EP 25 - Emily Salazar (Lime)

Summary Emily Salazar is Director of Social Impact and Advocacy at Lime. She got her start in impact work as a master's student in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, when a community garden she ran for local kids was sold to a developer. She organised the community, then went to the city as a partner rather than an opponent, and came away with a bigger garden on better land. From there she moved to HeadCount, where she brought digital tools into a paper-based voter registration operation, and then to Lime. She talks through Lime Access, Lime Hero and Lime to the Polls, and why impact only scales when it's built into the core business.Keywords social impact, urban mobility, micromobility, community engagement, advocacy, civic participation, voter registration, food access, sustainability, transport, Lime, HeadCountKey topics From community gardening to a career in impact and advocacy Treating stakeholders as partners instead of opponents Bringing digital tools to in-person voter registration at HeadCount Why impact needs tech and marketing to scale Lime Access, Lime Hero and Lime to the PollsTakeaways Advocacy works better when you treat the other side as a partner. Digital tools paired with in-person organising reach people you'd never meet face to face. Impact needs tech, marketing and product thinking behind it to scale. Impact programmes grow fastest when they're tied to the core business. Expect to fail and iterate. The collaboration lesson has to be relearned more than once.Sound bites "Impact is not just impact, it's tech, it's marketing, it's all of these other things, and it can't be siloed into just this impact space." "Impact and advocacy doesn't have to work against business and development." "Mobility is such a fundamental part of everyday life for city dwellers."Chapters 00:00 Introduction to Emily Salazar 01:05 Community gardening and food access in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania 03:13 The garden sale and grassroots organising 05:02 Shifting from adversarial to collaborative advocacy 07:25 Learning the collaboration lesson again and again 08:24 Scaling civic engagement at HeadCount 10:43 Bringing digital tools to voter registration 12:37 Why impact needs tech and marketing 13:21 Burnout, 2020 and the move to Lime 15:33 Why transport access is social impact 17:47 Lime Impact Lab and Lime Access 20:28 Lime Hero, Lime to the Polls and Lime's impact pillars 22:18 What's next for EmilyGuest links Emily Salazar on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/emilygibbs1/ Lime: https://www.li.me Lime Impact Lab: https://www.li.me/why/community HeadCount: https://www.headcount.org