In this episode, I speak with Sara Leedom, Co-Founder and COO at Inkomoko, an organisation supporting refugee and local entrepreneurs across East and Central Africa. We talk about what it means to build businesses in complex environments, what true community-centred support looks like, and how financial access, training, and local leadership can shift the trajectory of entire communities.Sara shares:• How Inkomoko began and why it focuses on refugee and host-community entrepreneurs• Why listening to communities leads to more resilient solutions• What sustainable impact looks like beyond numbers• The challenges and opportunities of growing in post-conflict and displacement settings• The role of technology and AI in widening access to finance and supporting small businessesInkomoko works with more than 100,000 entrepreneurs and has supported the creation of over 60,000 jobs, with a 96% loan repayment rate, in some of the most challenging environments. Behind those numbers are stories of people rebuilding their lives, supporting their families, and strengthening their communities.

What happens when an organisation decides to use voice AI to support its community work? In this episode, I speak with Shawn Paton, Vice President of Community Impact at United Way of Pierce County (Washington State). Shawn shares her experience of introducing our voice-based agent across their phone lines, and what it has meant for both staff and the people they serve.

At Fortell, where I work as Head of Partnerships, we collaborated with United Way to address a growing challenge that many organisations face: high call volumes, long waiting times, and the pressure on staff to respond to every request for help. The system we developed enables an AI agent to answer calls in multiple languages, provide clear information, guide people to the right services, and escalate to a staff member when needed.

Shawn reflects on the impact of this shift, what has worked well, where the learning has taken us, and what this might mean for community organisations looking for new ways to stay accessible and supportive.

What does exclusion really look like in Latin America today, and how can we measure it in a way that actually helps people?In this first episode of Conversations on Impact, I sit down with Yuri Soares, Chief Impact Officer at IDB Lab, to explore the insights from a groundbreaking vulnerability study we conducted in Colombia. Using digital avatars developed by Fortell, we reached communities often left out of traditional surveys, and uncovered stories that reveal deeper social trends across the region.We talk about:

• Why Colombia was chosen for the pilot

• How exclusion, education, and care burdens intersect in complex ways
• What technology made possible, and where human insight is still essential
• What it takes to turn data into real action, beyond the pilot phase