← The PM Podcast
Loading summary
Transcript67 lines
- [00:00]
Maya Cooperman
At least the foundations that we talk to are being much more bold. They're like, you know, we exist because we care about the topics that we fund and the issues that we fund. And to pull back because of, you know, these directives that our new administration is imposing would be antithetical to why they exist. And I think that's just been so inspiring.
- [00:23]
Jay Frost
Welcome to the PM Podcast brought to you by Donor Search, the show that takes you inside the lives of thought leaders, innovators and change makers in fundraising, philanthropy and civil society. I'm your host, Jay Frost. Maya Cooperman has spent her career building organizations that drive innovation and philanthropy. As co founder and CEO of Tamelio, she's using AI to make grant making faster and more efficient. Before that, she helped grow Main street from a seed stage startup to Series B and advised the farmlink project which connects surplus farm produce to food banks. With a background in tech nonprofits and software development and a degree in human biology and education from Stanford, she brings a unique perspective to this space. But her passion for impact started much earlier. We begin our conversation with the story of A Chance to Dance, the organization she founded at 12 to bring free dance classes to children in migrant farm working communities where she was born.
- [01:22]
Unknown
Just tell me a bit about where you come from.
- [01:25]
Maya Cooperman
Such a good question. Well, I grew up in a small town in California, Northern California called Davis. It's the home of UC Davis, the college, which is how most people, if they know about it, know about it. I'm the oldest of three girls in my family which I feel like my oldest sister identity very much like shaped a lot of who I am. I was raised by two professors of medicine which is how my family ended up at UC Davis. And yeah, I think my, some of my like early experiences that really shaped me was I grew up dancing really seriously and grew up playing many, many instruments for things where I learned a lot of my like curiosity and, and like general discipline in, in life. So that is my, I guess pre adult who I am and then I think more post adult. I did my undergrad at Stanford. I thought I was going to be a doctor so I studied biology education and dance and I'm sure we'll get to this. But my career since then has taken many turns kind of both towards and away from many of those topics. So it's been, it's been a fun journey so far.
- [02:42]
Unknown
Well, you've touched on dance a couple times and I know it's particularly important to you. When did that begin for people? For example, in ballet, it Might start at the age of two or three, but what was it? What, discipline for you and where did that start?
- [02:54]
Maya Cooperman
Yeah, I started dancing when I was 2. My mom put me in the Mommy and Me class, and it was just this, like, instant, instant love for me. I did ballet very seriously until I was about 12 years old. And then, I mean, you can't. You can't tell just looking on at Beyond Zoom. But I'm. I'm 5 foot 2, and I don't necessarily have, like, the ballerina build. And so I was like, okay, I want to explore what else dance has to offer. And so I ended up focusing a lot on contemporary dance into high school. And then, funny enough, the. My studying dance more formally in college was kind of an accident. So I was just so used to, like, finding joy and also, like, physical activity in dance that when I went to undergrad, I just signed up for a bunch of dance classes. And I had an academic advisor who came to me one day, and she was like, you know, you have enough dance credits where you have a. You can get the minor with just one, like, more academic dance class. And so kind of ended up accidentally getting it there. But my entire life, it's been where, I think where I found community. Like, most of my closest friends from high school and from college and even afterwards have met through the dance world. I think it as. As someone who, like, loves, like, team work, like, I feel like it taught you, me, really, how to, like, understand how to work with the team and how to, like, kind of put the team's success above your, like, individual success. And I think it also just taught me so much discipline as a young person because it is such a rigorous activity. Yeah. I think now in a lot of my work in the philanthropic space, we work with so many foundations that fund the arts, and I think it's made me feel really connected to the work I do day to day is getting to share that love with folks that feel the same way.
- [04:57]
Unknown
You told me before when we talked on an earlier occasion, that you saw, however, that the experience you had with dance was not the same one that others might have or that not everyone had the same access to that experience with you and your mother. But then later, just that kind of agency that you get with that kind of discipline that's not available to everybody. For those who don't know the community of Davis, maybe you can tell us more about that and what you discovered.
- [05:23]
Maya Cooperman
When you thought, yeah, yeah, no, I think it was maybe one of the first moments where I truly understood My own privilege was that when I was 12 years old, and I remember, like, so vividly talking to my mom at the dinner table and saying, like, I don't really understand why most of my friends, like, aren't taking dance class and, like, why I'm able to go do this for hours after school every day and other people are choosing not to. And she was like, well, you know, dance costs money and dance is expensive. And it felt so, like, shocking to me that. That so many people didn't have access to this thing that brought me so much, so much joy as a child. And Davis has a really interesting, like, makeup of folks where you have a university, so you have a lot of folks that come in because their parents are involved in the university or academics. And it also has a really big agriculture community. Davis, as a university, actually is one of the top, like, ag schools in the country. And we're surrounded by farmland, and so we had a lot of Mexican immigrants coming in as well. And so there was this, like, kind of. Davis was this melting pot of both, like, immigrants and academics and everything kind of in between. Um, but I think something that. In that conversation with my mom, I was like, okay, I. I felt such an urge to do something about this thing that felt so horrible to me and ended up teaming up with my. Who. She's still one of my best friends today. My friend Alex, who I met through dance. And we started a little nonprofit that went to the various migrant, like, centers across Davis and Woodland, which is a neighboring town, and and taught dance classes to young kids and ended up involving the community and getting donations from various dance clothing stores and donations from active dance studios who then would also volunteer their time. And we just ran this little weekend class for our entire childhood through high school, which it was just so fun to get to bring the joy of dance to folks. And obviously it wasn't the same access as myself and my friend Alex had, but hopefully was able to add a minimum spark, some joy for the people that we got to work with.
