This interview was originally recorded on March 31, 2023, as part of Leoni Consulting Group’s All Things Marketing and Education Podcast.
Access this episode's show notes, including links to the audio, a summary, and helpful resources.
Elana Leoni:
Hello and welcome to All Things Marketing and Education. My name is Elana Leoni and I've devoted my career to helping education brands build their brand awareness and engagement. Each week I sit down with educators, EdTech entrepreneurs, and experts in educational marketing and community building. All of them will share their successes and failures using social media, inbound marketing, or content marketing, and community building. I'm excited to guide you on your journey to transform your marketing efforts into something that provides consistent value and ultimately improves the lives of your audience.
Hi everyone. Welcome to another episode of All Things Marketing and Education. This week I am sitting down with Salleha Chaudhry. She's Head of Education Modernization at Meta. And if you don't know what that means, we are going to be talking all about that so don't worry. Today we are going to be talking about Salleha's career journey and I think it's incredibly interesting to see her journey interweaving into neuroscience from nonprofit to what it means to be in one of the biggest tech companies in the world working on education initiatives. We're also going to be talking about what it truly means to bring educators to the table in tech, get their voice heard and elevated. And of course, we're going to be talking about all things community, why you should invest in it, what were her specific lessons learned, some best practices, all of the things.
But before we get into those topics, let me give you a brief background about Salleha. So like I said, she leads the Global Education Modernization team at Meta. Her work is focused on co-creating products and programs that bring educator voices to the table. That's why we get along so well. When we talk about co-creation, that is a core tenant of community building. You're not building a community by yourself or your own program. You are co-creating it with your audience. And in particular with community, you're co-creating it with your community members. She believes that education should be equitable and freely accessible no matter where you were born. This is also why I love this person. We have so much in common. Salleha also spent a good amount of time, like I said, at educational nonprofits such as Girls Who Code, Reading Partners, and AmeriCorps. Salleha holds an MBA in social enterprise from Hult International Business School, as well as a BS in Neuroscience and Women's Equity from Knox College.
I have personally worked along Salleha for, gosh, maybe over three years. I will say our partnership is one of the most strongest and collaborative and supportive partnerships I've ever had in our consultancy. She is a voice of empathy. She is a voice of ethics and morality, of what's really right, how can I make sure that everyone is being heard and that is included into the table, including women in tech, women of color in tech, people of color. Whatever it may be, she is the voice, she is the advocate for you. She is incredibly empathetic. She is a learner at heart. She started this engagement with us when myself and my team, Porter and whatnot, started working with her team directly about what it meant to really build community, how is community fundamentally different from a product, for example. And she was a learner at heart. She also built a team of learners at heart. So I cannot say enough about this woman. I love her to death. I am so excited I convinced her to come on this show. Please welcome Salleha to the show everyone.
Salleha Chaudhry:
Thank you, Elana. I really appreciate it. Thank you for the opportunity. I'm always humbled by your leadership and happy that I waited to join the podcast as I was able to learn from all the other incredible voices that have joined this space. And so happy to be here and hopefully I will meet that bar that you've created as we have this conversation.
Elana Leoni:
Oh, there is no bar. I would say that I was just reflecting with you pre-show is, gosh, I feel so lucky. I feel so lucky that I have these inspiring humans that I get to partner with and work with and learn from. I always pinch myself because I shared with you when I first started this podcast, I was scared, I was intimidated, I didn't like my voice. All of the things. But I now feel like it's not like a duty or a right, but it's one of the ways that I can share all of your genius collectively out to other people. And I think it's selfish for me now not to do this because I've learned so much and I know our audience has learned so much. So again, I'm getting off my soapbox, but I'd love for you to tell the audience a little bit more about you. Bring us on the journey of you because I find this incredibly fascinating when you tell this story.
Salleha Chaudhry:
I appreciate it. I will say one thing about your soapbox though is that, as we talked about pre-show, you lead with a lot of humility in a space where, within technology, there's a lot of entitlement and you always lead with humility to which inspires others to be able to step up in ways where they didn't feel safe. I think this podcast and a lot of work that you lead in EdTech and within marketing as a whole enables that for others. So just going to leave that there because I think that's important to call in.
So to answer your question a little bit about myself. I'm from a small town in the Midwest on the border of Illinois and Wisconsin. We're like the little city that you stop at to get gas when you're on the freeway. Huge shout out to anyone who's from the Midwest on this call. I grew up being one of the only students of color in our school system with my brother. We identify as Pakistani Muslim first generation. I went to Catholic school for most of my life. I went to Sunday school at the local mosque. And so identity was something that always came up. I didn't necessarily see a difference in how I looked or who I was despite being surrounded by those who are very different from me. And that changed like it changed for many of us across the nation when 9/11 occurred. I started understanding what are my identity, what is my identity, what are my values and was really interested in the intersection of gender, religion, and location. So geography, where you were born.
