welcome to MidwestCon 2023. I'm Rob Richardson, the CEO of Disrupt Art and also, of course, the host of Disruption Now podcast. Honored to be here with you. Thank you for joining us. We are here at the Digital Futures Building at the University of Cincinnati taping live for MidwestCon 2023. And with me is Kalista Zackhariyas, who is the CEO of SparkSeeker. And really the goal, the SparkSeeker and I'm going to summarize it to the best I can.
The goal is to really make sure you have that we can have intentional engagement using technology, and it's through an app that she does that, but she also cares very deeply about the future of technology and how we're intentional about using that for humanity and for good and for transparency. And that's why it's an honor to have Kalista on the show. Kalista, welcome. How are you?. You had me. You're hired.. Yes. Hi. Hello. That's good. You know, we tried. We tried. So you for having me know.
Appreciate having you on. It's when we met, there was instant connection. I think we were very similar in our pursuits of why we're in technology, why we're doing this. But, you know, the audience needs to learn it, too. So tell me if you can, tell me what motivates Kalista day in and day out to get up. It's not just about entrepreneurship, but generally.
I think I told you a little bit about my background in history, which I don't know how much of it can go into here, but I'm just going to go with it. I think, you know I grew up homeless on and off the streets, and I think there was a part of me that always wanted to do good when I could, and I never knew what that opportunity was going to be. And I was looking to really have a shift in my life.
I wanted to get out of that rat race, that hamster wheel, and create something where I could be more intentional with my time and resources and find a way to give back. And I kind of stumbled upon this issue because I had actually gone to these social platforms looking for connection, looking for community, looking for ways that I can join existing organizations and start lending my time and my energy to give back. Right?
And I saw the disinformation and the hate speech and the systemic divide and the disinformation, the behavior, manipulation and all that stuff. And it just kind of took it on its own life. And what started out as a frustration eventually became something where it was like, Hey, my my whole passion is about uniting people and bringing the power of people together to do social good. And how about we did that while solving a problem, right? And so we were able to marry the two.
So before I die, we're going to talk a lot about Spark Seeker in your vision with technology, but want to know about what motivates you. Because I think the most important ingredient in any organization and startup is is the founder at least initially. And it's tied to their story, their experience and their why. So I would what is your why? Freedom. Freedom. What does that mean to you?
To me, freedom means that as human beings, we get to maintain a sense of autonomy over the way we think, over what we get to do. And I mean, obviously within legal parameters, but, you know, you want to have that. I think, you know, our ancestors have these are hard won freedoms we have and I think technology has the ability to really enhance our lives. I don't believe that technology technology's good or bad, believe it to be very neutral.
Interesting. But I think its current trajectory can do more harm than good. And so I think that we are a pivotal moment. And I think we need to have more and more of these conversations. We need to really look at what we're building, where we're going and why we're going there. And if it is going to make us lose that sense of autonomy. I think it's an injustice to all those who came before us of God who have helped us get to this place of hard work freedoms. Absolutely.
So much to dive into there. I'm going to back up a little bit. Why are you so motivated by this? I want to know, you know, the what makes you freedom is important, but it comes from a personal reason or your experience because freedom is relative to the person, experience and time. And so that must it must be something. You talked a little bit about you being homeless. If you could just speak to personally why this mission became your passion to help other people. Great question.
Thanks for asking. I think very early on in life I understood the pain of disconnection. I understood the pain of abandonment, and I understood how hard it was to navigate this world. And then as I grew older, I realized how fortunate I had been interesting and that I was one of the luckier ones and that I was not an anomaly, that I was an everyday story. And it was it became very personal to me.
And I remember being a little girl and thinking like, How does one just walk by a child who's shivering in the cold? How desensitized have we become? How does one not worry that somebody else hasn't had food? I mean one might say I'm naive or that I have a my mind lives in a utopian world. Right. But it's just it's the basics of our human existence. And I couldn't understand that.
And and as I realized that I was not this anomaly and it was a million more like me, billions more like me, you know, I just want to do my part. I was like, you know what? I've I've been very lucky. And I mean, the same circumstances. Had they been imposed on my life and I had been in a third world country or in a country where women don't have rights, I can't even fathom what the outcome of my life would have been. And so with all my hardships, I am very lucky, right?