- [07:54]
Unknown
I know that with dance, one of the difficulties is finding a space, as well as finding instruction and of course, your dance wear, even the dance shoes, depending upon what you're doing, actually a big deal. And this can get very expensive. But the space itself is also a big piece. So first of all, how do you locate the space, find the support? And maybe most importantly, then, did the people that you were reaching out to in these communities, did they take to it right away? Were they drawn to it? How did you introduce it in a way that was meaningful to them.
- [08:32]
Maya Cooperman
Yeah, it's such a good question. We really focus on going kind of directly to the source. So there was various community centers set up within Davis and Woodland and other neighboring towns. And we just drove. I mean, we didn't drive. We were 13 and 12 years old, but our parents drove us there. We just kind of walked right in and we were like, hey, we have a theory that this would be helpful, at least fun, like who should we talk to? And I think we definitely have the benefit of being cute little 13 year olds wanting to contribute, but folks were really receptive. So I think generally our process was we'd find the. Whoever organizer of the community center was, kind of pitch them the idea. They would go back and talk to most the families that they support and would come back to us saying, yeah, there's 15 kids who are interested or like, you know, like it might be. You might have slightly smaller attendance than you might think you'd want. And then they were super generous in just providing us their, their space. So we would actually go to the community centers. I also felt like a great opportunity to meet people where in a space that they're already comfortable and we would like clear out their rec room or like a dining hall and, and use that as our, as our studio. So yeah, I think we're really lucky and also I feel so grateful that so many people were willing to open up their space to us. As to your point, it typically can be a very costly part of the process. And actually, it's actually interesting. In the last month I joined the board of an organization that does this at a much more serious scale in New York called Groove With Me. They're a dance studio based in Harlem that provides like completely free, like rigorous dance training to women that are based in that area. And it's been like a really cool way for me to kind of reconnect with something that I was so passionate about and continue to be passionate about, but that I kind of got to do more directly many years ago.
- [10:41]
Unknown
Something that connects those two experiences. I don't know where you're living now. Which part of New York are you in?
- [10:47]
Maya Cooperman
Yeah, so I live in Brooklyn, a neighborhood called Prospect Heights. And then I work out of the financial district every day. So I'm back and forth from Brooklyn and Manhattan.
- [10:57]
Unknown
And for people who don't know these two places we're talking about now, one being Davis, you've introduced us to that. Another being New York, in each of these places, as different as they are from one another, And I'm sure you can tell us more about that. There are neighborhoods, and those experiences in those neighborhoods are different. The populations are different. Their needs and interests may be different as well.
- [11:16]
Maya Cooperman
Yeah.
- [11:17]
Unknown
So I'm raising this because when you were doing this work, especially as a young person in Davis, maybe even now doing this work with folks in Harlem, when you're from Brooklyn, if you have some kind of insight into communities that don't know one another, getting to know one another, not being afraid of that experience, but also being welcoming of it.
- [11:43]
Maya Cooperman
Yeah, yeah. No, I think I feel like something that the whole experience of starting this free program as a child taught me was just, like, how to build connection with people who are different from you. And I think we learned a ton about how to make sure those spaces feel, like, safe and welcoming. I found that many times it was just about finding the right people to partner with and really looking to the community you're trying to serve to actually dictate what they need. And so, for example, I remember one of the classes we taught, there was just a day where people clearly were feeling a bit restless. I think something had happened in the community, and one of our partners was like, hey, I don't think something super, like, regimented gonna be good. Say, like, the kids just need to, like, get their yayas out. And I was like, you know what? Like, we're not here to, like, impose what we think is the right thing. We're here to, like, listen. And our ultimate goal is just, like, provide a space of joy. And so I think in having the right partners who are willing to, like, communicate the needs of the community with us, it allowed for us to be more flexible. And ultimately, I build a bond of trust with folks because we weren't. Weren't coming at it from the perspective of, here's what I think is the right thing to do. It's like, what do the people that we're actually trying to help genuinely need? And I think as someone who now does a lot of work within the philanthropic sector, some of the philanthropists that inspire me the most are the ones that are going out to the communities actively and not just saying, I am a foundation and I know best, and I'm going to allocate my money accordingly. It's like the ones that are saying, we want to affect X area and then taking the time to actually engage with the people that they're trying to ultimately serve with their dollars and use that to inform where their money goes. I think those are the folks that inspire me the most. And I feel like I started to learn that at a really young age through, through doing that, this program.
- [13:55]
Unknown
And this is a chance to dance, right?
- [13:57]
Maya Cooperman
Yes, yes.
- [13:58]
Unknown
So the organization still exists today, or what's, what's happening?
- [14:02]
Maya Cooperman
No, no. So we did it for about six years, so all the way through my, my high school experience. And then I think when, when we went off to college, it was, it was hard to find the right, the right successors for it. But I know it exists in many forms and you know, it was, it was not, was not necessarily a unique idea. Right. So it's been cool to see the other types of programs are out there. Like it.
- [14:26]
Unknown
Sure. One of the reasons I asked that is because when you go back, have occasion to go back. I don't know if you do go back to Davis often.
- [14:33]
Maya Cooperman
Yeah.
- [14:34]
Unknown
If, if you see any kind of change in the community, not necessarily as a result of the dance classes you did, although I'm sure it had an impact, but just we're in a different time, even in the last few years. And this, this idea that of separation of communities, of separation of people, separation of ideas is so profound. And getting people together, especially when they again are in different communities, sometimes just feet or miles apart, is so staggering. Are you sensing that in places like Davis where you as a 13 year old just went over and started talking out to kids and helping them learn how to dance?