So in college, I was determined to better understand what caused inequity within society and changed your ability to have access. So as you noted earlier, I studied neuroscience and women's equity to determine why women specifically had different access in education and healthcare across the globe. Really wanted to be a neurosurgeon. My parents really wanted me to be a neurosurgeon. And so I was on the path to med school and decided to do an externship in Hohoe, Ghana to understand inequity specifically in their healthcare system.
I had the opportunity to volunteer at a local orphanage in school. And I fell in love with the nonprofit sector. I fell in love with the ability to see how different industries could come together to do good in society and do it sustainably and to be able to impact more individuals than I could as an individual within the medical field. And so I came back, destroyed my parents' hopes and dreams, decided not to go to med school and follow their path that they raised me on and instead join a nonprofit. And so I had the privilege of joining AmeriCorps and moved to Oakland, California and worked for below minimum wage.
My family did not understand it. They supported me, which I appreciated, but would send me clippings in the mail at the time being like, "Are you safe? Are you okay? You're alone." And I still reflect on that as one of the best decisions I ever made because it allowed me to join a national literacy program called Reading Partners. I was there for about three years, hit a glass ceiling. The CEO at the time was very honest with me and just said, "You hit a ceiling. You won't be able to move forward until you attain a diversity in your work experience, or you go back to school." And so I decided to go to Hult Business School and study how for-profits and nonprofits can create that triple bottom line as you noted. How do you create profit while supporting the planet, but also creating social equity?
And so I decided to join Girls Who Code. I led their national programming team for about three and a half years. While I was there, our team specifically placed all the young women into tech companies. We placed them at Facebook, Twitter, The Honest Company, at different industries. And then they just started leaving the industry. But the companies kept placing the blame on the young women asking questions of they didn't meet the bar that we needed internally, they weren't a good culture fit, they weren't aggressive enough. The blame kept being placed on them versus a reflection on themselves as a company. And I couldn't with full integrity and justice continually do that until I knew what it meant to be a woman of color in tech. And so I decided to join a tech company.
I had the privilege of joining in the engineering department at Meta, then known as Facebook, within the education modernization team about five years ago. And I learned firsthand what it meant to be a woman of color in tech. It's been super humbling. Very frustrating, but also very fulfilling. And I'm really grateful for that. And that's what brings me to today.
Elana Leoni:
Geez, I know I don't want to embarrass you, but you gave me goosebumps, Salleha, around when you think about if something isn't working, sometimes the knee-jerk reaction is, "Oh, it's their fault" rather than, "What are all the other things?" I know we're going to get into that because I think sometimes when we bring in educators into EdTech or even tech or whatever other industry, there has to be an open, honest conversation around, "What is the culture you came from? What is the culture you're joining? How can I help you assimilate? And how can we both get on the same page on what are your expectations in the role?" And it breaks my heart when educators do make that leap and they don't feel welcome. I know you weren't talking about educators, you were talking of women of color, women in general.
Let's dive into that a little bit. You got me going, but I do want to pause. And for everyone on their career journey as we all are, is a lot of our guests, they reflect on taking a risk and listening to their heart of what they know fulfills them and what brings them joy. And that's a continuous thing, and even for you now, is what gives us all joy. Don't ever ignore that gut. And don't do things because other people pressure you or it's the right linear path and whatnot. And I love that about your story. See, I love these shows because I learn things. I would've never really gotten that full story from you. I mean [inaudible 00:11:20] bits and pieces.
Salleha Chaudhry:
Yeah. No, I love what you just said about a linear path also because I think there is no path. I think that question comes up a lot of like, "What was your journey to get here? What is that path that I can follow or replicate?" And so much of our own lived experiences will shift what that path is, which sometimes can feel scary and a blocker, but in reality is opportunity and can be very thrilling. How do we leverage our experiences to exactly what you said? When we think of educators, I know I think we'll talk about this more, but just the amount of experience an educator brings with them, whether they were in the classroom for a year or they're in the classroom for 25 years, it's vast and there's so much that you can unpack there with skill-wise, both soft and hard that can truly transform when we think EdTech, when they come into the EdTech space.
The question that I have back to anyone listening who is in that tech space is creating those opportunities and opening the door because they have that passion, the dedication and the technical understanding to do really well within it.
