, the director of product management at consulting firm WTW (company photo)WTW released its own AI assistant, Expert, last month, while HR tech firm Visier has Vee, an AI agent specifically for people analytics. Google is working on its own AI-powered instance for its HR team. Like Bersin’s Galileo, the interfaces of Expert and Vee will be familiar to anyone who has used a generative AI tool. Why use tools like Galileo or Expert instead of ChatGPT? First, these platforms are closed environments, which means that the information employers enter about their workforce stays only within their ecosystem; it doesn’t feed the larger corpus underlying the tool. And second, these platforms are trained on data, research, and thought leadership from respected HR firms. Galileo pulls from the Bersin company’s own collection plus others, like research from Heidrick & Struggles. WTW’s Expert is similarly constructed, with the entirety of the WTW library backing the tool. Users can load in their own proprietary resources, like survey results, skills assessments, projects, plans, frameworks, processes, and original research. Amy Farner, Bersin’s SVP of product and member experience, said, “We’re not letting it go out there and troll the web.” These companies tell the AI what content to trust.Where AI Can Supercharge Succession PlanningLet’s say it’s time to start looking for a successor to your chief marketing officer, who’s likely to retire in the next three years. Let’s use generative AI to find a good fit. You might ask your tool: I need to find employees who have taken on several major, client-facing projects in the last year. Ideally, with the marketing team. They need to score high on our leadership assessment for innovation and creativity. They also need eight to 10 years of people-management experience.The tool returns a list of leaders matching the criteria. You’re surprised to see Kelly Kapoor, a senior manager from business development, on the list. You learn that last year she worked on a successful product launch and still attends regular meetings with the tech and marketing teams. Not only that, Kelly’s name appears on several proposals for new product features and she has created detailed presentations on original competitive research. Plus, her performance reviews are excellent.Amy Farner, SVP of product and member experience for the Josh Bersin Company (Company photo)It looks like she might be a promising candidate, but under the company’s traditional framework, she never would have crossed your radar. So you load the CMO job description into the AI tool and tell it to map a three-year development plan to prep Kelly for the seat. You learn that she hasn’t yet completed a few key leadership-training courses, and she has very little experience working with creative teams. Plus, she’s had only two or three direct reports at a time. Looks like Kelly has a ways to go before she’s ready, but now you have a new candidate and a plan.What Other Talent Have We Been Overlooking?This is a fictional example, but there’s real-world precedent. Pinc has seen it happen. 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Corporate Empathy: Where It Went and Why It Matters

It certainly seems like a bleak moment to be a worker in America. Scroll the news or social media and a picture forms of an uncaring, turbulent, and miserly workplace.Why is this so striking? Empathy, or the ability to understand and be sensitive to others’ feelings and experiences, became a fashionable trait in business just a few years ago. For a while, employers were getting really good at responding to the needs of the workforce. Some companies even traded on it. Empathy, as well as its more active cousin, compassion, took many forms. As more attention focused on how some demographic groups were often left on the sidelines, employers said OK, let’s find ways to level the playing field, and they set hiring goals and stood up mentorship programs. When Covid lockdown closed schools and day-care centers and quarantined babysitters, companies told workers to take care of their families and welcomed Zoom cameos from kids. 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First Amazon, AT&T, and Boeing called workers back to the office in late 2024, and the president did the same on inauguration day. Underscoring the dramatic shift: All of this is happening as we arrive at the fifth anniversary of Covid lockdowns in the U.S. In some ways, all those revolutionary changes to the way we work seem to be dissolving. To be sure, many employers insist that employee well-being is still a priority, but surveys show that most workers aren’t feeling it. According to Gallup, the percentage of employees who believe their organization cares about their well-being plunged to 21% in early 2024. At its peak in May 2020, that figure was 49%.These stories and statistics certainly make it seem like employers are pulling the plug on empathy. But while the big