- [15:16]
Maya Cooperman
Yeah, it's such a good question. And I think, I mean it is like staggering to see the, I think, disconnect between communities that we have, especially in the last, you know, I mean, actually last many, many years, that it's like, has continued to grow. I think with Davis. My program definitely, I don't think fundamentally changed the structure of Davis. So I would love to think it, you know, brought some happiness to many kids. But I think something that is so beautiful about Davis and something I'm so grateful for is it is this kind of small bubble of like protected community. And I think a lot of the division you see across the country doesn't really exist in the microcosm of Davis. I'm sure it does to some degree, but largely doesn't. And I think it can be highlighted interestingly by an example. So my, I have a. My youngest sister is 12 years younger than me and so she is a senior in high school now. Um, but I kind of got to watch her grow up in a different era of Davis. And I remember something that was so beautiful. I was. Picked her up from school one day when she was, gosh, it Must have been so young. Must have been like she was 10, 10 years old or so. And it's about 10 or seven years ago. And she was telling me about like two girls who have crushes on each other in their class, in her class, and was just kind of like giving me the gossip of the day. And I was like, asul, you know, are, do people treat them differently because they're two girls who are crushing on each other? And she looked at me and she was like, genuinely confused. She was like, why would they like, it was like not even a consideration that they're like, different. And it was just such like a, an amazing thing to see with a 10 year old where like so much of what they learn is just what they absorb from their peers or from the outside community. And I just thought it was like this, such like a beautiful thing to hear. And I think like Davis has that sort of sentiment across every group that is, you know, different from the next.
- [17:36]
Unknown
Well, you, you clearly took that, the inspiration and that experience with you. I know you went to Stanford, is that right? And then you studied and you said you were thinking about medical school, but you decided not to go that route. What, what changed your mind?
- [17:51]
Maya Cooperman
Yeah, it's. It was interesting. So I, my parents are both physicians and I used to like love shadowing them in the hospital. My dad's a pediatric ER doc and when I was 10, I used to like get a pass from him and go and like sit in the center of the er. I thought it was just the world's coolest place, which is pretty strange for a kid, but was always really kind of inspired by the world of health and health research and direct kind of service in that way. And so studied human biology with a focus in global child development and also ended up minoring in education, which was kind of almost part of my path away from medicine. And actually kind of remember pretty vividly the moment that I changed my mind because I was pre med for most of my time at Stanford. We were having a lecture by a health economics professor and he had put up a slide that was like. Or he'd asked the class first, what do you guys think impacts like population health the most? And everyone's like, hospital system, like the medical system. And he puts up a slide. This first bullet is like education, like the number one thing that impacts like population health. The second was like health policy. And the third was our actual medical system. And I remember being so kind of burnt out by the, by the pre med process and kind of started already starting to Question whether or not this was something I wanted to do. And then seeing this and I was like, I'm doing all of this to play at number three. Like, I really, I'm like, I want to be playing at number one. And that's really what kind of got me interested in education and ended up getting my minor from Stanford's master's, master's in education. And that kind of took me necessarily take me directly to the non profit route, but took me more into like, what are the programs and systems out there that impact people most and ended up actually kind of after making that decision of, you know, I don't, I don't want to go the medical route. Actually ended up with Sheryl Sandberg's family foundation over the summer, which was really my, like, foray into philanthropy, which is really, you know, dictate a lot of my, my career, since I don't want.
- [20:20]
Unknown
To assume people's knowledge about who that is. Can you explain?
- [20:23]
Maya Cooperman
Yes. Cheryl Sandberg was or is the CEO of Facebook. She's a very prominent tech figure and has put a lot of her, you know, financial resources into helping women in corporate America. So a lot of her foundation is focused on equal pay and making sure we have equal represent within the like, corporate, corporate world.
- [20:53]
Unknown
And the foundation, what was that like? I guess it was interning at that point. Right. So what was that like?
- [20:58]
Maya Cooperman
Yes, yes. I mean, it was. I was just so inspired to be at a place where everyone, it felt like everyone was there because they really believed in what. In the work. And I also think it was the first place I really understood what like, great mentorship looks like. The, the staff was all like, so smart and dedicated, but also like, really excited for to like, help me as a young intern, like, try to understand what the mark I wanted to leave on the world was. I remember having so many great, like, coffee chats and like, mentorship conversations that actually ultimately led me to my, my first job out of, out of undergrad as well. So I think, like, as much as I loved the direct work we were doing, I think it really taught me what I want out of like a work environment and like, what, yeah, what really good, like mentorship means.
- [22:00]
Unknown
But it also must have shown you some of the things that were working well and maybe some of the challenges of foundation work. Right.
- [22:07]
Maya Cooperman
Yeah. Interestingly enough, I, as much as I got such a good peek behind the curtain there, the thing that really showed me some of the challenges of philanthropic work was actually when I spent time on the grantee side. So in Undergrad, I ran two nonprofit organizations. One was the Stanford Dance Marathon, where we did. We fundraised for the uncompensated care unit at the local hospital and kids who couldn't afford treatment. And so it was like a massive fundraising and philanthropic effort run across student body. And then the second nonprofit that I ended up running in my last couple years at Stanford was called Stanford Camp Kesem, which is a free camp for kids whose parents have been affected by cancer, so either have passed away from our remission from, or are currently undergoing treatment. We spent all year, our focus was fundraising in order to put on those services. And so I think that's really where I started to see the ways in which some of these systems feel broken or difficult. As an applicant, I felt like we spent so much time and effort applying to these big, open calls for foundations and neither never hearing back or not really understanding whether we were even eligible or what they were looking for. And I think that's really when my wheel started to turn. And it wasn't until many years later, of course, that I ended up doing what I'm doing today. But I think that was really my first moment of, wow, like, this feels way harder than it. Than it should be. And I feel like I'm doing a lot of things that aren't actually yielding the results that we. We needed within that organization. So I think that even more than my experience within philanthropy directly is really what kind of sparked this inside me.