Elana Leoni:
Yes. And I would say that traditionally, I would say five or so years ago, we would see a very narrow path that educators would take into the workplace. Sometimes they would get thrown into community building, ambassador development connections, my kind of an extrinsic type of role where they're bringing in educators, they're either training them in professional development, they're creating community, that kind of thing. Sometimes you'd see roles where educators would go into customer success. But now I'm seeing educators jump into all sorts of roles. And I love that because there's so many, like you said, transferable skills around that.
Salleha Chaudhry:
Yes, 100%. I'm going to walk here. Let's see. So on our team, we've had the privilege of hiring about 10 ex-educators into our team. It's been a humbling experience for me because they've been able to transform what it means to be on our team and how we build and co-create with our communities.
I know that you've had a guest a few weeks ago who used to be in education and came into EdTech who do a shameless plugin, Eman Haggag. Highly recommend listening to it as someone who's lived that experience. But for any current or former educators who might be listening to this and to EdTech leaders as they're trying to explore how to bring educators into their space, my recommendation is to give educators grace and for the educators themselves to give yourself the permission to be proud of your experience when you come into EdTech because that's what will transform the products and programs that we build in classrooms. Because teachers, like you said, already embody a lot of the skill sets that they need to be able to be successful in that space.
To prep for this call, actually I was going through everyone I had hired and I was looking at my interview notes and I was like, "What were the skills that I saw that I knew would be transferable?" And there were a vast number. And I would say the first is teachers' ability to have interpersonal skill development. So understanding empathy. If you read any article on HBR or the Washington Post, you'll see some of the top skills within tech, in EdTech is having the ability to have empathy. How do you model it? How do you create it in teams? How do you nurture it? And teachers have to do this on a daily basis with their students, their guardians, the families, admin.
I would say conflict resolution. How can you find a short and long-term solution to disagreement? Educators are diffusing conflict, if not daily, hourly. They excel at understanding how to assess and support under high pressure with respect and understanding. Those are skills that I'm not able to teach someone. And so having someone to come into the space and be able to lead with it naturally is something I can't put a dollar amount too and something that I would always look for and many others would look for within EdTech. And the fact that they can both project manage and people manage and they self-manage their classrooms. They coach other teachers, they're able to create connections school year to school year just as we do within technology. And then the last piece, because I'm coming in from a space of technology where everything is about efficiency and resource management this year, I mean, educators can take $10 and do more with it than anyone else that I know of in our world, in our society.
Elana Leoni:
Oh my god, 10 million percent. 10 million percent.
Salleha Chaudhry:
They create efficiency and effectiveness where others don't see that. It is so humbling and hard and takes a lot of courage and vulnerability and time, but teachers do it daily. And that is such a gift to have when you look at how do we expand our work and become more efficient with it.
Elana Leoni:
Yes, all of those things. And the other thing I would add is if you add an educator to your team, they're going to be your biggest team player. They're going to come in and just, "How can I collectively make each other rise up? It's never about me." And that humbleness is really an amazing characteristic to join the team. But for the educators listening, I want to make sure that you don't do that to the sake of hurting yourself in a way. Because in other organizations they may say, "Oh, she might just do my work or he might just do my work." What I loved what you said is come in proud that you're an educator and have that confidence to come in because so much, if you look different, you feel different, you come with a different background, sometimes you have a tendency to hide it.
I am the same way. I hid my background. I didn't come from a traditional background and I was embarrassed all the way until I was really 35 in the workplace. I still struggle with it because when you don't come from a traditional background, you feel like you don't belong at the table. And what I loved hearing you say is that educators, you belong at the bigger table. Not even the table. Your voice is even more important because how else are we going to make sure that our programs and our products are actually serving you and the learners?
Salleha Chaudhry:
100%. I think I've had so many conversations with other leaders where I was like, "Bring educators to the table." And they're like, "We do. We co-design with them, or we had a call with them or we looked at their feedback and we surveyed them." And I was like, "That's not bringing educators to the table. Bringing educators to the table is bringing them into your room when you're ideating a concept, when you're trying to find a solution, co-designing and co-building from the beginning, from zero to one."
Because to exactly what you said, Elana, they are your biggest team builders. If they believe in what you do and they know their voice is being heard, you may not agree on everything and that's normal just like in any workplace, but if your voice is respected and they're being heard, that makes the biggest difference because they're going to be your biggest champions outside of the classroom. And products within EdTech are determined by word of mouth to this day if I believe in your work and I tell another educator you will see a ripple effect. But to build that trust and to build that community takes time. And also it takes to exactly what you said earlier, bring them to the actual table and keep them at that table and listen to them.
