As CEO and co-founder of Promise, Phaedra Ellis-Lamkins works with governments and utilities to more efficiently manage public services and benefits. But her path to the top of a fast-growing and profitable technology company was anything but direct. She was the kid standing in line for free lunch at school, a labor organizer, the CEO of Green for All, and an advisor to Prince.
In 2017, she founded Promise, a technology company dedicated to modernizing how public services and utilities work for their most marginalized customers. As part of the 2018 Y Combinator accelerator program, the company is currently working with organizations across the country, including Cal Water and the City of Richmond, to streamline how people living in poverty access public and government services, while also easier and more efficient. For those agencies.
Phaedra Ellis Lambkins
Below is a seven-question interview with Bay Area native Ellis Lamkins.
Q: What is the story behind Promise?
Ellis Lamkins: I founded Promise because it was important to me to leverage technology to improve the lives of working people. Often technology was used for fun and good things like hailing a taxi outside a club or asking someone to walk your dog or park your car, but the technology companies I saw There weren’t that many. I was improving the lives of the people I grew up with.
I wanted to make sure that we had a company that was growing at a venture scale, a company that was growing very quickly, and had a model that wasn’t predatory. If the company did well, the people I grew up with did well. To that end, we primarily serve governments and some public utilities, and we use technology to deliver social programs and make them easier as well as deter waste, fraud, and abuse. We are working to do so. Interest-free repayment plans are also available. If you can get Peloton interest-free, you should be able to pay off government debt interest-free. Everything we do is about making public institutions work well for the people who depend on them.
Q: You have a long history of leadership in a variety of sectors, including labor, social services, and now technology. Tell us about that journey and how it shapes what you do today.
Ellis Lamkins: I started getting involved in the labor movement in the South Bay and saw the impact technology was having on workers. While it seemed great to some people who were becoming millionaires, for most people in the valley it was a devastating financial event. I saw people living in garages. Housing prices were so high that people were suddenly driving to live in Tracy or Stockton.
Later, after working for a non-profit organization focused on the environment, I began to feel that technology was also bad for the environment. Then I was working in music, and I thought[technology]was going to drive down the price of content, which was scary.
I went to work for a technology company because I wanted to understand how to make technology work better. And the way I think about technology has changed. It’s not inherently wrong or broken. That said, that tool wasn’t necessarily being used to find solutions that were important to the people I wanted to serve.
The best thing we can do as a company is build technology that works and succeed as a company. We are intentionally not a nonprofit organization. We are not a public interest corporation. We’re not trying to get grants. I want to win in the capitalist race. We want people to believe that it’s possible to start a company without actually hurting people.
Q: What led you to focus on services?
Ellis Lamkins: I grew up with no money. My mom was a waitress and I was in a gifted program, so I was exposed to wealth in a way that I probably wouldn’t normally be exposed to. I had never seen rights until I saw children who believed the world should treat them a certain way. Since I was the only one in the program getting free lunch, I had to stand in line for free, separate from other kids who were paying for lunch. I’m incredibly lucky to have been able to build my own personal wealth in a way that now people treat me special. And I want that for everyone too. It is unacceptable to see people who are essentially doing good for society – janitors, housekeepers, landscapers, and now teachers – struggling to make ends meet.
Q: Explain how Promises work.
Ellis Lamkins: We have three different products. First, we offer flexible repayment options to our utility customers. San Jose Water is the client. Suppose you are behind on your water bill. Let’s say you lose your job or something happens. Through Promise, we can offer interest-free payment plans so you can continue your service. You can pay in a variety of ways.
We are also working with states to extract funds. We use existing SNAP (Federal Food Assistance) or affordable housing data to find eligible people. In this day and age, there’s no need to ask people to manually fill out applications or upload documents when all the information is easily available. This is a modern way of running the public interest.
The final product we offer is income verification. This comes from the realization that in many places people still need to upload paychecks to verify income for public programs. There is no point in uploading your salary in 2024.
Q: How does this benefit various stakeholders?
Ellis Lamkins: I think people who use our services appreciate being treated with respect. When someone is struggling to pay their bills and facing water outages, we can continue to serve them and get them to repay their debt on their terms. Alternatively, you can let them know when they are eligible for assistance and get them into the program. , which is pretty great.
For the agencies we work with, this is actually a better option financially and a great way to improve the quality of customer service. For investors, our revenue has been increasing year on year, making it profitable. In the technology space, it’s unusual for software companies to be profitable and grow at such a fast pace.
Q: What are some examples of how your technology is being used in California?
Ellis Lamkins: In Southern California, we work with government agencies to help people pay off their criminal justice debts and parking ticket debts. In the Bay Area and Northern California, we work with water utilities. Our most consistent work in California is providing funding to agencies through flexible repayment terms. Our fundamental belief as a company is that people don’t want to go without water or electricity or go to jail. Make it easy and people will pay.
Q: What’s next for Promise?
Ellis Lamkins: We have new contracts with southern states to operate utility programs for emergency relief. We plan to make it so that you don’t have to come to the counter to apply. What’s interesting to me is the evolution of public services and the steady evolution of government. That is expected in the defense field as well, right? I want it for social welfare.
©2024 MediaNews Group Inc. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