- [24:12]
Unknown
So you went from that, I know, into this world of consulting, which is a different animal altogether. Talk about that. Where did you go and why and what were you doing there?
- [24:25]
Maya Cooperman
Yeah, this actually came from advice I got from mentors at Charles Sandberg's family foundation, where I think I came to them a bit lost. I was like, I knew. I know I want to make like a. I want to be able to, as dramatic as it sounds like, leave this world and feel like I just moved the needle at least slightly in a positive direction. It doesn't have to be significant, like, over significant. If I want to know that, like, I'm leaving the world a little bit better than I. Than I found it. And I was telling them a bit about just, like, feeling lost of what that even looks like. And while I loved what I studied in undergrad, I didn't necessarily feel like I had a super transferable skill the way that an engineer might or someone who studied, you know, finance. And so a lot of them were actually Sheryl Sandberg's. One of her early jobs was at McKinsey, which is a large consulting firm and actually global consulting firm. And so a lot of them said, hey, listen, if you want exposure to tons of industries, tons of people, tons of expertise and kind of get some of those basic workplace skills, consulting is a great route. And so that's really. I hadn't even heard about this before I being raised by physician parents. Like my concept of work was like, you're a doctor, you're a lawyer, you're a teacher. And like, you know, it felt like I don't think the world is like, I think I have a concept of like how vast the the world was in terms of like the ways that you can interact with it. And ended up going to McKinsey but really being like uber focused on the broader impact space. So most of my clients that I was consulting for were, you know, local governments, large nonprofits, small nonprofits, many educational institutions like universities. And so I think that was just this amazing crash course of what are the problems that these organizations face, what is the makeup of the organizations at all? And I think I just got a ton of exposure to people that were really inspiring and I built a career around impact. And so yeah, it just felt like I felt very lucky to be in a lot of the rooms that I got to be in within that role. And I remember one of my favorite projects, and this was a pro bono project, so I'm allowed to speak about it. But we worked with Khan Academy during COVID and Sal Khan, the founder of Khan Academy, is like a personal hero of mine and I highly doubt he remembers me today, but we ended up getting to work with him personally on helping them publish a report around remote learning and remote learning strategy during COVID And I just remember as a, you know, 20, I think I was 23 at the time, like playing three real person, getting to work with like one of my personal heroes just felt like a really, really incredible experience.
- [27:27]
Unknown
Talk a little bit more about the kinds of, you don't have to refer to who the organizations were. You probably can't, but, but what kinds of problems were you trying to solve, you and your colleagues, especially within the impact sector, whether it's the givers or the grantees.
- [27:46]
Maya Cooperman
Yeah, a lot of, within the smaller nonprofits we worked with, a lot of it was on long term strategies. We would help them set their five year strategic plan, which would of course involve how are, where are we going to get the money and who's it going to come from and what do we need to track in order to prove that the Money's going to a really great cause. And so that was a lot of focus with our smaller clients, with some of our larger clients, we actually got to do some really cool programmatic work. So specifically within the government sector, I spent a lot of time at the intersection of government and education. And one of the local governments we were working with was trying to solve the problem of actually labor market gaps as well as.
- [28:33]
Unknown
You mean not enough teachers or what?
- [28:36]
Maya Cooperman
Yeah, so they would, in this, in this region, they were struggling to have enough nurses, they were struggling to have enough folks within more advanced areas of agriculture. And what they, what they brought us on to do is say we want to solve this issue, but we also want to solve educational attainment. They were having high dropout rates and high schools, high dropout rates in community colleges and four year institutions. And so our job was actually not to invent a solution, but to bring together people from these, the industries where there was labor market gaps from The K through 12 institutions, community colleges, public and private four year colleges, and say, hey, what are the, let's think about the programs that we can start even maybe as early as 8th grade to not only keep kids motivated and excited to kind of go through with a degree, but also funnel them into these areas where there are high paying jobs and a serious need in the community for folks to fill those roles. And to me, even though what I do say is much less like programmatic, those were the most fun projects I always thought were, because we were spending time with people who spent their careers thinking about these problems and kind of getting them in a room and helping them, you know, helping guide the process of coming up with solutions. And that particular program ended up actually getting, I believe it's like $25 million from the government to, to pilot it and see kind of if it, if it would actually solve their, some of the like core issues that they were trying to tackle. And I think they're, you know, they should be up four years into that now. So I'm not connected with their team anymore, so I'm not exactly sure how it's going, but I'm excited to maybe one day see an article about it in a local newspaper somewhere.
- [30:29]
Unknown
One of the reasons we're asking about this is because I know it will impact then your decision to do what you do now. But also because a lot of not for profits organizations that are out there seeking funding, they don't necessarily either know about or have access to that kind of process, the strategic planning process. And then there are others who have A jaundiced view of it entirely. So that's, That's a different issue. But the same may be true on the grantee side. I think you said in another interview that a lot of these, these, you know, they're almost mom and pop family foundations. They might have a million dollars or something or a few million dollars, but that means one staff person or a few members of the family on the board, and they, they don't necessarily avail themselves of that expertise either. So they may know what they want to do, they may have the resources to do it, or they may have, in the nonprofit's case, the, the staff and the ideas, the mission statement, the program team, but they don't necessarily have someone who invests in strategic planning. So for them, what are, are there, There are lessons that you took from that that you've either applied now or that you share with people when you talk about this process of helping organizations figure out what the future looks like and how to get there.