tech and banking companies that have toughened up their workplace policies employ a lot of people, as does the federal government, they don’t employ everyone. Do these stories really reflect what it’s like to be a worker in 2025? Is corporate empathy dead? I started asking around.When the Reality Doesn't Match the MessageAs I was working on this story, Lauren Branston, CEO of the UK-based nonprofit Institute of Business Ethics, sent me an email. “I have been hearing people I trust saying they are seeing more and more ‘campaigns’ saying empathy is bad, etc. Which I find worrying,” she wrote. “People are campaigning against a core human value. We aren’t ready for this as an institution or in society because we have assumed these topics to be settled.”For decades, she later told me in an interview, people have operated with the belief that undergirds much of Western political democracy: that those with power can largely be trusted to use that power for good, and if they don’t use it for good, then accountability, in the form of ethics or regulations, will come for them. Now, it’s not clear whether either of those things is enough to stop the rolling tide.“It’s fundamentally challenging, she said. “It’s a moment where your values and beliefs are shaken, and it’s a moment where you have to sit and recalibrate what’s going on. What you see when people’s values are challenged is engagement and collaboration and connection. People organize and get organized. And I think that might happen.”As a reporter, I talk to senior HR leaders and executives every day, and some of them I know well. It’s clear to me that a lot of these people who work in HR are, as individuals, genuinely concerned about the well-being of their colleagues. And some are really pushing for change.In February, I moderated a From Day One panel of senior talent-acquisition leaders, and all of them were insistent on providing a good candidate experience even as they introduce AI into their hiring process and navigate an unwelcoming labor marketplace. 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There have been two rounds of layoffs and a reorganization since he arrived, but Terry believes the matters were handled as well as they could have been.Primarily, he told me, empathy is evident in the fact that executives are so accessible. For two years, and especially lately, employees have asked executives during town hall meetings whether they’ll stick with DEI. The answer has always been yes. They ask whether workers will be called back to the office. The answer is no, remote and hybrid work will stay in place. As far as ratcheting up productivity expectations, the company now attaches bonuses to performance, but Terry doesn’t believe that’s meant to hector workers. It’s just what happens when revenue flattens out.But something weird happened. Recently, Terry’s new boss told him to provide weekly status updates, a requirement that sounds suspiciously close to Elon Musk’s ominous email to federal employees, ordering them to list five accomplishments for the week. I asked Terry, does that give you pause? It does, so he’s going to ask his manager why. Is he not trusted? Many workers may be harboring the same concerns, but aren’t confident enough to speak up. “Senior leadership can’t make people ask questions,” Terry told me, “but they can create an atmosphere where you can ask questions in front of everyone, or silently Slack the leadership.” So that’s what he’s going to do.What Does Empathy Have to Do With Business?It may be worth asking ourselves where we expect empathy in the workplace to come from: the executives in the C-suite who represent the business, or the colleagues we interact with on a daily basis?One employee who was recently let go from the Department of Education wrote on LinkedIn about how her colleagues went out of their way to help when she was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. One tech worker told me how much their manager was a mentor. Federal workers at the Federal Trade Commission and the Department of Commerce have told me how they’re banding together to share resources and support. Go looking for empathy, and you’ll find it.What some employees are getting from their employers cannot be dismissed: bullying and badgering, threats and ultimatums. Really big sticks and no carrots to speak of. People are really angry about layoffs. Most people would agree this is really bad humanity. Some would argue really bad business too.Business Insider’s Aki Ito reported on how Meta’s harsh performance reviews may backfire and damage productivity rather than improve performance. “CEOs may think they’re creating a meritocracy,” Ito writes. “but in reality they’re marching their companies straight into a trap of sunken morale, high turnover, depressed profits, and reduced innovation.”There’s evidence that corporate empathy really does affect dollars and cents. Among my favorite examples is a study by a group of researchers in Switzerland and the UK. 