Elana Leoni:
Yeah. And as people start bringing them to the table and maybe they're doing baby steps, like they're doing the surveys and things like that, just know that there's a bias when you talk to educators because educators are the nicest human beings in the world. And like you said, sometimes they're not used to the best, highest quality products or things like that and they just make it work, right?
I'm not saying that that is something that we should get used to because I do believe that they deserve the best. But because in their day to day, they're used to kind of duct taping things together. When you give them a survey about things, they'll be nice. They will be nice. And they're like, "Oh, you tried." And so sometimes when you get those survey results, you're like, "We're doing great." We'll have to actually bring them to the table and have in-depth conversations with them to really understand, "Hey, it really didn't meet their needs at all, but they just wanted to be nice." So I just warn all of you that are starting, it's good to do baby steps and scaffold into it, but just know there's a... It's not really a confirmation bias. I don't know what we would call it in statistics, but there's a niceness bias with educators.
Salleha Chaudhry:
It's a niceness filter that occurs. The intention is positive, but it may not necessarily be the feedback you're looking for versus having them in front of you and being able to create the space for them to give you raw feedback that's coming from a good place because ultimately you both want to do what's best for the students and for the teachers in the classroom. The question is how do you get there and who's involved in that process?
And I would say, I think as I was reflecting coming into this podcast, I just kept thinking of the amount of EdTech founders, and I know you've met many yourself on who've created and built product and program, but they've never actually stepped foot in a classroom post their education or they don't have anyone on their team who's been in the classroom. The intention is positive, I understand that. But the impact will be very different. It's okay not to know, but it's not okay when you don't build them into your ecosystem and into your war rooms, into your meetings to really understand how a product can be created and how it can be executed.
Elana Leoni:
Yes, 100%. I know we could talk about this for a long time, but I hope those of you that are listening in EdTech and/or educators are going, "Gosh, if I'm in EdTech, how am I doing this? How am I bringing in? Can we push the needle a little bit more? And are we getting authentic interaction with educators?" And if I'm an ED educator, I hope this is your pep talk to get in there and interact with EdTech, interact with tech if this is your jam, and know that we respect your opinion more than anything else. It's okay to give us your authentic response to it because that's what we want. We want to make sure you're meeting your needs.
So why don't we move around? I'm going to use some jargony pivot words just for fun. Let's pivot. We're talking to someone in tech, one of the biggest tech companies in the world. Maybe I could throw in some more jargon, but-
Salleha Chaudhry:
Innovation, disruption. There's a lot of them.
Elana Leoni:
Yes.
Salleha Chaudhry:
Let's do it.
Elana Leoni:
We talked about the year of efficiency, so there's one. So let's talk about community, because we've been on a journey together and in all of your products and programs and education, you have built this fundamental mission of we want to co-create. So you had community in mind. One of the core tenets of community is how do we co-create it with our audience so it meets their needs and our needs at the same time? But why don't you talk to me about we've been on this journey for a couple of years. We've managed to build up a beautiful community called Nourish Teachers. It's a Facebook group. It's one of the most active educator Facebook groups on Facebook itself. Pure, authentic, love and support of educators. And we'll put the link in the show notes if you all want to join or curious about what the community is.
But maybe take us on that journey, Salleha, of maybe what you learned, the process of it. I think eventually I want to get into, if other EdTech companies are listening, why invest in community. Because that's always that ROI conversation, triple bottom line, bottom this, lead gen. But why invest in community? But I'd love to just hear your experience so far with it.
Salleha Chaudhry:
I love your company voice. It's so... Right? I like it. Oh, man. Yeah, I've been at Meta for five years. My previous manager, Jay Borenstein, who's still at Meta, Stanford professor, he had been at Meta at the time for about 10 years. His goal was to understand how to create more access within education. He continually saw that programs and products within EdTech were based and created for students, not for teachers. Teachers were a door to get to his students. But no one focused on the teachers. And so he brought me a question of, what can we uniquely do for teachers? We started listening and we went through our survey results. As Elana said, that was our first baby step of understanding what is happening within the school system.