- [31:48]
Maya Cooperman
Yeah, I think, I think it actually goes back to something we were talking about earlier around, like, really spending time with the communities you're trying to impact. Like, some of the family foundations that we work with that I think have, like, the strongest. Yeah, like, strategy are the ones who, like, have taken the time with the communities that they, that they care about that are, like, around the program areas that they've defined. And that's, it's part of what got me so excited about what we do. Even though I think software is a baby, it's kind of a boring element. Right. Of, like, what many organizations do, because the goal for us is just to allow people to save time with the things that they were doing that were very manual. And, and for, for me, what saving time means for a family foundation with one staff person is those, you know, five hours a week can be spent in the community or can be spent working alongside a grantee and understanding their work on a deeper level. Like, to me, that is as much as I was someone who made all the fancy strategy presentations and decks and, and such, like, to me, within soup, small philanthropy. Like strategy means spending time with the community. And that's like, ultimately what our, our goal is with what we're. What we're doing.
- [33:08]
Unknown
Yeah, it's, it's funny, as you were saying that I thought sometimes we think about efficiency and, and time, but if people don't have that flight path already plotted out, then even if they have more time, if they have the right tools, they don't necessarily know how to use them because they, they haven't plotted the path, so that's, that's kind of a challenge. But maybe that does take us into closer to the present. What, you were at McKinsey for how long?
- [33:38]
Maya Cooperman
About two and a half years, which is totally typical.
- [33:41]
Unknown
I guess a lot of people go, and that's. And it's a real grind. I mean, you're talking about long days, long weeks, non stop, right?
- [33:48]
Maya Cooperman
Yeah, it definitely, it definitely showed me how hard I can work. And I think there was very much a culture of expected excellence that I think really taught me how to do really diligent work and I think also taught me the value of feedback and actively seeking feedback on what you're doing at any given time. And this one manager, who was my very first manager at McKinsey, you actually change managers for each project you do. So I got exposure to a lot of different leadership styles, but it was my first ever manager. And I remember she was giving me so much, like, critical feedback. And I was, and it was really helpful. But as a 22 year old, I was like, oh my gosh, I'm doing a terrible job. I'm getting, I'm getting all this critical feedback. And I ended up bringing it up. I was like, hey, like, I just want to know, like, at a high level, like, how do you think I'm, I'm doing? Like, I want to improve. I'm trying to benchmark myself. And she was like, oh, Maya, I think you're doing great. She's like, the reason I do this is because I care about your development and I want you to be excellent and I know you can be. And she was like, if you ever have a manager who isn't giving you those critical insights, she's like, they probably don't care about your development. Like, this is something you should be seeing as a positive, not as a negative. And I think that that rigor, that like, mindset really kind of has carried through to, you know, the way we, we kind of run our organization at Tebelio today. And even just like in my job, I had in between McKinsey and Tibelio, kind of how, how I built relationships with like, mentors and folks across the organization was really focused on, like, the people that were going to help me develop. So I think that was like one of the big, the big learnings from that environment, which was definitely like a very intense first place to start your career.
- [35:49]
Unknown
Yeah. And that was all taking place not just in real time at that time, but also probably in person, in person.
- [35:56]
Maya Cooperman
And we in real time. And we would travel together every week to our, wherever our clients were. So these are people you're, you know, spending every waking moment with from Monday through Thursday. And so yeah, you get, you get a lot of that, like very much real time feedback during, during the work.
- [36:14]
Unknown
Right. So you said it was kind of a bridging moment you decided to leave. I guess you didn't want to make this your life mission to work at McKinsey, no matter how much you were benefiting from it. And then you had kind of a bridging moment that took you to founding Tamelio. So can you talk about that and then what caused you to start the company?
- [36:35]
Maya Cooperman
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. So I left McKinsey. I think something that I, one of the things I learned about myself there was that I love being a generalist. I was very much a generalist at McKinsey. I was thrown into so many different industries and functions and I just loved the learning you get from a role like that. And so I was really seeking a role that felt the same, but where I could have a more direct impact on the organization. And I ended up joining a startup called Main street as chief of staff to their CEO. A chief of staff role is kind of a catch all, you know, role where it, it can mean a lot of things. But in this, in this instance it was very much like I was the, the right hand to our CEO there. And I like think I got like very lucky in this organization in that we, I joined when we were 10 people, so very small. And we raised a $60 million Series A from a venture capitalist in, in the Bay Area. And so we, our team grew exponentially. We grew from 10 people to 180 people in a year. And we really got to, I really got to see like, what does growth look like at various, you know, organization sizes. And the CEO I was supporting was such a wonderful mentor. He really let me kind of take on big chunks of what we, how we ran the organization day to day. I think really what ended up inspiring me to start Tamelio alongside my co founder Ruth Wick is that Main street was doing something I thought was just amazing. So they were, they're a software company that helps small businesses and startups claim tax credits from the government. So essentially the same way that the Amazons and the Walmarts of the world are able to, you know, pay very little in taxes because of various tax credits offered by the government and economic incentives. Those same credits apply for the, to the small businesses of the world. But many Times they don't know that they exist. They don't know how to claim them. They're complicated to claim. And so these businesses that can, could really benefit from the financial help, like just are leaving money on the table. And Main street was a software company where essentially you would provide the software with your HR data and your financial data. And they had an algorithm that would say, hey, like, here's what we think you qualify for and the types of credits. And then they actually would do all the work to the paperwork to help these small businesses claim them. So many of our clients were getting, you know, tens of thousands of dollars back each year. These like mom and pop shops or like uber new startups. And. And I just was like amazed at how revolutionary it felt that I was like, this software is literally finding people