And with all of my all the things I've had to overcome, I've been very privileged. So just because I was raised here in in in Canada, in the U.S. And so that's a very different story for someone in India. And as well. It is. Absolutely. It is. It definitely is. And that's a great perspective to not a mother says to not live with the scars which you've met as. You call her Mama Richardson.
But that's what we're saying, is to, you know, to not to not live with your scars, because it's when you go through trauma and you go through hardship, the temptation is to let that to keep that perspective and never come out of it. And it's very difficult for for folks to do that. So how were you able to do that and what message do you give to others when they're going through their own hardships? I'm able to do that because God grace me with two beautiful sons.
I just dropped my youngest off to college yesterday. Congratulations. I am. I don't like the term empty nester. I'm officially an open nester, but I think that when you when you create life and I think it's this wonderful journey that is there for both moms and dads, but really very unique to motherhood, is that you want to leave the world in better shape than you found it.
You want to make sure that you get I mean, I think I've always taught my kids until all of us are okay, none of us are okay. And I think, you know, I imagine, like, what do I want the world to be like if somebody that was my child? And I think that's really what motivates me. I really want to know. You can't it's necessary for one person to go and try to save the world. But it is important that every one of us takes responsibility to some degree and tries. Absolutely.
Absolutely. It's you talked about privilege. And when when folks discuss privilege is often discussed from a negative point of view. But I would ask us to look at it from another perspective. Privileges is something that you have. Right. And it's a it can be male privilege, it can be white privilege, and people automatically like it, defensive about it. And the first time I understood that was in law school, right.
In terms of getting defensive about it, because I went to a women in the law class and I think I was the only man that like, Oh, what's that? What's up with you? Oh, yes, but you're allowed to to order sisters. I grew up strong and a strong mother. Right. But that's clearly. But I, but I remember being in the class and, and there was this conversation about essentially misogyny, culture, rape culture, men. And then I felt a little attacked. I never had that feeling before.
Like, well, I feel like all men are responsible for this or have some privilege in this and that was basically what the conversation was about. And I was kind of like, I don't want to really understand that. Right? And and then somebody just flipped it over very quickly and said, you know, if people talk about racism, it's the same thing. And the light bulb went off for me. Right. And I and I got that. And so when people think about privilege, privilege is not necessarily inherently a bad thing.
It's only bad if you abuse it and you ignore the fact that you have it right. It's not bad in itself. It's not bad itself. And even if, you know, somebody could say, and I've actually been asked this question, you've been homeless, you've gone through abuse, you've got and there's a list, there's a long list out to that things we won't get into all of those things now, too.
How can you say you were privileged simply because even with all those horrific experiences, all those challenges and adversities, I got to experience those adversities in a place like the United States or in a place like Canada, Right. Where a woman can go to a shelter. Yes, absolutely. It's not. I mean, that's a different level of privilege that most people don't associate. No. Because you could never know because life is the reason why they don't is the mind is relative. Right.
You can only compare to what you've seen and understood, which is why on another podcast we talked about, the most beneficial thing one can do is to travel and understand other cultures because that really helps you understand. It'll help you understand a lot. It'll also help you understand privilege. Absolutely, quite a bit. If you go to the wizard level, is life challenging? Absolutely. But would I have liked to have done that life in a third world country?
Hell no. Yeah, there's levels of challenge and people are still able to find a way. But let's go to some of the challenges that you're dealing with with your business in Spark Seeker. What problem are you trying to solve of spark figure? Well, where do we begin now? Well, we're solving quite a few things you don't like. Online engagement hasn't changed much.
You know, there might be a new fad or a new filter or a new this or new that, but the whole like follow how engagement is metric sized, how these platforms are monetized, not much has changed, right, in a long, long time.
And really that's where, you know, whether you are a nonprofit organization who has a global community or a nationwide community and you're looking to mobilize that community, get that community engaged, or you're an individual, whether you are an influencer, an individual user of this platforms like how do you measure engagement, What is engagement mean to you? Like, so do the likes and follows work anymore. The question with deepfakes, fakes, bots, all the explosion of all these things.
What does a lot of the metrics that we get from these platforms? What do they really mean to a marketer? Yeah, What do they mean to an organization? What does it mean for actual If we're looking at like a business to business interaction or, you know, you're catering to a community that has let's take a hypothetical, say the YMCA, right? If they've got a huge global community, how are they really engaging their audience, how they really staying connected?