And then I, one day, was introduced as this incredible leader who just has this vast experience within marketing and education. She's so brilliant named Elana. She had just kicked off her new organization, the LCG, Leoni Consulting Group, and that's when it just shifted. We started ideating and understanding what is it that we can do for teachers, but most importantly what I learned was we can't decide what we're doing for teachers. Even though my team at the time was 80% individuals who were in the classroom at one point of their career, they were not teachers at that time. And so we had to honor that. And so who could we work with to be able to bring it? And so we worked really closely. And as Elana mentioned, co-design, co-creation is a very large part of the fabric of our team. And so we decided to co-create a community with teachers, by teachers, and for teachers. And that just started us on a journey. For the past few years, we were able to build nurse teachers.
We started with 30 teachers and we would meet weekly to understand what is the strategy that we're building, what is the go-to market strategy? How are we going to contact? We did all of our decisions together. And when I mean we made all our decisions together, we made all our decisions together. I know some individuals right now on the call from EdTech world are like, "Seriously?" And I was like, "Yes." I would talk to leadership at Meta and then I would talk to the teachers. If I couldn't have them in the room for other reasons, I brought them into the space and we had these conversations. And they were hard because as you know, corporate companies are regulated and we have a lot of different limitations and blockers and sometimes are vastly different than the education space.
And so there was a space of learning and unlearning that we had to do as Meta and that the teachers did also as they learned what it meant to collaborate with us internally. It gave us the privilege of being able to actually bring on four teachers, four full time K12 teachers who have changed my life in so many ways and the outlook of how I see the world and how I'm able to support teachers and the position that I play within that, not having been in the classroom. And they, with LCG, came together to moderate the space and create a space of trust and understanding.
One of the biggest parts of that process as we looked at the community was that I thought community could be built faster. I didn't think it would take so much time. And I say that because as in a corporate company, it's like, "Okay, what's the ROI? How fast will it get the ROI? What's the greatest number of member growth? Can it happen tomorrow? What can I invest in? How much more money can I put in?" It's technology. We're in Silicon Valley. There is an overabundance of money, especially right before COVID occurred. And during COVID, there was a lot of money sitting. And so it was like, "Okay, let's put in another $100,000 or let's put in X, but I want to see X percent growth." But that's not how community works.
The two biggest things I learned there was community will grow and it will grow at the speed of trust, the safety within the community, how the community members are connecting with one another, the sense of belonging that they have. And just because you have an additional $100,000 to spend doesn't mean it's going to positively impact the community. Very quickly, we learned that the high end experiences that we were investing in with the professional speakers and the professional spaces, no one wanted to attend that. Instead, they just wanted to jump on Zoom and chat with one another as teachers and connect. And that cost difference is substantial, but the impact was also substantial and it was the opposite of what we thought.
I think a lot had brought this up at the beginning of the podcast. A lot of... Oh no, actually you brought this up in a podcast a few weeks ago with another guest. A lot of what I thought I knew with teachers and educators and what they needed, I was 100% wrong in the best of ways. The ROI was so much greater than we thought. And that community will evolve and you have to be able to just let go and trust that the community will evolve on its own and give them the structure and the guidelines so that they can prosper and build it as their own. Because once they believe in your mission, in your brand, they're going to create opportunities that you could have only imagined because they're going to carry it for you and they're proud of it.
For the number of teachers that I've met at different Meta events across the nation who are Nourished teachers, they were the best brand ambassadors but that wasn't why we have them in our community. But they were like, "Tell us what you want us to do. We love Meta. We are happy to talk about it." And I was like, "That's not why we built the community." And they're like, "No, but we believe in you. We believe in the product because you care for us and you see us as humans and you see us as individuals and who we are." That was just so humbling because that was not what our goal was, and yet that's what actually occurred. We would have hoped and dreamt to have ambassadors in that way, and now we do. And it's been such an incredible journey.
But as I mentioned earlier, it takes time. And trust me, it is worth the time. But please know that a community is not a transactional space for it to be parasitic where you're just pulling things from it. It needs to be mutualistic where you're both there for each other and you see your community for who they are.
Elana Leoni:
So, so good. So good. I just want to make a poster of what you just said. I have a lot of conversations with tech brands in particular about community, and we always talk about, "What do you really want?" I reflect on our time together because there was learning together as you were trying to manage expectations with leadership, but also make sure that the place was somewhere where people that were members felt like they could grow, that they could be as vulnerable as they wanted to and all the things that surrounded that. So there is that compromise between the two. But I'm going to quote my colleague Porter. So Porter Palmer is the director of Joy and she was instrumental in the Nourish Teachers. A lot of the times when I speak or I hear you speak, it's like we're kind of puppeting Porter speak a little bit because she's-
Salleha Chaudhry:
[inaudible 00:31:45].