free money. Like, it was just. I'd never seen anything like it. And it really got me thinking about my nonprofit work, especially kind of thinking back to that time where I was like doing so much active fundraising. I was like, there is nothing that I can think of like that in the nonprofit space. Like, I couldn't, I couldn't think of a single software tool that I was like, wow, this is revolutionary, right? For the nonprofit world. And I think a lot of it comes from the fact that the venture community doesn't see profit in the nonprofit world. And so you don't have the same level of like tech investment that you have in the for profit world. And I mean, I said, you'll hear me say this all the time, but I don't think software is going to solve the world's problems at all. Like, that's what the nonprofits that are actually on the ground doing the work are doing. But for my earlier point, I'm like, if we can even get people some time back in the impact space, like either that time goes to just like making people's lives a bit easier or can even go to moving along the actual impactful work of these organizations. And so that's really where I started to kind of think a lot about the nonprofit sector and how to kind of apply what I've learned in the for profit software world to it. And around that time, met my absolutely wonderful co founder, Ruth Wick, who is just the most brilliant engineer I've ever met. And he has spent his life outside of engineering, actually doing on the ground, volunteering. He to this day spends five hours every Saturday tutoring underprivileged kids in math because he's amazing at explaining very technical concepts. And he also has advised nonprofits on the technology that they use over the last many years. And so we found this shared love of software and the non profit world. And I think we both definitely like put ego aside when we were building the company in the early days where we were like, you know, I had experience across the spectrum in the nonprofit space and that I was like it's not really up to me to dictate where there's need and it's not really even up to me to dictate that there's need at all. Right. Like it was all based on an inkling I had at, at my last company. And so what we did is we spoke to hundreds of people across the space. So small nonprofits, large nonprofits, small foundations, large foundations, government grant makers. And throughout all these kind of user interviews, we started to see a need emerge within the small to mid sized grant maker like foundation space, which is.
- [42:08]
Unknown
About how much the small to mid size.
- [42:11]
Maya Cooperman
Yeah, so we, we, I think about it in terms of like on the small end of small to mid size you have a small foundation giving out, you know, under a million dollars a year in grants run by someone part time and mid size being, you know, maybe a team of 50 giving out $80 million. So it's a pretty big chunk of the industry. But there's the two kind of segments I have to say it excludes are super tiny family foundations that are run by pretty much no one and are mostly just, you know, we're logging donations each year on a tax return. And, and then on the other side you have the uber large foundations like the Ford Foundations of the world or the MacArthur's of the world that are like enormous enterprise organizations. So we're, we really kind of saw the need within the, the middle chunk of, of the space. And that's really when we, we started building and was In August of 2022, we put together an advisory board of over 50 folks across the space. So like small foundations, mid sized foundations, grantees of all shapes and sizes, grant writers. And we kind of co developed the product that we end up launching two years ago with them.
- [43:29]
Unknown
Now I have to ask you about a couple of things in there. One is how do you assemble that board of advisors? Because I mean doing this survey itself, we're talking to hundreds of organizations is, is not easy either but, but getting 50 advisors, people to contribute time to something which is going to be a product is really tough stuff. But you've also another. So I'd love to know about that, but particularly the composition because the People you've described don't usually talk a lot together. The grantees and the grant makers, there are kind of invisible walls between a lot of those folks. How did you find them and how did you get them to cooperate, even if it's through?
- [44:10]
Maya Cooperman
No, it's a great question. Truthfully. I just emailed hundreds of people directly. I LinkedIn messaged like hundreds of people and I was like, hey, my co founder and I are building a grants management system tailored for small to mid sized grant makers. We think your perspective would be valuable. Will you talk to us? And I think this was also a very validating moment for the product because there were so many people who said yes. I was shocked. I thought I was going to have to send thousands of emails and it was a few hundred to get to that 50. And I think a lot of it too was articulating the passion that my co founder and I have for what we were building allowed people to want to give us their time and we're so grateful for it. And I also think it made me realize how collaborative the philanthropic community is where as much as there is that wall between the foundations and the grantees within the, within the foundation world, because most of these foundations are based off of an endowment and they don't actively fundraise, they don't compete with each other for anything. And so they are very willing to contribute to the philanthropic community at large because it benefits them and it benefits their peers and they're excited by that. And then we did have moments where we brought people together across the funders and the grantees. But really the way that we ran the board was in those first five months where you're really designing and developing the product. I would have one on one meetings with every single advisor every other week. So we're talking about 2545 minute meetings a week where I would show them like a drawing of the product and I'd be like, here is the application feature, like where are we wrong? Like if we had a magic, if you had a magic wand, like what would this feature do for you that your current application systems aren't doing today? Where are we right? And I think in getting that one on one feedback, it allowed us to create like very safe for our advisors to be honest. And it also allowed us to then be able to see the 30,000 foot view of one person's feedback might be very specific to just their foundation's experience. Whereas others we might hear across the board when we have these 50 conversations. And I think that's what allowed us to get really honest perspective across groups that maybe aren't talking to each other as much. And I think the other thing, and maybe this is just like a bias of the funders who ended up wanting to talk to us. But something that I thought was really cool and makes me really excited about the future of this industry is how much the funders felt it was important that we had grantees on this board. Like, we already felt that it was important, but these funders were like, if you're going to build a good system, the grantee experience is broken. Like, the grantee experience has to be a focus. And so I feel like there was a genuine excitement of, like, having both sides kind of as part of the building conversation as well.
