Power, Narrative, and Influence: Van Jones and Promise CEO Phaedra Ellis-Lamkins

Hey, everybody. This is Ben Kesnoka, cofounder and partner at Village Global, a network driven venture firm. And this is our podcast where we go deep on all things business and technology with world leading experts. Hi, everyone. On behalf of Anne Doreen, Ben Casnoka, Lindsay, Sam, and the rest of the Village Global team, welcome to transformers. We're gonna kick things off with our good friend and fellow villager, Phaedra Ellis Lampkins, founder and CEO of Promise. Phaedra is scaling Promise at the intersection of government, technology, and financial health. And she's broken down institutional walls in order to build a category defining company. Oh, thank you. We're also joined by her friend Van Jones, who'll help us understand how power in government and in politics is not only helpful, but its own competitive and competitive advantage. So let's get started. Phaedra. Yes. Can you tell us a little bit about Promise and what it does? Yeah. Absolutely. I I do wanted to say thank you to Village and both Amrit and Ben and Anne and Sheila. It I feel really lucky that Village was one of our, as we said, OG investors and continues to be I I I don't think you can oh, I'm supposed to be succinct. But kindness is I just wanna say kindness is, underrated. Kindness and support and the consistent kindness and support and ease from Village is such a gift. And so there's no stress, and I just think as a founder to have investors where you have no stress is such an incredible gift. And so so happy to be here, but just really wanted to say thank you because it's, like, so lovely to just be like, oh, yeah. I'm gonna spend time with Village. So so Promise is a company, focused software company focused on, how do you improve the experience of government? How do you make it more efficient? And we are really focused on basic needs for people. How do you get access to food, power, water, shelter? And so we basically run programs for mostly states so that people can get, aid. And a example of that is where the state of Florida uses us is if you need emergency aid for electricity, we actually get your information because you've already applied for food stamps. We compare that against the data file of a, energy company, and we send you a message that says you qualify for aid. Let us know if you don't want aid. If you apply in the state of California, we're promised is not. You will go online and call. They will have windows that they take applications. You will have to come in. You will bring to a copy of your income, a copy of your, utility bill. They'll then put it into a Salesforce system, and, you'll wait somewhere between six weeks to three months. Wow. And so, it's just recognizing inherently that technology can make the system better. That's …