Conscious Unbias

Our platform elevates underrepresented employees and their communities by providing an anonymized platform using adaptable software to record employees’ experiences.

Our methods ensure interventions remove workplace inequities experienced by underrepresented employees for employees. Improving the talent lifecycle and produces higher returns on all investments associated with environmental, social, governance priorities. Ultimately, creates better opportunities to positively impact the local economic systems. 

The value of our product expands beyond the workforce and workplace and impacts companies' marketplace and shareholders. We will also invite community members who receive services from companies to review and bring transparency to the unfair treatment in settings like the public sector, hospitals, schools, or research facilities.

Conscious Unbias is building equitable and inclusive workplaces by utilizing four main pillars: employee experience, organization reputation, true equity, and investment optimization. 

Through our platform, we will diagnose and observe improvements within the companies themselves and their respective markets through evaluating and tracking recruitment and retention rates, the morale of employees, and the overall investment towards the communities they serve compared to their reputation and their Environmental, Social, and Corporate Governance (ESG) data.

Conscious Unbias will also observe the influence on the BIPOC communities our platform serves by monitoring any investments made through Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) and the Community Reinvestment Act (CRA), with the United Nations Principles for Responsible Investment as guidelines, UN SDG goals.

As more companies use our platform to address systematic discrimination, exploitation, and investments in under-resourced communities more equitably, a gradual societal change will take place across community development and economic development efforts. 

This subscription-based service automates standard change management methods and interventions. Using a 150+ equity index, we survey marginalized employees about inequities and identifying what works and for who.

A root cause analysis report is generated to show effective and ineffective systems with recommended interventions. Leaders choose the interventions generated.

The platform will learn what changes work and automatically generate recommendations and decrease time in making decisions and costs associated with ineffective solutions. Monitoring progress will be public so employees know what issues companies are having and provide options when making decisions. It will also build smarter consumers so folks know where their dollars are used.

We are focused on impacting BIPOC people, and intersections, inside of companies and BIPOC communities within the company's marketplaces.  Most folks are helpless and do not know how to address inequities they are facing at work and services that are killing or further perpetuating harm. 

We have deployed an ambassador program to introduce the platform to industry groups and marginalized professionals. There is a gap in the language and how transparency creates accountability. Folks also do not understand the multiple layers of anonymization and how root cause analyses protect identities. 

My solution will connect folks who feel silenced and helpless in addressing their issues and amplifying their voices and protect their livelihood. 

We want to design spaces so folks can show up how they are, provide for their families with integrity, divest their labor from spaces that do not value BIPOC lives, and hold companies accountable for the sick, unalive, and sacrificing people to generate revenue for a small few.

Our technology will overcompensate for the centuries of inequitable treatment of the most marginalized people. We are creating opportunities for equitable access to jobs and generational wealth in communities of color. We are building capacity for community members to vote on how their communities are developed with their labor and dollars. We are creating a tool that does not include identities of the status quo and mitigating bias in ML platforms. It minimizes algorithmic biases in workplaces, research institutions, and shows how to develop a tool that centers BIPOC and accountable to change on behalf of BIPOC people.

I chose pilot because while I have a successful consulting firm and use similar tools for clients, but I only have secured 1 contract with the platform to date. There are a couple of components I need to build with companies to ensure accommodations for the entire talent lifecycle.

Our company is owned and operated by a Black woman activist. Her consulting practice uses root cause analysis, designing equitable systems and workarounds to address exploitation in the workforce and communities. She built report with marginalized communities to amplify their voices in change management work. We have never centered companies to make this work palatable. 

Due to generating root cause analyses, we do not provide any data that we have collected. These reports provide problems, solutions, with referrals. So, we own the data. Companies are not able to manipulate our analysis nor retaliate against employees for providing information since our index questions are objective. They can not manipulate what is publicly shared

We are building adaptable software to address race, gender, and equity issues marginalizing the status quo. We want to overcompensate for the homogeneity that exists within society.

Our recommendations are focused on systems versus people or situations. We understand representation is a portion of the solution and BIPOC folks will still oppress other BIPOC folks if the system and tools do not change.

Most importantly the founder has integrity and her work is informed Black femme queer theory. She knows it will take a massive shift from protecting the rights of companies and putting the rights of the most impacted, first.

Currently - 5k

1 year - 150k

5 years - 1.1M

We are building critical mass with reviews and aiming for 3k by august and 6k by the end of the year. 

We are also following companies bottom line. We will be able to see divestment in companies that do not create equitable workplaces.

 Many companies have issues with implementing all of the UN goals simultaneously. My index will help companies understand how to aspire to all goals in the workforce, workplace, and marketplace and holistically address transformation that benefits communities versus the bottom line. Developing corporate policy that protects all people, places, and things that don't breathe.

We also aim to build class consciousness so folks understand what is possible and do not get stuck thinking that "this is just the way it is." And begin asking "why isn't my company doing this? Am I supposed to have these benefits?"

5 Contractors

Amber Thompson (Founder) - is a lifelong Black activist, with over 10+ years designing equitable systems, a bachelor's in behavioral sociology, a master's degree in Organization Development and Change, and continue my education in organizing and resistance theory. She is published in the area of cross-movement building and a public speaker on issues of inequities in education, environmental justice, equity & inclusion, community development, and economic development.

My mission attracts folks of all genders, race, class, abilities due to the type of consulting I provide. So I hire slow to take time in ensuring I stay true to my mission. I use the tools and rubrics I embed in companies to constantly evaluate decisions I make.

As a non-tech founder, I am learning how to build the algorithms for my product. Solve would help increase my chances of building a Machine Learning tool to address some of society's most complex problems as well as overcompensating for racial biases in ML. Especially, ensuring we move from compartmentalizing SDGs to implementing changes that use all SDGs for a greater, faster change. 

Solve would help me connect with Tech founders that understand what I need to accomplish and how. I am limited by my resources in Pittsburgh and within the change management industry.

This program would also increase my chances of finding a tech cofounder by exposing me to a network that I wouldn't have access to otherwise.

Human capital - I Need to hire for roles that I do not know what qualifications exist for developers or engineers.

Financial - Need to pay for salaries and agency to develop the next phase

Public Relations - I have not been able to develop a strategy and not sure where to start.

Technology - I need someone who understands algorithms and debiasing tools. Even if they don't know how to de-bias, I do. I just need to make sure the algorithms do what I need.

MIT AI engineers would be a great partnership. I began building if/then statements and would like to learn to grow and develop this platform unlike anything else.

I would also like to partner with other antiracist tech to develop a systemic approach through other industries to make sure the impact is felt.

My tool will be impacting societal institutions such as hospitals, the public sector, and social services to increase the quality of life and mitigate harm these institutions impose on BIPOC communties.

My equity index increases the opportunities for change to happen simultaneously with people and the environment. Supporting companies in understanding how these issues overlap and interventions may be the same.

Our platform increases economic prosperity by showing barriers to addressing inequities in workforces, workplaces, and the marketplace. It will be advancing equity, inclusion, and justice.

I am using ML to bring transparency to not only issues but solutions to our largest problems in society.