- [47:19]
Unknown
So everybody was open to that, even if it was, albeit probably through you, rather than sitting in a room together where they might try to say, hey, how about doing this? So that's always the problem. But you probably identified some huge issues that you didn't know about before. I mean, I know you did fundraising before, but that was kind of a different animal to what you were now investigating.
- [47:40]
Maya Cooperman
Yes.
- [47:40]
Unknown
What were the biggest problems that you started to solve here? But maybe more importantly, as you look forward, what are the problems that are still yet to be resolved?
- [47:50]
Maya Cooperman
Yeah, yeah. Oh, it's such a good question. I think there was two really big ones that came up. One on the grant, like, recipient side and one on the funder side on the grant recipient side. And this is, you know, I mean, there's so many articles written about this. It's maybe a tale as old as time at this point, but when, when these nonprofits are applying to grants, they are submitting the exact same information over and over and over again, but they might be submitting it in a slightly different format. And so it takes time to, like, translate, you know, what they said for one funder to another. And from like, a technical system perspective, it's really hard to share information across different grants you've applied to because you're logging into so many different systems. And, and, you know, so much of time, like, nonprofits also, like, are maintaining profiles about their organizations outside of the grant making process. Like, you think about Candid or guidestar, which is, you know, the premier database for nonprofits, it's important that their nonprofits are maintaining their information there as well, because funders will use that to, to verify information. And so I think there was just. The inefficiency of the grant application process was made very clear with the conversations that we had with you know, countless grant writers and just like nonprofits that are constantly applying to grants. And then on the, on the funder side, I thought something. One of the most interesting things that we found out of the many challenges that they, that they face was really around data. I think a lot of these foundations collect a ton of information via grantee reports on the effectiveness of the programs that they're funding. But many times the way the data is being collected makes it really challenging to analyze whether that's an actual like, data structure issue of, you know, there's this data all over the place and it's hard to centralize it or sometimes it's just, you know, in order to make it an easier experience on the grantee, you'll collect qualitative data and it's really hard to take, you know, a couple paragraphs about the success of a program and put it into like a quantifiable, you know, metric or even like sense of like, what were the true impact on my dollars? I think that was an interesting problem we were seeing on the funder side is like, how do you ensure that the grantee experience is, you know, good and that you're not overburdening them while also being able to truly understand whether or not the dollars you're putting into, into these organizations are like, effective or accomplishing your mission. So I think those were just a couple of the of the challenges that, that came up a lot that I think are maybe a bit more interesting than the like, nuance of like the actual like software challenges. People have, you know, a lot of gripes about software generally, but I think thematically those were the two that really bubbled up the most. And I think when I look forward and you know, just to give a little bit context what we do, we are like a grants management system. So we allow funders to manage all of their like grant applications and reviews, hold the relationship data with their nonprofits, run reports, and then of course have a grantee portal where grantees can apply. And I think something that gets me excited as we look towards the future with not just our system, but any technical system that's supporting the non profit community is I think we have an opportunity to make some of those things easier for folks, right? So like on the nonprofit side, thinking about how can we auto populate from data that's already out there or data they've already provided, like a sort of really simple example, or on the non profit side or the foundation side, like, how can we use some of these really amazing tools that you know, the AI world has provided to us to take qualitative data and put it into something that can be quantified so that you're not putting that burden onto the grantees, but you're able to like leverage information that they already have to understand your work better. And so those are the, some of the things that make me really excited, I think coming for EDIT from, from the Tech Lens and I think the group of funders that we work with today, we're a newer company and we've only been around for two and a half years. And so I feel like we end up working with a lot of foundations that are excited about people that are doing more kind of like cutting edge or innovative work. And I think I'm excited for our partnership with them to kind of drive how our product can help support their work.
- [52:20]
Unknown
And it sounds like all this is occurring within a closed AI environment. So you're not exposing data either on the grantee side or the grantor side to the world.
- [52:30]
Maya Cooperman
Exactly, yes. And that's something that we're, we're super careful about, especially in the world we live in now, right where we don't. We want to make sure that people can feel like their data is safe with us and that we're not sending it out to, you know, these outside language models that are going to use it for future training. And we truly try to be super clear with our foundations too. Of like here is how we built these features, here is what's happening to the data when you use them. Like we want people and they're all opt in. Our foundations have to choose to use an AI tool on our platform because we want them to feel like it's something that is their, that's their choice and that they're making an informed decision about.
- [53:14]
Unknown
Well, that said, you do have a lot of information in one place, so do you have the ability through appropriate permissions from the users to aggregate some of that as, as kind of collective intelligence about the sector? Have you seen some trends as a result of this work over the past two and a half years that tell you a little bit about where either non profits are going or where the grant makers are going?
- [53:37]
Maya Cooperman
Yeah, it's such a good question. So right now we don't have any sort of like benchmarking tool or anything based on the aggregated data, but we are able to kind of see the trend at the high level as, you know, the people that are working with our foundations day to day. And I think some of the big things that, that I'VE started to see, especially in the last like six months or so or one in the last six months or so. And one I think more broadly is we've seen, at least with our funders, that trust based philanthropy and kind of that redistribution of power continues to be a really big focus for a lot of our foundations that we work with. And I think from a, from our standpoint, what this means is we're seeing more people collect like video reports in our system. We're seeing more people do away with fields because they're like on an application because they say we're actually never really using this field in our decision making. So why should we make the non profit fill something out that we're not going to use? I'm seeing that be a big focus in the way that people are setting up their systems, which I think is, is a really like amazing thing to see. And then in the last six months or so we've also seen a big uptick in response, more responsive philanthropy. I think especially in our, with our current administration and some of the reductions in federal grant making, we've seen a lot of our foundations who, you know, obviously don't fall under that government umbrella really start to mobilize more funds to organizations that might be more at risk now that we're, you know, typically federally funded. And so I think it'll be interesting over the next few years to see how the non government philanthropy world evolves to kind of fill more of those gaps that we, that we might see with some of the reduction in funding at the federal level.