How are we creating community and how are we mobilizing that community into action? So that's really what we focus on. Okay, So give that to me because I like to get it in and where we're as as Joe Madison is, where the goats can get it right, make it very easy. What would you say if you had to explain that in less than two sentences? What problem are you solving? We're see engagement and action. Okay. All right. And what would that look like when the problem solve was spark seeker?
It would look like we had a more human connection that was more meaningful and personal. We felt a true sense of community and we felt empowered to take action within our communities or on topics that matter to us. Right? How would we measure that? You could actually measure that through. We have a lot of we don't do a invasive tracking, but we have aggregated and atomized data in terms of what does that mean? Means that we don't associate things to behavior to. Rob Richardson.
Okay, we might get some. Okay. With this many actions taken on this platform, this is the amount of good we were able to do. There are certain basic metrics that we can pull, but it's just not associated to you because the second it becomes associated to you, we're building a profile and now we're looking to see how we can manipulate. Yes, exactly. So we're not looking to do that. So we're very mindful about that. So we we do have a way of maximizing that.
And then, of course, like with we're going to like the how the platform is positioned for each organization is a little bit different with the B2B side. Okay. So we actually go in and do a pre assessment. We look at what the overarching goals are and then we look to see, first of all, if we're right fit in the way we matricide, the way we can give them the results that they're looking for. Is it possible? So if we do it, then it's a good fit and we move forward.
So you work with organizations essentially that are looking for ways to connect with their communities. How do you so you work mostly on the B2B side? It sounds like at this mostly the the B2B can always add like a member of the B2B side can always add a B to C account if they want to have a private social experience or private online experience. But really, like one of the use cases might be a university alumni group.
Okay, They've got, you know, stuff where they want to get their community involved in donations events. They want them to come back and be part of their communities. So one of the big, bigger things that people are trying to get done, like one big area of interest for us is there because it's a huge market. Oh, okay. Well, you had a university, so we had connections. Walk me through what that would look like. Just and then I want to then I want to really get into what do you see?
Walk me through what that looks like, the visual experience. So online. So let's just say you were let's take the university alumni group. Sure. You're working with them. How would that look if you were just to work with them on a very high level? How would that work with you working with any university University of Cincinnati. Well, what we do is we don't actually have a regular plot like the feature of connection. Our platform is all video based. Okay, So it's a video centric app. Okay?
So you go in and it's like, let's the best analogy would be if Clubhouse and Zoom had a baby. Okay, That's what the video engagement is like. Okay, They could be one off for recordings and people can actually search based on their interests, actually find a community that was good unless the clubhouse in Zoom had a baby. Okay. So that's sort of our video engagement.
And whether you are starting a small business at home and you want to create awareness around that or you're a big organization who wants to like, for example, we've got we know organizations that have one organization that has 176 on Facebook, Right. And all of this is for their community engagement, right? And not one department knows what the other departments are doing that Very, very disconnected. Got it.
So like to create a lot of these online virtual events, get there to get that community actually talking. And then we've got something called an action feature where you can actually get them to take action. Now. Oh, that's awesome. So I got it. So I'm envisioning kind of how the clubhouse spaces which turned into Twitter spaces now and you're in which there's a huge opportunity now given where that's at, but engaging people but using video to do so. Yeah, and it's in video.
It's video rooms and video communities. And so you're building you're not building your community because someone liked your software, someone followed you. You're building your community because you sat out to make time to talk to your community. Got it. You're Engaging with your community. They get to ask you questions. They get to be part of the conversation.
They want to feel engaged and they want to know that they matter, that their opinion matters, and that they want to feel seen and heard. Yes. And really, how do we build relationships in the world? By connecting. By connecting. So we got a dollar back and we got to go back to our roots of connection and what connection means and looks like.
So we're doing things very differently on Spark Seeker and also like we know data support science supports that if you want someone to take action, they've got to do it. Now, if you tell them let's take action a day from now, a week from now, they won't do it. The drop off rate is very high. So if you are looking to mobilize a community, whether that be towards a good cause or whether that be towards a company excursion, how do you want them to take action? How do you want them to get involved?
And it's let's do it now. Okay. So thinking of that and just walking through that a little bit, you know, a lot of social media platforms use complex algorithms. A lot of them are using I don't want to get into that because obviously you're going to use a I. What is your biggest concern with the current use of AI for social interactions? And if you do have concerns and I assume you do, how is Spark Seeker or your organization going to go about changing that?