Elana Leoni:
... influenced us. Influenced us so, so much. But she says, "You know, Elana..." Because when we're talking about growth targets and she's like, "Do you want a community or do you want a Facebook page?" Because we can open up the gates and have hundreds of thousands of educators join, but those hundreds of thousands of educators that join have very little affinity towards you. They don't know who you are. It's the point where they don't know who you are. And if you put in and you jump the gun and you want to do things that are transactional, so sometimes people come in and say, "I want to do an ambassador program," but what they really mean is they want to create a loyalty transactional program, almost like an affiliate program where they get money if they refer. And sure, that'll give you some leads, but you'll never have the depth of relationship you will if you start with the community first.
Because imagine if we did that way, we're like, "Hey, educators, giving you 50 bucks if you sell a headset." And they're like, "Okay, sure." But they would never felt like we truly cared about them and it would limit the potential of our relationship with them.
Salleha Chaudhry:
Yes, a hundred times over. Ms. Porter Palmer has, yeah, taught me everything that I know about community. I think she's a great example, Elana, on if anyone this call is thinking about building a community, please study and understand what it means to build a community versus trying to copy what someone else does. There is a lot of depth of understanding what community is. Porter had shared a multitude of books with me on like, "Study this and then understand, is this what you're actually trying to build? This is what you're going to need to do."
I will do a shout-out to Building Brand Communities. That was super helpful. Buzzing Communities by Richard Millington was really helpful. You may see it on this way. You might see it on my bookshelf as I have multiple copies of it and I've marked it up. But it allowed me to work with leadership internally because you need to have buy-in with your company. That's the other piece. Your marketing team, your engineering team, your executive team, they need to believe in the community because they're going to be a part of it. If you are trying to truly build and lead your brand through that community, they need to have the buy-in. There is a lot of analytics and metrics behind assessing an ROI within your community. It's not what many will say, "Well, it's just fluff. It's just like how someone feels." I'm like, "No, it actually can transform your product and they can lead your adoption." I think that was a huge learning I had as I studied and understood it so that I could best understand how do you create the structure so the community can flourish.
Elana Leoni:
Mm-hmm. What you said about are you truly ready for community is something that I don't see enough people pause at. They will jump in and say, "I need a community." And then we kind of step back and say and we assess, "All right, let's just define the terms, what you have as an audience." And there's a gradient towards community. Community truly only exists. And again, I am quoting Porter Palmer here because she has taught me so much. I helped grow a community, Edutopia, but not to the level that she grew an ambassador program at the DEN Star. So to quote her, "A community truly only exists when the members call it a community." You can call a community all the time. It's kind of one of those things that you cannot unsee when you look at any other brand. They'll, "Join our community," and the community is a dead Facebook page or all of the things around it and you're like, "That's not a community." And you can't really call it a community.
Twitter introduced community. And sorry, Facebook did too. And they weren't community. They weren't communities. They were just places where people hung but didn't know it. And if the members aren't saying it's a community and they don't care for one another and it's all about the interaction between them and not your brand, then it's not a community. It's okay if you're not ready for it. So we work with brands to try to say like, "Are you ready? Is that best move for you?" You have to have that budget. You have to have the time invested. You have to make sure leadership is on board like you said. If you don't have all those things, it's going to quickly die.
Sometimes we work with companies and we decide we want to just create a network. And the network is transactional where members help each other if they want. It takes some prodding from us in the beginning, but that's really beneficial for them. And we can measure ROI and it does improve what they're doing. But at the end of the day, they're not caring about each other and they're not identifying themselves as much with a network as they would a community.
Salleha Chaudhry:
Yeah. I mean, the success of a community is when they also see it as part of their identity because they carry it with them. Whether your community is in person, whether it's on online, they're going to carry it with them in their day to day. Many individuals are part of many different communities, but that's what creates a more sustainable and connected world. I think just having a community-centric model is very successful and is what's going to carry us to be successful in the future. As many of us become more and more isolated because of COVID and where society is now, that model can be really successful. I think there are some communities where Porter and I have talked about it with nurse teachers specifically, it sometimes feels like a revolution of what can be and what should be when we think of how to support educators and teachers and how they are just the most selfless humans in the entire world and just want to do good.
And so community just allows them to have that space to feel safe and heard and seen just basic human rights, but it creates this revolution where they have the space now to be able to teach the way they want to teach and they feel safe to be able to do that. I think it's just an example of, well, how community can shift and change what you're trying to build. But as you said, Elana, it's a fact of do you understand what community is and then are you ready to invest in it in a way that allows it to grow and flourish and give it that time? Because it's not a quick hit win. And I think that's the other piece. Because in that space, if you're trying to do that, no one is going to win in that situation.