- [55:27]
Unknown
Well, I did want to ask you about that. We're at a particular moment in time, It's March of 2025 when we're speaking, and there have been a lot of federal government actions that are also manifesting themselves at the state and potentially local level across the country that have to do with what should be funded and not only what they will fund. There have been pauses or freezes or perhaps cancellations of a lot of aid, but also directives to different institutional types about what they should support or fund or in fact what would make them eligible for federal funding should they decide to support those activities through other sources of support. So that's a very long winded way of saying, are you seeing the foundations that are now that you're talking with, whether they're current users or not? Are you seeing them change or think about what they're doing differently? Are they being more bold or more cautious as a result of some of these federal and state decisions?
- [56:33]
Maya Cooperman
Yeah, it's such a good question, I think. I mean I've seen this with folks across the board. You know, even folks who do not use our system is at least the foundations that we talk to are being much more bold. They're like, you know, we, we exist because we care about the topics that we fund and the issues that we fund. And to pull back because of, you know, these directives that, that our new administration is imposing would be antithetical to, to why they exist. And I think that's just been so inspiring to see. There's been, I've seen multiple messages to funders, to their grantees talking about how they are going to work to protect them. And I think that's my hope for what we continue to see in this administration is the private foundation world really stepping up and continuing to be bold and not shying away from these topics that are going to go less funded because of the beliefs of our current administration. I think it's been a really inspiring thing to see and I hope it continues.
- [57:54]
Unknown
So two and a half years in, you talked about maybe some of the things that the product can do, but what about what you might want to do?
- [58:03]
Maya Cooperman
Yeah, that's such a good question. I think we as a vendor in this industry, essentially, I think our job and my job is to just continue to be a really good listener to the space. And I think on a personal level, like we've, I've heard some of these like larger, more innovative foundations talk about like how the sector can be better with, with data sharing or with some of these like bigger cross sector initiatives. And my hope from like a, a personal standpoint is that I get to work on some of those right. That we have. We end up working with enough foundations that we can do, really, we can help them do the things that really move the needle and, and that we get to continue to collaborate with folks who are, who are changing the industry. I don't think it's our job, it shouldn't be our job, the software in the space to dictate where the industry goes. It's our job to facilitate it. And so I think even beyond the product, I'm just hopeful that we get to be a part of that conversation and facilitate some of the, I think more exciting things that can happen within the philanthropic industry. And then as like on a more personal note, like I'm just really, really excited to like help our team grow. It's been one of the, the most fun parts of my job. We started two and a half years ago with you know, just myself and my co founder and are now actually just hired our 20th employee last week. And actually our 20th employee was a previous client of ours. She was an early adopter of our product and then we had an open role and she was like, I really want to contribute beyond being a user of what you guys built. And so I'm just excited to continue to bring on more incredible and thoughtful people and have our little community here grow as well.
- [59:56]
Unknown
I have to ask you about one thing you said early on in the conversation, which is you have this older sister identity and that's been gnawing at me ever since. But then you said you have a, I guess a 12 year gap between you and your youngest sister. So when you talk about some of this work for someone who is living what you describe is almost a different experience in the same place where you grew up and maybe sees the world differently not necessarily from the way you do, but from the way the world was 12 years ago. What kind of conversation is that? Like as you talk about your work and then she thinks about her future?
- [60:36]
Maya Cooperman
Yeah. Oh, it's such a good question. I mean, I talk with her a ton about like what I'm, what I'm doing. And I think, I don't think I'm like the reason for this, but I. My hope in our conversations is she. So she is absolutely brilliant. She actually got really into robotics and as a freshman in high school and currently is on like the leadership team of her robotics club, the all girls school that she goes to. And they, they went out last year and actually won like a underwater robotics world championship against like college teams. Like, they're just, it's just like amazing to me. I think she's very much like the smartest person in our family. But I think what's been really like, exciting is as she's gotten older, older, like having more conversations with her about what she wants to do. And I, and like, my like, small hope is that by taking this like, entrepreneurship route and kind of taking a risk that like, she sees spaces like this is like accessible to her as well. Because I think if I think back to myself as a high schooler, like never in my wildest dreams would you have caught me saying that I was going to be a startup CEO, you know, and I was in my late 20s and, and so I think like some of the conversations I have with her around what she wants to do longer term have been really exciting and I feel like I've been able to provide some, some insight on at least with my, my experience. But it's so funny. I feel like there is my, my family still, like I would say, only understands what I do, like 75 of the way. Like, like, I. We've gone through the conversation a few times, but they're like, okay, so you work with foundations and that's pretty much what we're gonna, what we're gonna hold on to. But yeah, those, I mean, those conversations with her have just been so fun.
- [62:27]
Jay Frost
Well, that's it for this episode of the PM Podcast. You can learn more about Maya and her work@trytemelio.com our thanks to our sponsor, Donor Search, the world leader in AI and donor research for None Fundraising. Our producer is Jack Frost, and our theme music is Moving Out, Moving in by Jay Taylor and is provided courtesy of Epidemic Sound. If you like what you heard, make sure to subscribe wherever you like to listen. Check out our sister shows, Front Lines of Social Good and How to Raise. And come back next weekend for another conversation with a leader in the world of social good. Until then, this is Jay Frost. Thanks for joining me.