Quarterly Publication - Ed. 02-May6 - Flipbook - Page 17
TECH
FOR
ALL,
ALL
FOR
TECH
16
GRIT
With Sage Franch
NEXT Canada interviews Sage Franch on the
mission behind Crescendo, the tech that powers her business and how she balances making
a positive impact on society with profitability
WHY FOCUS YOUR BUSINESS
AROUND THE LACK OF
DIVERSITY IN TECH?
We founded Crescendo to
tackle the issues of inequality
and workplace discrimination.
The professional world is more
diverse than ever before, yet marginalized employees still face
disproportionate barriers and unfairness that lead to fewer growth opportunities, lower income,
and negative impacts on mental
health. In recent years the tech
industry has come under fire for
its unfair treatment of women
and people of colour, leading
company leaders to recognize
the importance of investing in
Diversity and Inclusion (D&I) efforts. But while the intention
was there, no affordable solution
existed to help distributed and
global teams implement successful D&I programs at scale.
We chose to focus on this
problem because of our own
experiences with workplace discrimination and inequality. We
know what it's like to work in places
where inequality reigns - we're
building Crescendo for people like
us, so it's really meaningful when
we see it making a difference.
HOW DOES TECH ENABLE YOU
TO SOLVE THIS CHALLENGE?
Professionals today are hyperconnected, using tools like Slack
and Microsoft Teams to share
information round the clock. We
saw an opportunity to embed
Crescendo right into these tools,
to make it easy for professionals
to develop cultural competence
while they work.
Crescendo sends personalized
resources to professionals that
help them understand different
cultures, leading to more inclusive
behaviour. By integrating with the
technology that professionals are
already using, Crescendo makes it
easy for any company to initiate
and measure cultural change at a
global scale.
HOW DOES SOCIAL IMPACT
COMPLEMENT CRESCENDO’S
BUSINESS MODEL?
Social impact is at the core
of our company's purpose, so it
is tightly coupled with our measurements of success. We have
built our product in such a way
that more usage leads to both
increased revenue and stronger
social impact. A big component
of our platform is microlearning,
which helps employees develop
skills that lead to tangible D&I
outcomes for our clients. The more
a user learns through Crescendo,
the more likely they are to take
inclusive actions at work. We track
user engagement and measure
the change in D&I metrics over
time to see how users' learning
journeys are changing the work
environment for different groups
of people.
ANY ADVICE FOR FOUNDERS
LOOKING TO BUILD A VENTURE
WITH SOCIAL IMPACT?
Startups have the benefit of
flexibility and are usually early
enough to be able to retrofit
social impact into an existing
company, even if social good is
not at the core of their mission.
To start, founders could think
about which causes are important
to their customers and see how
they can integrate those into their
products or services. To devise a
meaningful social impact strategy
that lasts, the impact metrics
should be tied to the company's
growth metrics such that the
strength of the impact increases
as the company becomes more
successful.
WHAT'S ON THE HORIZON
FOR CRESCENDO?
Founded in 2018, Crescendo
now has customers across North
America, with thousands of professionals around the world who
are using Crescendo to develop
their cultural competence. This
year, we are introducing new offerings designed specifically for
managers and senior leaders,
as well as new integrations that
make it easy for diversity and inclusion professionals to leverage
Crescendo data in their existing
systems. Crescendo is the allin-one platform for maximizing
team potential. In the long term,
we aim to help every company in
the world realize the benefits of a
culturally competent workforce.
LEARN MORE
ABOUT CRESCENDO
GRIT
17