Well, there's a lot of concerns, everything from, you know, disinformation, the deep fakes with generative AI to existential threats and elite ism. And this, you know, it's there's there's a whole gamut of things to discuss there. I think on a lot of these social platforms, like we don't call ourselves social media, we're actually social community. You get to be social, but we're all about community. We're not about anything to do with typical social media. So we really try to do it.
So it's social community that's social media. I think that's such a key point for Go. I have more later. Thank you. But we don't we haven't deployed any as of yet. We're building a framework for it. So that's what I would say. The number one thing that would want everybody to do, really sort of looking at things from a ethical intelligence place first, you know, you need ethical intelligence models first, right? You need to understand really what are you building?
And I think, you know, in your panel tomorrow, wonderful gentleman that's going to be on the panel that speaks about explainable that that's another great topic to get into. But there's I think a framework needs to be done. You need to understand what you're going to be doing with this A.I.. A.I., I think, can be used for some amazing things,
specifically like disease prevention. Yes. You know, early detection, early like early evaluation, early findings actually prevent that from ever actually manifest or like predicting things like drought and famine. So there's a lot of great uses for I think, that we can see in the future. And I don't think that it's going to be an AI itself. It's going to be when AI converges with an existing industry and finds a solution to a problem within that industry. Got it.
And I think it's something which is true because technology is just a tool. It's doesn't solve. There's no you got to figure out what problem yourself in an airplane. It's all do. Exactly, exactly. So I think I think there's some great opportunities to explore. I think everything is going to still require that human interaction. I think it needs to I think the second we remove the human piece out of it, I think that's where we start running into a lot of risks.
How concerned are you that that's happening? So what is happening? Yeah, and that's why these conversations are so necessary. I do believe we're at a very pivotal point in time. What's the worst case scenario if we if we don't take the human centric approach, militarization and, you know, really jobs, job security, I think disparity between countries like right now with AI, with the technology, the tools that we have, you know, there are third world countries with a lack of training.
There's going to be an elite decision that comes out and there's going to be a huge divide. Yeah, I mean, I've the way up to the way I've described it is we can upgrade inequality, right? So those who have access to AI and will have a totally different experience and opportunities and those that don't, what else is well, what is how we defining what algorithms can do overall, which are algorithms that combine the two together because that's basically what it is.
Are we going to have algorithms only? And because it's all of this, all this is possible, right? Because most humans don't own land, right? Shoes, you know, like the entities own land. And you could argue an algorithm is another entity that can be controlled by a few people. How important is that for us to think about? Like, so how do we get people to think about that, though? Because it's we talk about this a lot on our podcast.
It's very hard to get people to prevent fires, even though it's it'll save you a lot more money. It's it's what it will save lives. But people often only see the fire. Right. And so like they it's people can easily put out fires for for right now people are seeing AI and they're saying, you know, Kalista, I hear you, but let's just figure out a way to move as fast as we can, make as much money as we can. How do we come at that?
Especially we know America is great for a lot of things when it comes to that. Generally, we we make as much money first and figure out what happens on the back end later. How do we how do we how do we change the narrative there? I think that think putting the cart before the horse right now, that is that is my genuine opinion on that. I think there is going to always be people that say, we'll worry about this, we'll worry about dealing with the problem later. Let's just make that money.
But I think that it's going to be, in this particular case, a runaway train and it's going to be a lot more undoing. That may not even be possible at that point. Yeah, you know, I think right now we are at a point where we need to stop and we need to we have to understand as human beings that we live in a supply and demand world.
And if we all want to jump onto a fad, onto the next greatest thing, and we just want to use all the new air tools out there, it is going to be a runaway train, but we need to and then we always sit back and say, But the government this but this company did this and that person will know. Ultimately, the responsibility is with each of us as individuals. What do we accept now, do we have the time to wait for terms of service?
No, no. We will complain that our data is being pillaged, but we agree to it now, you know, how much responsibility do we take as individuals show up? And by not showing up, you're showing up. So if something doesn't work, don't participate. Oh, man, you're speaking my language. I tell this, when people are in politics, I tell people, you get what you don't vote for, too. Yeah, people complain every minute. And I used to go to that. My former life. I ran for office.