Elana Leoni:
Yeah. What I loved about what you said around when you invest in it, you get to... And when you start studying community theory, we talk about the critical mass, and I called it the tipping point. But at that point, your community becomes self-sustaining, so you no longer have to pull out your bag of tricks and program and tell people to jump in because it's become part of their human behavior. But when that happens and it continues to grow and flourish, it'll fundamentally transform your brand in ways that you have no idea is possible. And so the idea of community ROI is a beautiful topic. It's complicated and nuanced. And if you approach it with a linear mindset, you're going to be disappointed and also pleasantly surprised in weird ways because you're not growing. Within social media, if I put in a certain amount of paid ads, at some point there's a linear model once I start targeting my audience effectively. It's not like that at all with community. It's a line that includes nots, going backwards, all of the things around it.
Salleha Chaudhry:
[inaudible 00:39:33]. Yeah, a lot of crisscrossing. I would love to see an image of what community looks like. I think it would be really... That infographic would be super great to be able to build. But you're going to take 11 right turns and seven left turns. And while you're taking those turns, you're going to unlock opportunities that you didn't know before. Because products that are built, programs that are built, they're built with this understanding of what we need at the end of the day, but there's so much learning of how to pivot and shift your product. And some of the best products in this world were not built for that reason. They were built for many other reasons, but that's where we landed because that's what was most successful. Community can unlock that for you because at the end of the day, they are your consumers that are going to be utilizing your product and they're going to see things that you're not going to see sitting in your office.
Elana Leoni:
Yeah, I see a lot of parallels with building community and design thinking. And when you were talking about, "We made so many assumptions that were just flat out wrong," is it didn't hurt us because we approached it with the mindset of, "Here, let's list our assumptions and let's be cognizant to when they fail as they will," because we're not educators. We don't know. As we co-create, there's going to be things we assume something was right or going to be popular, and it wasn't.
But we approached it with this joy, this scientific of like, "Oh, we were wrong there. That's funny." We're not taking it personally. We're finding that beautiful magic in the middle where we're seeing what they want and then we're matching it with the business needs. So I don't want people to walk away from this call going, "Oh, we just create community with whatever educators want." It has to be aligned to the business needs as well. And so really finding that magic in the middle is going to be core for sustaining the future of the community as well.
I know we could talk about this forever. The audience is like, "Wow, you guys know a lot about community. You're going to go on a roll." And we'll probably hang out and talk more community at some point. Why don't we shift to some of our ending questions? And Salleha, if you will put those resources in the show notes, every episode gets a show note, we'll talk about the URL where the audience can find it later, those books in particular. But if you have any great reads that have changed your mindset around what community is and isn't, we'll put those in the show notes as well.
Salleha Chaudhry:
Absolutely.
Elana Leoni:
But I don't know how to shift into something that we were super passionate about, but this question is a little bit about passion. I know you are someone who leads with impact, leads with her heart and empathy. When you do that, there's moments where you can feel drained. There's moments where you just feel like you've hit a brick wall and you didn't do enough or something happened. Or anytime you interact with educators, sometimes it breaks your heart. There's things in the system... If you listen to educators and truly took the time to listen to educators every day, your heart would be slightly breaking every day. And that's the truth. And I have to do things that recharge me. And I'm wondering, what are the things that recharge you after those days of you feeling drained? What keeps you inspired as you go along in your journey?
Salleha Chaudhry:
Oh my gosh, such a great question. I'd say a few things. One is I love volunteering. I think for when they hear it, they're like, "That's also draining." I'm like, "No." I get to leave my space and go into a different space. And I get to be grounded in that space and be able to support in ways that I haven't been able to before. And it's very fulfilling. It's also very humbling, and I love volunteering since I was a child. I don't know that you don't know this yet. I don't think you know this, but I joined yoga teacher training. And so I'm excited to just delve into a new community of practitioners and yogis and being able to be surrounded by just diversity of life. Especially living in San Francisco, I think it becomes very homogenous at a certain point. And so coming into a new community and physically being there and being centering with my body and my spirit has been very, very fulfilling on the days that I've had drained energy.
Elana Leoni:
I did not know that. You're going to have to, I don't know, do some yogi-like stuff and need a session at some point when we get together. That would be-
Salleha Chaudhry:
[inaudible 00:44:22].