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Much of that may be politically inspired, but Musk’s gleeful lack of empathy for workers hit by DOGE cutbacks, with references to wood chippers and chain saws, gained viral infamy.The opposite kind of behavior appears to be demonstrably beneficial and stabilizing. “Follow-up explorations unveiled a negative association between CEO human care statements and stock volatility, meaning that market participants discounted these companies’ future earnings less,” the study reads. “Our explorations suggest that it pays off for CEOs to go beyond mere financial information and show some humanity.”Emily McCrary-Ruiz-Esparza is an independent journalist and From Day One contributing editor who writes about business and the world of work. Her work has appeared in the Economist, the BBC, The Washington Post, Inc., and Business Insider, among others. She is the recipient of a Virginia Press Association award for business and financial journalism.(Featured photo by Miniseries/iStock by Getty Images)

Emily McCrary-Ruiz-Esparza March 19, 2025

5 Priorities for 2025: How HR Leaders Plan to Meet a New Wave of Change

In 2025, HR will be at yet another inflection point. With high levels of employee detachment, anxiety about the arrival of AI, and a huge demand for new skills, corporate CEOs are saying to their chief people officers (CPOs): We need you to fix these things. And by the way, restructure how your own HR operations run–and keep spirits high too!It’s a lot, but chief HR officers are gearing up for another wave of change, even after the incessant disruption in the five years since the pandemic arrived. The consulting firm Heidrick & Struggles interviewed 70 chief people officers around the world about what it takes to do the job. Jennifer Wilson, the co-head of the global HR-officers practice at the firm, wasn’t surprised by the substance of their findings—artificial intelligence, generational changes, and the need to adapt to a stream of curveballs are all priorities they expected to find. 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Now, futurists train their focus on culture. “It should be the guiding light for companies,” he said, but “they’ve gotten away from that.”The percentage of U.S. workers who say they’re thriving in life has hit a record low: Just 50% of workers Gallup surveyed in 2024 are feeling good about their current life and future prospects, a figure that has declined in the past decade. Gallup also found that employees are detached from their jobs. The chief culprit: rapid organizational changes and the persistent uncertainty around flexible work schedules. If CPOs are still fighting with their CEOs and boards about workers returning to office in 2025, “then you’ve lost,” Kaplan said. The HR leaders who will win are those that can push executives closer to their employees, and inspire them to deliver.Elaine Becraft, the SVP of HR at global medical-tech company Siemens Healthineers, believes that company culture must connect workers to each other and to the mission of the business. Long gone are the days of clocking in and clocking out to collect a paycheck. In 2025, she’s going to focus on holistic employee care.Workers need a new relationship with their employers, and that responsibility has been handed to HR. “There is a recognition that the workforce overall is tired,” said Wilson at Heidrick & Struggles. “We’ve been through a lot over the last few years. The nature of work is changing. Mental health issues in the western world are more prominent than they’ve been in the past, and that’s really become a reality for chief people officers.”Get to the Next Steps on AIArtificial intelligence is unavoidable, but there’s a gap between expectations by CEOs and the actual embrace of AI by workers. “So far, employee adoption of AI in the workplace is lagging behind the hype,” Gallup reports. If your company isn’t an early adopter, it’s probably trying to catch up. 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It’s a skills-based world now, with much more malleable definitions of roles and projects. And “until companies shift their cultures, efforts to scale skills-based marketplaces will stall,” i4cp’s report says.In a skills-based workforce, employees flow from one assignment to the next, pick up skills in fractional roles, dip into new teams with temporary projects, and volunteer their expertise in new departments. Ideally, all work is promotable and company tenure is no longer a deciding factor.  There’s a large share of the workforce that may be attracted to the fluidity of skills-based work. Sixty-five percent of workers feel stuck in their current roles, according to a Glassdoor survey, a situation that can breed resentment. “It used to be that you stepped into a defined job with tasks, and that was your role all the time. Now it’s more project-based,” said VML’s Blandon. For one team you might be the brand leader, and for another you’re the project manager. “I think jobs need to be fundamentally redesigned to tap into people’s ‘gig desires.’ They want to bring more skill sets to the table. They want to explore more things, and I think we can be savvy in leveraging that.”Maintain a Commitment to DEI, But Change the LanguageDespite recent high-profile changes in diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programs by the likes of Walmart and Ford in the face of anti-DEI activists, the overall corporate commitment to DEI’s principles isn’t dead. “Activists are overstating the surface-level changes many companies are making to get rid of the heat,” CNN reported this week based on a review of company policies. “Nearly all the largest companies in America still say they are committed to promoting DEI.”Companies are motivated to persist with the principles of DEI because, in an increasingly diverse population, it has been proven to be good for the bottom line, as well as employee retention and motivation. That said, companies still want to avoid the political flak, so they have shifted the emphasis of their language, focusing more on inclusion and belonging. The values have already been operationalized and, in some cases, leaders have asserted that they have not abandoned those values, but are waiting to see what the temperature will be under a second Trump Administration before speaking out more.How can HR make sure thier companies evolve their practices, and not just the labels? The NeuroLeadership Institute’s DEI Impact Case recommends three actions that organizations can take to maintain their investments in DEI, no matter what they’re calling it, as Fast Company reports: “prioritize diversity by aligning it with specific business goals, habituate inclusion through targeted learning and performance tools that integrate it into daily practices, and systemize equity by examining policies and procedures to embed and sustain fairness throughout.”Reshape Organizational StructuresThe new skills-based economy is shaking up corporate structures, and companies are “delayering” their organizations, removing expensive middle managers believed by some to stymie productivity, while companies are also trying to teach managers to be more effective. Blandon says we’re due. “When was the last time we truly thought about reframing that? Manager, subordinate. It hasn’t been really tweaked in a long time, and people are questioning it.”Some companies are delayering to usher in the next generation of executives. Baby Boomers in the C-suite are retiring, and “you’ve got to get that next layer ready,” Wilson said. As vacancies open en masse, “how do you make sure that you don’t have business disruption from that newness?”Kaplan hopes that a shallow hierarchy will shrink the distance between the CEO and the rank and file–and motivate the workforce. “The CEO should be the most inspiring leader in the company,” he said, and by bringing workers closer to their leader, they may feel more connected to the company.At many comppanies, the HR department is getting a reorganization of its own. The traditional “centers of excellence” model, in which HR segments specialize in narrow disciplines, is on its way out, and a cross-functional model, in which HR teams are multi-skilled and capable of working with all departments, is gaining popularity. People ops no longer waits for requests, but goes problem-solving on its own. “We’re seeing agile teams form and disband for specific organizational issues,” said Wilson.Experiments abound. Some companies have moved all administrative tasks to a general shared-services center, leaving HR to “focus entirely on talent, leadership, succession, bench strength, organizational design, and [organizational development].” And, according to Wilson, this could be “a smart way to get HR out of the administrative chains that it’s been under for so many years.”Maybe it’s time for HR and people operations to get a new name? “Talent operations,” Wilson suggested, but then paused. Even that suggests the team is doing more admin than it really does, and the discipline continues to grow. “Maybe talent advisors?” Whatever the name, she said, it should demonstrate that talent is at the center of its responsibilities.“We’re like the lookout on a boat,” Becraft said about her team at Siemens Healthineers. “We see issues, challenges, and opportunities coming toward the company, and it’s our responsibility to bring those to the right people and make sure they understand what’s going on out there.”Emily McCrary-Ruiz-Esparza is a freelance journalist and From Day One contributing editor who writes about work, the job market, and women’s experiences in the workplace. Her work has appeared in the Economist, the BBC, The Washington Post, Quartz, Business Insider, and Fast Company.(Featured image: Photo by Kobus Louw/iStock by Getty Images)

Emily McCrary-Ruiz-Esparza December 18, 2024