And it's not the people that complain the most. You go back and look like you haven't voted in ten years. You got a lot of complaints about what's happening. It's the same thing, right? We have to be active citizens. And I guess and what's happening when I'm building, nobody's out there are spending billions, millions of dollars building models and no one wants to use They're in it to make money. Yeah, but that's the trick, though, right?
So I want to challenge that side of what you're saying. I don't disagree, but when all the social media apps started right, I think people believed that they were getting on to connect with their family. I think that was a genuine, genuine interest that you could connect with people that you didn't know, what you didn't see, and it didn't start that way, Right?
Yeah, But to your point, because I love you said that social community versus social media, because my definition of media is that especially with news generally, I'd say, you know, media to the to the brain, what sugar is to the body. You get the instant hit, but then it really kind of takes you down because the goal is just to get you emotional reaction. If you think about it, most of the time, the amount of information we get at news doesn't help us.
Yeah, it just really makes us either depressed or angry or emotional in some way. That's really what it does, right? That's why we keep hearing about when there's a there could be a crime to happen in certain area. There could not have been a crime for ten years. Right. But then they'll talk about a crime that happened because people over and over and over again cause people are interested, I'll draw them in. But it doesn't necessarily really solve the problem.
I'm making the point that what social media does the goal is to click, but it's not to connect. I was telling you a little bit about this piece of that because I don't agree that, you know, I think people were misinformed when they first went on social because it ever any of these social platforms that they ever charge you money for it? No. So how do we think how did we ever believe that a company that gave us something for free was worth billions of dollars? Well, I agree with you there.
And I tell people, if you're not the if it's free, you're not the consumer, you're the product. You are the product. So I think. But do you think people knew that genuinely, though? I think that people it I know that that's true because at the end of the day, they were getting something for free. Yes. And you know what? I think we will face that every single time you've given somebody something for. And then now you turn around and charge you for it. Why? I got it for free, right?
And then they don't connect. The issue is such a great point. I mean, it's have a lot of points on this. I mean, I agree with a lot of it. This is my nuance mine, the challenges people definitely. I think you're right. Right. They they got a free product and they were fine with it. And then and and I think it got people used to in a bad way getting things for free and expecting things are free content is free creators is free, music is free. We don't like none of this matters.
And then the only people that end up getting some money are the platforms that have advertising on there. And that's it, right? So it did create other problems in terms of how we thought about things because we shouldn't think about things that there is value to what we're getting, but we're giving it, but we're literally not paying for it.
But I would say the other side of it is I don't know if it was for informed consent in that agreed in that I don't think people predicted and I actually don't think even Facebook and others predicted how the algorithms would affect people in terms of how our politics are going, in terms of how people are dividing in a way.
And well, I think many those platforms and I didn't mean to interrupt you, but I think, you know, when you when you start tracking through third party services minute by minute behavior of every single person on your platforms, whether you're a company or an organization using it social. Sure. Or you're an individual, it doesn't matter because companies are just as much risk or worse.
And so if when you start tracking everybody and then in order to achieve a certain result, you're going to deploy behavior manipulation, tactics to create deeper engagement, longer engagement to result in a certain outcome, whether that be in disinformation or whether that be a purchase or whether that you know ads through ad sales and things like that, whatever it might be, there's a surveillance economy and then there's behavior manipulation to get certain things to happen.
So it's not just the ad revenue. This is like the smallest of problems. Sure. I mean, I think as we go into this conversation of AI, all this data that's been collected on who we are, once we switch into a digital currency and we switch into AI and we switch into all of these things that are going to be connected, how is the data that that all these organizations have on us? How is that going to be leveraged against us? Where do we qualify for what? Wow.
What kind of jobs are going to be linked to our data? Wow. What kind of credit scoring are we going to be? Have for medical resources? Do we have access to it? What type of criminal justice system will we have? What kind of travel permissions will we have? Oh, wow.
So how I is going to with a I with the evolution explosion of AI and with all this data that's being collected about us, especially companies and individuals really need to start thinking about what kind of platforms am I going to use? Is it worth it for me to get something for free when my data is being pillaged, basically? And how will that data be leveraged against me with AI? That's great at its current trajectory. So that's where I want everybody to start thinking and why.
I think Spike because there are necessary. There you go. Podcast. You do that. That was great. No, it's and getting people to make it to understand that issue is everything right And that's why that's why we started this disruption now That's why we were this conference and Midwest con people have to understand and it's up to us to advocate the problem. Like I think it's people did sign away a lot of that so people signed away a lot of their rights.