Elana Leoni:
That's awesome. Well, Salleha, thank you so much for joining us. I've worked with you for a very long time. I feel honored and privileged to do so. But even in these podcasts, I learn so much in a deep way, and that isn't not the exception here. I was like, "Oh, preach. Preach, Salleha." I love it. I learned so much. I would love for you to tell the audience just how they can get in touch with you, how can they learn more about the things you talked about.
Salleha Chaudhry:
Yeah. So please feel free to reach out to me on LinkedIn. Despite working at a social media company, I do not use social media, so feel free to... I'll put my LinkedIn in the show notes. I just want to just end with the fact of, it's been an honor and a privilege to be on this podcast. Elana has asked me to do it for a while. I think Elana and I have very similar values. I'm not one to do external engagements because I've had the privilege of my parents being able to provide certain privileges for me as a child. That's not necessarily common. And I think the space that you have, I will always be one to take a step back and provide it to someone else. And so I was very much telling Elana, someone else needs to take that space. It shouldn't be me, and I will always lead that way.
And so Elana, if anyone on this call has not met her in person, has not realized this through her podcast or her LinkedIn, is very persuasive and she does it with a lot of persistence and a smile on her face. And so she can make you do anything. It is impressive skill of hers. And it has been an honor to be on this call. And for anyone listening, I hope what we shared was helpful. I'm always here to help and support and ensure that we can continually do good in this world with our teachers as we build with them.
Elana Leoni:
That's beautiful. And Salleha, I don't want to not recognize your compliments, but you know me, I get very uncomfortable. And so people that aren't seeing this on the video will know like, "I'll see this weird, uncomfortable, Elana's getting a compliment face." But I don't take it for granted. I find that I have grown so much working alongside Meta and your team, and I know vice versa. So I don't know.
Salleha Chaudhry:
[inaudible 00:46:45].
Elana Leoni:
[inaudible 00:46:48]. I think what I'm going to do is just find a transition where there is none and say thank you all for joining us. Thank you everyone for joining us. And like I said, when you are listening, I really urge you, and I can be your accountability partner, to find one thing you're going to take away from this. And it could be just a small slight thing where I've like, "Oh, I now fundamentally see community differently." That's fine. Or, "Maybe I'm going to bring educators to the table more. If I'm an educator, maybe I'm going to start being more bold with my opinions and jumping in and really looking at my transferable skills." Whatever it may be, I want you to really hold yourself accountable to growing and professionally developing in this beautiful space of EdTech where we all are lifelong learners. So thank you all for joining us.
I mentioned the show notes, so we're going to put all of the resources that Salleha talked about. I'm going to put in some related podcasts that she also mentioned in the show notes. It'll have audio, transcript, all of the goodies. The show notes will be found at leoniconsultinggroup.com/49. Oh, that's like my favorite football team, 49ers. leoniconsultinggroup, that's two Gs, .com. I know it's a long URL, backslash 49. And thank you all. We'll see you next time on All Things Marketing and Education. Take care.
Thanks so much for listening to this week's episode. If you liked what you heard and want to dive deeper, you can visit leoniconsultinggroup.com/podcasts for all show notes, links and freebies mentioned in each episode. We always love friends. So please connect with us on Twitter @LeoniGroup. If you enjoyed today's show, go ahead and click the subscribe button to be the first one notified when our next episode is released. We'll see you next week on All Things Marketing and Education.
Elana Leoni, Host
Elana Leoni has dedicated the majority of her career to improving K-12 education. Prior to founding LCG, she spent eight years leading the marketing and community strategy for the George Lucas Educational Foundation, where she grew Edutopia’s social media presence exponentially to reach over 20 million education change-makers every month.
Salleha Chaudhry, Guest
Salleha Chaudhry is a voice of empathy and advocacy. She formerly led the Global Education Modernization Team at Meta. Her work at Meta was focused on co-creating products and programs that bring educator voices to the table. She believes that education should be equitable and freely accessible no matter where you were born. This passion took her down a path of developing equity-based teams and enabling for-profit organizations to create both a bottom line and social equity sustainably. Today her time is dedicated to shifting the fabric of who creates technology, who is known for creating it, and how they create equitable access to it. Salleha holds an MBA in Social Enterprise from Hult International Business School as well as a BS in Neuroscience and Women’s Equity from Knox College.
About All Things Marketing and Education
What if marketing was judged solely by the level of value it brings to its audience? Welcome to All Things Marketing and Education, a podcast that lives at the intersection of marketing and you guessed it, education. Each week, Elana Leoni, CEO of Leoni Consulting Group, highlights innovative social media marketing, community-building, and content marketing strategies that can significantly increase brand awareness, engagement, and revenue.
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