They didn't realize it, but now they can go back and reclaim them. Right. And we have to figure out what are we going to do with all this, with all this information that's been collected like we have. I forget what all the stats are in terms of the amount of data collected. It changes every year. But I think it's we've already repeated more collected in times in our history the last few years.
We have a lot of this information, but a lot of it is being collected in a way that has reinforced the same biases that we've had forever. Right? And so, like, if we if we're not intentional about how we're using artificial intelligence, it's going to really we don't understand the consequences. And we ought to at least come from a mindset of let's make sure we understand what's happening, not like turn a blind eye, make as much money as we can, and figure it out after the fact.
I think those I think, are really like ethically speaking, like I think you really need to sit back and look at why are we building these models that we're building? What's going into building these models, how we training was lying, how do we get people to hear us like we are? You, you and I are. We're obviously preaching to the converted, right? How do we get people who don't who just want to go and watch the algorithm on that Netflix takes them down or whatever or social media?
How do we get the attention of of those of degraded communities or how do we get the attention of corporations and others to make them understand that this is in their interests right now versus them just saying, don't worry about it? Because that's what concerns me. Like, I agree with you I think you you know that. But what concerns me is that how how likely are we to get the attention of enough people to actually get them to be intentional?
I think that whenever New technology or new things come out, it's all nice and new and shiny. It's like a new car. And, you know, we can sit there and talk about, Oh, it's got this feature and it's got these bells and those whistles that we can glamorize something very quickly. And I think that's really what happened with a I agree. You came up to the house. Yeah, there's your Bentley and you have blockchain really to be that we're we're we're we're like two side children now.
So no one likes teamwork. And I think, you know, I think you you can play the short game. We can play the long game. Some of it comes down to ethics. Yeah, you ethics as a human being and you ethics as an organization. Yes, We all want to make money and you don't. In an ideal world, we all want to make lots of money. Yeah, but there is more than one way to do that. Yeah. You can make money and still have ethics you can think about.
Okay. Like I get why companies one won alums and I get why why is so appealing. I see the virtues of AI in many ways. There are many aspects of AI that I am very excited about. Sure, But we can take them and say, Why are we building what we're building? What's vital? Like what is the outcome? And start really looking at it from an ethics. I think ethical intelligence is very important. It would be great if every company could deploy an ethical intelligence community or ethical intelligence.
What do you mean by that, really looking at the core principles of what ethics is and saying, hey, listen, this is our business, this is the problem our business solves. And as we are coming up, what is the next feature? What is the next advancement? What is the next thing we want to focus on and how is what we're building going to support that outcome, that solution? And what what is it that we need to collect in order to be able to How is it that we need to train these models?
Where are those biases? How can those biases, those conscious, unconscious biases impact people? Like what are the long term? I think that that's ethical. Intelligence needs to be something that is. There is a preface to A.I.. Yes. You know, before artificial intelligence, we need ethical intelligence. That's great. And I think that's one of the things I really speak about, because I think we're entering the AI renaissance. Yes.
You know, we had many different periods as the era of the AI renaissance. So we are all artists and we're all creators. And what are we really creating in this period? And then, you know, and I think these are the conversations need to have. So really, so much of like emotional intelligence is going to be every company go out there and put together an emotional intelligence work. It's you said we're all you're right. Something that I said a few years ago.
So I feel like I was predicting the future a little bit. So we're all of us are creators and all of us are media companies, too, right? And so we have the ability to change the narrative that can change the conversation, that can change the perspective, that can then solve problems that people didn't think of. And I think that's that's why is so wonderful. The work that you're doing with Spark Seeker. And I think we think about the opportunity. It's changing those perspectives, right?
So I'm going to give you a few rapid fire questions at the end of tell me you got Spark Seeker. What does success look like? I don't define success anymore. You don't define success anymore. Okay, so I learned something. Okay, Tell you this. I think there's a duality. One thing I've learned to life and this is my true sense of wisdom, for whatever it's worth. Okay? There's a duality to everything in life. Okay? Nothing is black or white or like, all good or bad, there's a duality to everything.
Okay? And I think the there was a time that I had to prove over my head and I had to I'm thankfully in a place where I'm okay, like I get to create Spark Seeker. And so for me if I chase success, the duality of that is failure that's waiting for me on the corner. So I'm in the space of creation. Okay, You're in a space of creation. I love that. I love that answer. But I'm going to challenges you while you're on disruption. This is what we do. What does the legacy look like for Calista?
What does it look like for Spark Seeker Oof Legacy? Now there's a word really closely attached to success, but still enough of a difference. I can go down that. Oh yeah, I like it when it goes. Legacy look like legacy is how you define it. I was like, No, I don't want to do that for you. Go We probably think very much like, so it's okay.
You probably re right legacy to me looks like someone through our work feels empowered to build a family, to think differently and to stand up for humanity's autonomy. And and I think we're all just here to walk each other home. So, as you know, I'm going to be I'm going to play a part in that. And so I hope the work we do and the way I've lived inspires that. All right.
What is it uncomfortable truth that you have that most people would disagree with you on, an uncomfortable truth or let's say this, what's a truth you have that most people would disagree with you on and about most people.
But I know that there's a huge just yeah yeah it doesn't that it could just be like most people like it's something that I think yeah in order for us to ever change a woman's journey in this world, we need to start at home with our boys and our boys are some of the more lost people that really need more support and more guidance, more love. Yeah, I would agree with you.
And I think there will be people that like people that would disagree with you too, because there's a lot of people fight back on that. But it's very difficult. I can tell you that as a as a man and as a boy, to feel like there's a place you could be that you can't be vulnerable. Right. That's a very hard thing for a man and boy. And I haven't come close to mastering it either.
But I know that's difficult because, I mean, I raised boys and I can say that, you know, I raised them to be kind to women. I raised them to be fair. I taught them what showing up looks like for equally and, you know, I did all those things. And as a man, as a woman, it mattered to me. And I didn't want it to change that in the world.
But I think with the world, the way it's changing as rapidly as it's changing even though maybe it's going in the right direction, that it's our perspective, it's who you speak to. But I do know that there's a lot more support right now in this moment in time for women to navigate these waters than they are for young boys who are feeling extremely lost and they do not know how to speak and they certainly don't know what manhood looks like. That's so true in this world.
And until if we want our journey to change and I'm ready for our journey to change, I think, to our boys. Oh, my gosh, you've you've you've walked down a line. There's so many things I'd like to address on that is because I do think that's one of the threads that get ignored. And you see, there's a reason why a lot young boys are attracted to the people like the Andrew Andrew Tate to those folks. Right. They speak to them about mental health is right.
They see on the rise a suicide, something, but they're speaking to something that they're feeling on. And rather than just saying all these men are jerks like you asked another question, why are they feeling that way? And how can we figure out how to address that? I think that's we just we just agree. All right. Final two questions. One, we'll just do it quickly. What's your what's theme in life? What's your theme at the end of the day, if you had to say the theme for you, what would that be?
What would that say and why? A theme, A theme, a saying might is define yourself for yourself by yourself. The theme I would say the series of your choices becomes the sum of your life. So choose well, I'm just. That's good. All right. Final question. You got a committee of three your advisers for life, business, spirituality, whatever you want. Tell me who these three people are and why who your three people are. Yeah, you're three advisors and three advisors. My mom.
Okay. And I want to give my sister a sister. Okay, Well, could be a worldly sister and a brother. All right. But you're not going to name anybody. It can be whatever capacity could be personal, could be professional. But I do believe the people who are close to my life, they may not be born with me, but they're my brothers and sisters will live that way. And some of them are the top CEOs.
Some of them are surgeons, some of them in politics, and some of them are moms, and they're all powerhouses in their own right. And I think depends on what it is. But if you have one of each of those, you've got an army by your side and there's not much you can't take on. Kalista, such a pleasure having you on this. So again, it was great having you, all of you on. Thank you for listening. We're at Midwest Con 2023. I'm Rob Richardson, CEO of Disrupt Art.
We are taping here live at the Digital Futures building. Be sure to check out more of our episodes at Disruption, our podcast. We have plenty of great conversations just like this one with Kalista Zackhariyas. And this will be a great will be a great content. So save it. Also, you're going to learn more about our company. You can look you can look more in the comments and the descriptions and learn more about her.
Also, you can learn more about disrupt art and what we're doing to really change the future of events, change the future of engagement, and make sure that we're empowering creators all across the world. But always, we thank you for everything you do and keep disrupting It is awesome. Thank you